Category: Home Decor

Are you Obsessed with Tidying Up with Marie Kondo?

Netflix is brilliant. I mean, think of how many people have New Year’s resolutions to purge stuff out of their house and then BOOM Tidying Up with Marie Kondo shows up on their Netflix account. Brilliant!

In case you are in the dark, here is the trailer:

Isn’t she adorable?!

This little sprite of a lady comes into your house and helps you tidy up your life. It’s basically like Hoarders, but less hoarder-ish. And yes, it is the biggest first world problem to have too much stuff…

I LOVE purging, so this show totally sucked me in. I’ve only watched three episodes so far (and wanted to throw things at my television during the first one), but every time I start watching I find myself making notes in my phone like “purge DVDs” and “go through unused Christmas décor items”.

I’m not going to go full Kondo and start rolling my clothing, but I am certainly taking away some of the lessons from the show. Already I have attacked my pantry, my storage container cupboard and the great abyss of random kitchen crap that lives in my kitchen island. Oh, and I went through my underroos drawer and threw out anything that gives me a wedgie!

Next up on my list is:

  • The playroom (again). As Jack grows out of toys, I’m really good at donating them or giving them to friends. It’s TIME again.
  • The Christmas decorations in the basement. I still haven’t taken down our Christmas décor this year (it makes me happy and I need all the happy I can get this month), but we have some stuff that I haven’t put out for the last few years. I think it is time to go through the unused stuff for a purge while I’m packing things away.
  • Our DVDs. We basically never watch our old DVDs, so I think it’s a good time to go through and get rid of 90% of them. I’ll probably check eBay to make sure we don’t have anything that we could resell, but I anticipate I’ll just drop them all off at the thrift store.

How about you? Have you been watching Tidying up with Marie Kondo? Are you currently ripping apart your house in a purging frenzy?

Another Laundry Improvement

Almost exactly 2 years ago I posted about my *groundbreaking* idea of having two laundry baskets in my closet (read it here). Sure, it wasn’t rocket science, but since implementing my new approach I have shrunk my clothing by accident probably 98% less often.

There was one issue though. After washing my ‘no dryer’ items, I’d lay them all on top the washer/dryer to let them air dry. Or, I’d stick them on hangers and hang them all over my bedroom – on my closet door, on my dresser knobs, on Ollie’s tail if he was moving too slowly…

It was a mess.

So I decided to improve the situation with a fancy, new laundry rack. I didn’t have space for a standing rack though, so I found one that mounts on the wall. I checked out a bunch of options and ended up with one that had 3.5 out of 5 stars and almost 100 customer reviews.

Specifically, this one:

I ordered it off of Amazon (of course, because I order practically EVERYTHING off Amazon nowadays) and it came a couple days later. I also ordered a set of clothespins and chia seeds and a dog collar and a lunch box…

Anywhoo… it came like this:


It wasn’t too much of a pain to put together, but it was missing one screw. I still haven’t gotten around to replacing it, which is kind of annoying. The whole thing went together in less than 20 minutes or so and then I screwed it into the wall (with drywall anchors):


I like that it collapses to the wall when I’m not using it and then I can easily open it up and hang items when I’m doing laundry:

This $50 investment makes doing laundry so much easier/better/more tolerable for me. I mean, I still hate doing laundry, but at least now I can hang everything up to dry without playing clothing Tetris on the top of the washer/dryer.

How do you air dry clothes? Do you have a clothing rack or just hang things all over the house?

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. This means that clicking on a link may help me earn a small commission at no cost to you.

My Back to School Organization Tricks

I’m one of those ‘everything has its place’ people… but I’m also a mom to a 6-year-old boy. Our house isn’t SUPER organized like the ones you see pinned all over Pinterest (do people even live there??), but it also typically doesn’t get super messy. With the start of school, I thought it would be a good time to share my little tricks for keeping school work and backpacks from exploding all over my house.

First tip, check out Jack’s area in our front entrance way:

This is right when you walk in our front door and it’s pretty much been like this for the past 4 years or so. I just added the backpack hook recently though and it’s been working great! The umbrella hook holds Jack’s jackets and/or sweatshirts and all his shoes go into the basket. I also have a spare pair of socks in there in case we realize we need some right when we are walking out the door.

Jack knows that the moment he walks in the door, his shoes go in the basket and his backpack goes on the hook. Sure, sometimes the shoes end up next to the basket. However, this little system makes our lives SO MUCH easier to have it all right there, rather than doing the ‘WHERE ARE YOUR SHOES?!’ dance while running around the house.

Second (and final) tip, the schoolwork station:

Every single day there is SOMETHING coming home from school. It may be artwork, homework, papers for me to review and sign, a calendar of upcoming crap, etc. I keep this little basket on our kitchen island and each evening when I empty Jack’s backpack I glance at each item and throw it into the basket. In the bottom of the basket, I have a few sharpened pencils, a glue-stick and some erasers.

Homework gets done each night and returned to the backpack. Everything else sits there until I have a few minutes to go through it all.

Conveniently the basket is located right on top of the trash can…

Like I said, I’m no Pinterest Queen but these little areas work for us. So now I want to know, what do you do to keep organized?