My simple kitchen command station

Hello all! Hope your weekend was great! I was sick all weekend -- at first I was frustrated I couldn't get anything done but then I embraced it and just enjoyed laying around and watching movies for 72 hours straight. Now I'm on the mend and trying to catch up from my lazy days. :)

I'll be hard at work on some outdoor projects this week but I wanted to share a quick spray paint project I did a few weeks ago. If you've seen my kitchen you know I added a tray to our island since I expanded it more than a year ago -- I love having a spot to corral all the stuff that we reach for every day. 

I've been using a tray I found at Goodwill but I had been on the search for something a little larger for months. I found this one at HomeGoods: 

I liked the big industrial/farmhouse metal rings as handles and loved the color of the wood, but unfortunately it was all wrong on the butcher block island. 

Spray paint to the rescue! I wanted more of a contrast so I sprayed it black and LOVED it. You saw it last week when I shared more about our peonies: 

This has become our "command center" in the kitchen and we use the items in the tray numerous times a day. They're all little things that feel too small and cluttery on their own and gathering up on the tray looks so much better. 

My favorite part of the tray is the new recipe box I found a few weeks ago at a local shop: 

Of course afterwards I looked online and found the exact same one on Amazon for less. There's a floral one I may have to get for the spring/summer. I don't usually do that but I LOVE that one too and have an Amazon gift card burning a hole in my pocket. ;)

Anyway, the polka dot version had me immediately and I love having my recipes so easily accessible. I've started filling in the cards but need to get more:

That's my yummy crock pot chicken and wild rice soup -- SO GOOD. These recipe cards from this line are so pretty too! They have so many cute designs. I'll probably end up just copying more on the printer but they are adorable. 

The set comes with about 12 dividers too. It's seriously too cute and looks great sitting out on the tray: 

 I also keep a dollar store vase in the tray with straws and my favorite butter dish from Target:

Of course my pitcher (also from Target) I've had for years holds my flowers every week. This napkin holder was from Target (I think?) as well (do you sense a trend here?). The napkins were from IKEA, but watch out because they turn your face blue!: 

Ha! They sure are pretty though. 

We use at least one of the items on this try every day, if not all. I love having it right out in the open so everything is easy to access: 

I'm trying to keep the clutter down in our kitchen so having all of these little items in the tray eliminates some of that. At least it feels like it does. ;) 

Do you use a tray in the kitchen for similar items? It would work for the kitchen table too! You can see how I used the tray to make a cute and functional hot chocolate station at Christmas too:

Affiliate links included for your convenience!

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Going vertical with storage (it always works!)

Well hello! I have a super quick, but SUPER effective organizing project today! This will apply to those of you who have children obsessed with Nerf guns. In our house the tiny little Lego pieces have (mostly) been replaced with the Nerf bullets that we find every-freaking-where in our house. 

Everywhere. 

😆

Our son used to be a huge Lego fan but as he gets older he's switched to Nerf. For every birthday and holiday that's his request. Our home has also become the place where his buddies house some of their guns too, so we have quite the collection. 

My son has been begging me to figure out a better solution for the storage. For a couple years we've had them in a bin in the little closet under the stairs: 

But this is how it looked on a good day. The games and the Nerf stuff got intermingled and most days this closet was a big mess. It drove me crazy and although he did try to keep everything put away, the bin wasn't working. There wasn't enough room and to get one out they had to remove everything. Plus we had smaller guns and accessories in bins in another part of the room, so things were all over the place. 

We found some ideas for Nerf storage that were fun and seemed like great options and all of them involved hanging them on a wall. At first we were going to do it in the garage, but I realized that would be a pain for the kids to run out and then take them down to the basement (where they play with them all winter). 

So I decided to move some things around and make this little closet work. And it is AWESOME! I moved the games to our storage closet:

We have empty shelves in there because of this major purge I did last year. Love. :) 

I grabbed some small pegboards from Home Depot and because this closet is not finished, I was able to screw them right into the studs. The end result? GLORIOUS: 

If you have finished walls you just need to screw some 1x2 boards into studs vertically and then attach the pegboards to those. You can't hang these right against drywall because the hooks won't go into the board. These pegboards are smaller and perfect for a project like this -- the bigger ones are so large and bulky. Each one of these was $7 and I believe they are two feet by four feet. 

I grabbed these hooks to hang everything: 

They are the perfect hook for the Nerf guns -- here are some that are the same size. I also ordered these locks that go over the hooks as well. They are great because they keep the hooks in place when things are taken on and off.  

