Tackle It Tuesday

I’m joining the Clear Out the Clutter project on Money Saving Mom. For my first project, I tackled the kitchen counter. We’re a family of seven living in a relatively small home, so the clutter easily builds up in every room of the house. The kitchen is no exception.

Here’s the before picture:

And the after picture:

It took about 15-20 minutes to clean and de-clutter this area. Ruben had to help half-way through, because Elisabeth woke up from her brief nap and needed mama.

I love the extra counter space I have now. 🙂

Have you done any de-cluttering lately?

For this week’s Tackle It Tuesday, I decided to clean the changing table on my to-do list for the week. It’s a brand new changing table that we purchased from Target for around $22. It was originally around $99, so it was quite a steal.

BUT after it was assembled, because we don’t yet have the new baby “here”….it became a place not only to store diapers for my boys using the diapers and other things we’ve purchased for the new baby, but also a place to just put random things we didn’t feel like finding an immediate home for. And just look at what happened….

And here it is after about 10 minutes of work….

Much better.

To see what others are tackling this week, please visit 5 Minutes for Mom!

Oh, the shame. It’s been way too long since I’ve “tackled” our kitchen pantry and as a result, it became quite the disorganized mess. Just take a look….

This is what happens when six people use the pantry and no one organizes it for months. Terrible, I know.

And so in an effort to knock some things off of my to-do list for the week, I decided to clean to the pantry tonight. Just me and the two kids who wanted to help by FIRST opening and then throwing away the items in the pantry that were expired. At least, they were opening and throwing things almost directly into the garbage can.

Anyway, before I show you the AFTER picture of the pantry, I thought I’d share a few things that I found while cleaning:

1. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of boxes of plastic sandwich bags that I found. You can never had too many of those.

2. I found expired food from June 2010. That was right before I found expired yeast from February 2010.

3. I finally decided to take a closer look at our spices, and I found at least 6-7 that were expired…some from 2009. Yikes.

And now for the AFTER picture:

Much better.

To see what others are tackling this week, please visit 5 Minutes for Mom!

My plan for this week was to have a cleaning day on Tuesday to get our home ready for our Thanksgiving guests, but two things happened last week that kind of sped up our cleaning day and left our home in relatively good shape. First, we all got sick last week, which resulted in vomit everywhere and us subsequently doing 20 loads of laundry and using a rug cleaner to shampoo the carpet. And second, my dad came to stay with us for a few days. I found out late Friday evening that he was on his way and that quickly kicked me into high gear. Guests seem to do that, don’t they?

So, at the moment, our home is looking good except for some areas that constantly need attention in order to stay in shape. I decided to tackle those areas. Take a look:

First is the DESK. A clutter magnet because so many people use it. It usually gets cleaned at least once a day, but unfortunately can go from clean to messy in about 2 seconds. Our mail is sprawled over it in the picture. Here’s the before:

And the After:

Next is our shoe area. Before:

After:

I also decluttered a small area in our home that tends to be a place to put things you don’t feel like finding a “home” for. Before:

After:

In addition to these three areas, I also folded a load of laundry, but I’ll spare you pictures of that since I know we all know what an empty basket looks like. 🙂

Did you tackle anything this week? I’d love to hear about it!

To see what everyone else is tackling this week, please visit 5 Minutes for Mom!