Most of the Nerf toys have hooks but those that don't can just be hung by the handles:

I almost went horizontal and stacked the two pegboards, but then a majority of the bottom board would have been at the floor, so I would have lost hanging space. Hanging them vertically makes the bottom part usable. 

We took two of the storage bins and filled one with the accessories and one with bullets. Now there's no question exactly where everything goes when it's time to clean up the meeellions of bullets: 

Side note -- see the air hockey table there? Last year I added wheels to the end of it so it's easy to roll in and out of the closet for storage: 

One of my best moves ever, not gonna lie. ;) 

Our son is SO stinking thrilled with this closet and he's crazy proud of it. It's the first thing he shows friends when they come over. It's been a week now and everything has stayed organized...this is a record for the Nerf stuff! 

I know most don't probably have a dedicated closet for something like this, but if you are trying to find a good spot for these awkward toys, this may be a good option for a wall in any closet. I've also seen these done out in the open in toy rooms or family/basement spaces and it's a fun way to display and organize them. 

Every time I go vertical with storage I find it works so much better! And having them easily accessible means they are easier to put away! Hopefully this gives you ideas if you're dealing with the same Nerf problems. ;) Have you figured out a way to organize something awkward like these? I'd love to hear about it! 

Here's an image to pin if you'd like to save this idea for later!:

Affiliate links included for your convenience! 

My favorite hidden storage in the kitchen!

Hello and happy weekend! It's Friday the 13th, the full moon was yesterday and we're expecting an ice storm tonight. Good day to stay inside I say! 

This is one of my very favorite little details of our home and I can't believe in nine years I've never shared it with you! At least I don't think I have? I've been at this a long time folks! 

This organization idea is hidden away and you'd never even know it was there. We have them in the kitchen and master bath: 

Any guesses? I don't even remember picking these out when we built our house -- if I remember right they came as a nice surprise to us when we moved in. 

They are called tip out trays and they allow you to use that small space behind those upper, faux drawers: 

They work with nearly all drop in or undermount sinks. And of course with sinks that sit on top of the counter in bathrooms. When we installed this sink years ago with our old countertops I couldn't use the trays because there wasn't enough room. But when we got the granite they must have moved the position of the sink back just a bit because they work fine again! 

They are absolutely AWESOME for the little stuff you need to access daily:

We used to keep our sponges in there until I found these that I love -- they won't fit inside. But regular sponges fit fine and tons of other random stuff will as well. 

In our bathroom we use them for our toothbrushes, toothpaste and flossers: 

We each have one in our bathroom and I plan to add two more when I work on this room sometime in the next couple of years. They are so convenient and easy to access! 

It wasn't till about seven years ago or so that I noticed they had started selling them in the store -- I've seen them at Lowe's but the best price I've seen for them is on Amazon. (Make sure yours come with the hinges if you buy online!) You can also just buy the trays -- when ours didn't fit with our new sink I just took the trays out and attached them to the back of the cabinet doors. Still great storage! 

If you're handy you can install them yourself, but they do take some patience. To install them where there are none, you'll need to lay inside the cabinet to remove the drawer front and then install them. :) I had to remove the kitchen trays when I painted our cabinets and took photos of them to remember exactly how to reinstall them. 

I highly recommend these hidden storage trays for little stuff you use every day -- I think they're especially helpful in the kitchen! Do you have these hidden gems in your house? We love them and plan to add more! 

Have a great weekend and if you are getting the ice as well, be safe!

Affiliate links included for your convenience! 

Pretty ways to organize everyday items

Hello there! Sorry for the late post today -- we thought we had a sick kiddo on our hands but after a doctor appointment all is well. :) 

I always feel like organizing this time of year and it last for a few months. The older I get, the less stuff we have and the longer we live here...I feel more and more organized. It's taken awhile! But organization doesn't always mean hiding things away into containers behind closed doors. The things we reach for the most can look good out in the open too! 

I thought I'd share a few examples of how I do that with items that fit seamlessly into our decor. It's easy to go overboard with tchotchkes so I chose to keep things out that I know we use every day. Like our commonly cooking utensils by the stove:  

I found this little container at HomeGoods -- it came with a lid. Of course we have a lot of other utensils in a drawer nearby too, but these are what we grab 90 percent of the time.

I first shared these jars with you seven years ago when I showed you how to make easy chalkboard labels for them:

I've since changed out the Cheerios (that we used to go through super quick at the time for the Bub, sniff!) for baking needs. We keep flour, sugar and powdered sugar in our containers. Our friends laugh that we keep that much powdered sugar but we use them to make our favorite margaritas. ;) 

My absolute favorite zone for cute organization in our kitchen is our wood and metal shelf -- this thing is our hub every day and I've been able to organize quite a few everyday items in a cute way: 

I keep our mail in the basket, cat and dog food (and treats!) in the white containers, odds and ends for the animals go in the copper bowl and our smaller office supply items go in the metal basket. I also keep our extra kitchen towels in the fabric bin at the top. 

This spot really does work overtime for us and I love that we can keep items that usually clutter up a kitchen stored away. 

I used to legit have a problem with magazines. For real, I would buy them constantly and hold onto them forever. Over the years I've moved past that and I can't even tell you how nice it is! ALL of our magazines go in this wood container (I think I got it from Target):

If you've seen my past posts about my beloved magazines you know this is pretty big for me. ;) I give myself this much space -- if it starts getting too full it's time to purge. I like having them out so I can actually see them and remind myself to look through them, but they aren't super obvious or laying on the coffee table. (And they help to hide the subwoofer a bit!)

I use trays all over the house to corral little items. I told you about the tray on our kitchen island here and how it's our little station with items we reach for every day. This one sits on the desk in our office and has all of the supplies we need day to day: 

That's one sad looking plant! 😆

I think my absolute favorite way to organize in our office/craft room is this DIY craft caddy I made a couple years ago using dollar store pails: 

We reach for that nearly every day! I don't mind having craft items out if they're organized and cute. I really think that is the stuff that makes a house a home. :)

For years now I've organized our son's markers, chalk and paints in this caddy I got on clearance and painted: 

I gotta say, adding the wheels on the bottom was a brilliant move. ;) It's so easy to wheel it to the kitchen table or wherever we need it. 

I think bathrooms are another room that have random stuff that has the potential to look cute. Our son's bathroom doesn't have much storage so I put all of his random stuff like brushes, washcloths and toothpaste in this small basket: 

And I keep my bath supplies looking cute on our tub with a small tray and simple glass containers: 

I think bath items look especially pretty behind glass -- cotton balls, soap and bath salts all look like decor while staying organized. I hope to add more of those when we redo our master bathroom someday. 

These are just a few ways I've done this around our house! If you reach for it every day it can look good while staying organized. Do you have a favorite way to store everyday items in a pretty way? I'd love to hear about them! My goal for our home is always to be super functional, but I promise you it can be both that and look good too. :)

How to easily organize awkward pans above the fridge

Hey there! It's Friday, the sun is (kind of) shining, the weather is supposed to warm up (a little) and we have a fun weekend planned. It's a good day! 

This is organizing project is something I've been meaning to tackle for months. I think of it every time I reach for something in the cabinet above our fridge. I've never organized it because I wanted to see how we used it first:

When I built that cabinet over the fridge I initially planned to DIY something to hold our long and awkward pans and items. I thought I would want something with wood at the top and bottom of the cabinet to make slots I could slide everything into. 

But because we have extra storage behind this cabinet (I left our original cabinet up and reused our doors -- see that post linked in the paragraph above for photos) I thought I'd want to use that back space behind it for rarely used items. I wanted to make it easy to access things back there if needed. 

Fast forward to this week when I finally decided to tackle this project -- when I cleaned it out I realized there were plenty of items (some that were pushed all the way to the back) that we just didn't use or need: 

Do you all have those random metal shelves from the refrigerator (or who knows where else?). We haven't used them and years and never will. :) 

I got rid of about a third of the items and decided to grab this Variera organizer from IKEA I've had in storage for awhile: 

Years ago I used it for a DIY rolling rack in our island, but since then we've purged/organized them differently and I removed it:

What I love about this organizer is it's like an accordion -- you can pull it out for larger items or push it together for skinny ones. I wanted it to hold a lot and span the whole cabinet so I pulled it out pretty far:

And what do you know...everything fit perfectly!:

The area off to each side was the perfect size to slip in another item. WHY I waited so long to do this I have no idea. It took all of ten minutes!

When I used this before I secured it to the bottom of the cabinet to hold it in place, but I've found that with the weight of the pans it stays put just fine. It's super easy to pull things in and out:

This little rack is only $6 and totally worth it! If you don't have an IKEA nearby you can find it here online too. 

SO. MUCH. BETTER. And I'm still kicking myself for not doing it sooner:

Have you used this rack in your home? It can be used for so many things in the kitchen -- lids, pots, pans, plates (I use another one for dishes in our built in storage in the library). 

Here are some other helpful posts on projects from this area of our kitchen: 

DIY soft close doors

Building cabinets to the ceiling

Building in the refrigerator with cabinet on top

Organizing both online and printed photos -- I need help!

I'm sending out an SOS! I got my act together last year when I finished purging our whole house using the Konmari method. It's one of the best things I've ever done for our home.

BUT I ignored a small section of the house. Going through our photos was too overwhelming at the time and I knew it would take me at least a month. So I told myself I would tackle it later. Later has come and I'm totally intimidated by the thought of it.

This is what I'm going to tackle over the next few weeks:

That's not even all of it -- the rest goes back into the corner of the closet. As you can see, most of it is at least in some kind of box. MOST. When we try to access something up there at least ten photos rain down on us. :) 

Although it doesn't look like it, I treasure these so much. I actually have quite a few old, vintage photos from our family (on all sides) through the generations. Because my home life was crappy for a few years in my teens, I lost pretty much everything from my childhood. All I have left is in a small storage box and these photos -- so I want to do them justice. 

The only part of this that is slightly put together (although it doesn't look like it) are the boxes I use for our son's school artwork and papers:

I get them every year at the Container Store and use one box for each grade. It's super easy to slip art and papers in the box -- we keep it on our shelves in the kitchen:

Someday I'd like to do even more with that, but for now the photos -- those are my nemesis. And the thing is, we've barely added any photos over the past ten years and that's something I'd like to change. I know...I've got enough to deal with here, but I actually want to add to the photos because everything sits on our computers and phones. I really want to start printing them out and adding them to photo albums. 

So I HAVE to get this figured out. This is my plan and then I need some advice on my questions below: 

1. Take everything out of the closet. 

Loose photos need to go into boxes -- I don't even care what box at this point, I just want them put away. 

2. Go through every single photo. 

This is going to take forever. I just know there are so many random pics that we really don't need to keep, as well as plenty of duplicates. (Remember when we used to get film developed and got doubles? Yeah, I did that a lot.)

3. Organize the photos by box. 

I actually did this years ago -- those photo boxes used to have labels. No idea where those went along the way. 😳 I had a box for travel, one for high school, college, family...etc. Need to do that all over again. 

4. Go through boxes and start filling photo albums. 

I'm not sure I want to get a ton of photo albums and fill those, or use the boxes for most of the pictures. How do you do it? I DO want to fill a few albums (I already have them) because I know we would pull them out to look at them a lot more often than heavy boxes.

5. Organized large photos

I have quite a few old family photos that are especially large. I think I have a solution for that but I'll let you know how that turns out.

Number five is why I really want to tackle this -- I realized recently that our son doesn't often see photos of himself from years ago unless we show him something from Facebook or our old phones. It makes me sad! I want him to be able to go through the albums with us and I want the albums organized so he can have them someday if he wants them. 

This is where I need help!

• Do you use boxes or albums for your photos and why? 
• Do you print photos off your phone on a normal basis? My sister uses the Meijer app and is SO good about sending off some to be printed on a regular basis. I want to do the same. Is there an app you like or a store that does it? 
• Where do you store your photos online? I used to use Photobucket for personal photos but haven't really done that for years since most of our photos are on our phones. (Although I think they have an app -- I need to look into that.) Are there apps you like that store photos? 
• I'd really love to start making the photo books I see out there -- maybe for specific trips or for a year at a time. Do any of you do the printed books on a regular basis? Is there one you love? 
• How do you store photos long term -- on your computer? An external drive? Online? 

Whew! See? I need help! I want to get this part of our life under control, but I also want us to start enjoying all of these memories a bit more. 

I feel like this is the final organizing frontier in our home...everything else has a place and is organized fairly well. Once I get this under control I know I will feel great about it. And this is another one of those things that I want to have organized for our kids -- I try to be cognizant of what we're leaving them. (God forbid if anything happens to us.) But even long term, I want to have our memories put together for them in the future. 

I'd love your advice! You are all a wealth of information so please feel free to share! :)

The bright and light mudroom makeover is complete!

As many of you know, it can take me eons to finish up a room makeover. It's usually because of two things -- we pay cash for everything so I only make updates as the budget allows. And since I try to do most of it myself, it just takes longer than it would if I hired out. I don't mind this usually because I think I make better decisions when I take my time. 

I'll take even longer if it's a room we don't use often (like our guest room) or one that we use mostly (and guests don't see) so I'm not as concerned about it getting finished up quickly. I've been working on our mudroom for more than three years now -- well, even longer than that if you consider all of our changes -- but I've been making updates for a few years to get it the way I want it. 

And it's FINALLY DONE. Whoot! You may have seen the most dramatic changes I shared last fall, but I wasn't calling it done till we got the storage shelf built and finished up. Now it's finished and because this room looks so different from where we started, I'm sharing a bunch of before and after pics. (My favorite!)

This is one of the biggest transformations in our house, but probably one of the simplest in terms of what we did to change it up. When we built our house the laundry room and mud room were combined. And I hated it from day one because no matter what we did, it looked like this every day: 

You can't tell from that pic, but I had already made some changes to the room. I painted it yellow with black accents way back in the day, and then installed inexpensive vinyl floor tiles. 

What you CAN tell is that the room was a disaster. ALWAYS. It drove us both crazy. There was no closed storage, there wasn't enough room and washer and dryer became our dumping ground for everything. 

Thankfully, when we finished our basement we added a laundry room. When people ask me if we mind it in the basement I cannot help but express my JOY. ;) We actually quite like it down there (upstairs would be awesome, but we were working with what we had) and I love love LOVE that it's out of this room now. 

Later on I made some additional updates like adding more beadboard around the room where the washer and dryer were, we had some sconces added, and I built the DIY mud room bench:

Oh my, I miss that fluffy cat every single day. :) 

I was trying to do something different than my normal style with that peacock blue trim and walls, but I grew tired of it. Although I still LOVE that color, it just wasn't our style and didn't mesh with the rest of the house. 

Last year I took on the huge job of painting all the trim and the walls. It made a HUGE difference:

There were only two things left that I wanted to tackle -- storage above the bench and crown molding. Last fall we got help with the simple cubby build and then I painted that and the crown molding. 

I looked for weeks to find the right storage baskets for the shelf and ended up with these cubbies from Target instead: 

I ended up staining them and adding metal house numbers I found at Home Depot to the front. NOW the room is done!: 

I wish I would have gone a little lighter with my stain on the cubbies -- it's the same color as the bench but that soft wood soaked it up! I just love them though -- they are easier to access than baskets and I love how they look! We use a small stool to get to them and as I mentioned, they hold items we don't need to access very often. 

I've kept the decor in this room really simple -- and the storage is simple as well. The bench holds our shoes, there's a metal basket on the wall that holds items we need to take out to the car and the cubbies above hold off season items and extras. It's a perfect spot for random stuff in our house! I'll list all the items and the paint colors at the bottom of the post. 

When I started the process of transitioning from the black and yellow to the dark blue and light walls, I added my craftsman/farmhouse trim to the three doorways in the room. I also went light blue with the door, which I didn't love long term:

I switched some lights around in the house and removed the fluorescent light we had in here. This small chandelier used to hang in our closet: 

I kept trying to live with the peacock blue, but it just wasn't meshing. We have black doors throughout our house and once this one went black I knew it was the right move: 

You can see here that I never moved the washer and dryer to paint the room yellow 😬: 

And no one knew till we moved them. ;) This room felt SO MUCH better just with the simple addition of hooks there -- like it was supposed to function this way all along. 

I painted the room white and we added a bench for storage for awhile: 

And now that same angle looks like this: 

Our mud room is actually fairly large -- but half of it is a long hallway by the utility closet. Years ago I changed out the inexpensive metal folding doors that we used to have:

To some nicer wood ones -- I added the handles to them and it was an easy upgrade. You can see how I changed out the door trim here as well:  

When I painted the room last year, I simplified the art wall straight ahead with one pretty piece instead. We have enough going on with the IKEA command center I installed (and still love):

The addition of crown molding made a big difference in here: 

I LOVE that I don't even mind that utility closet anymore -- it used to stand out like a sore thumb. I considered spraying them the dark blue color years ago and I'm so glad I didn't! 

Here are some final looks at this space -- I'm so pleased with it and as always, I did the majority of the projects myself and we only made changes as we could afford them. I'm so glad we waited too -- now it functions perfectly for our needs. We didn't need a TON of storage in here -- hooks for coats, a spot for shoes and storage for odds and ends were all that were needed: 

Changing out the light bulbs to daylight bulbs makes a HUGE difference too. This room doesn't get any natural light so the new bulbs make it feel so much brighter.

Here's a list of the items from this room -- some were purchased years ago but I'll add them anyway:

Utility doors: Lowe's
Wood cubbies: Target (Pillowfort line)
Metal numbers: Home Depot
Magnetic bird key holders: Container store (this option (affiliate) is cute too!)
"Exit" sign on door: HomeGoods
Sconces on wall: Lowe's (see more and a link here)
Pillow on bench: HomeGoods
Metal basket on wall: HomeGoods
Hooks on wall: Home Depot
Command center: IKEA
Art: Target

Paint colors: White, Pure White by Sherwin Williams
Walls: Krypton by SW
Door: Graphite by Benjamin Moore, mixed in SW

Let me know if I've forgotten anything!