Tackle-It Tuesday - The Laundry Room

The purge and reorg continues...

Last night I spent about an hour and a half reorganizing and purging stuff out of the laundry room. I reorganized cabinets, the ledge and shelves where we store stuff, and even ironed a shirt that I was supposed to iron last week. There are a couple of things that still need to be gone through (I'll point them out as I go through the series of pictures) but the pile of stuff to go to the Salvation Army is continuing to grow. At any rate... without further ado...

The Laundry Room - Before and After Series

Full Shot: Before


(You might not notice much difference in the next few pictures. They are, after all, storage. But trust me, they're reorganized. If you look at them as a series you'll notice stuff missing and other stuff just generally in different spots.)

Above the Washer/Dryer - Before & After



Game Cabinet - Before & After



Third Cabinet - Before & After



And now for the grand finale shot... **drum roll**

Full Shot - After


So that's that. Like I said, there's still a bit of purging to do in that room. For example, there's a giant stack of manuals for various appliances that we probably don't need anymore just taking up space in there. Steve's going to look through those and make a decision at some point.

As for next week's tackle... not sure what I'm doing yet. I have a couple of ideas in mind but we'll see as it gets closer.

Tackle-It Tuesday - The Bookcases Part Deux

Last week I maintained my energy and completed the bookcase overhaul. Here's the book-bookcase before I purged the thing:


Book Bookcase - Before

And here is a shot of that bookcase after, as well as the shelves that were empty after last week's tackle on the other bookcase.


Book Bookcase - After


Shelves on the Other Bookcase

For next week I think I'll be starting a phase of tackling our laundry room. Wish me luck with that; our laundry room is a disaster...

Tackle-It Tuesday: The Bookcases, Part 1

Ah, Spring Cleaning. This time around I'm going to be focusing on decluttering our apartment, getting rid of things we don't need, and generally making the place more presentable and comfortable. I'm going to be doing this process over a couple of weeks, and for today's Tuesday Tackle I began the process of reorganizing our bookcases. I started with the "trinkety stuff" bookcase this week, and next week's post will be our bookcase that houses books. Here we go!


Bookcase #1 - Before the Purge


Bookcase #2 - After the Purge and Sort

The purge and sort did a couple of things:

1. It got rid of some of the stuff that we weren't quite sure why we were holding on to. I have a bunch of stuff that's either going to the Salvation Army or up for grabs (including 2 Nerf Guns, if anyone is interested) and a bunch of stuff that made it's way to the Salem Transfer Station because it was broken.
2. For those things that we are holding on to, they were sorted into 2 different places. Those things that we were holding on to for memories went into the wooden box and any useful toys that we've accumulated were gathered together into the Patriots ice bucket you see on the bottom shelf. We didn't want to get rid of all the toys, because with our friends starting to have children we figure they'll come in useful if they're ever over.
3. The freed up shelves will allow us to have more space for our overflowing store of books on the bookcase in the other room.

So there you have it! Next week - Bookcases Part 2!

Tackle-It Tuesday: Attack of the Small Yarn Monster

What started as a smaller amount of yarn for a girl who barely knew how to crochet grew into a big pile of yarn that overtook my corner of the office for a girl who can't put the hook down. Steve was starting to twitch in his left eye because the pile of yarn was such a mess; disorganized, all over the floor. Even I was starting to be bothered by the pile of yarn that never seemed to stop growing (I'm liking clutter less and less in my "old" age). After a bit of thought about it, I headed to Wal*Mart and picked up a couple of flat containers and got to work.

Here's a picture of my yarn pile before I got started, after I had taken a bunch of it out of the corner and put it in the middle of the floor. I have to say... you can't tell but there's a LOT of yarn crammed into those 2 milk-crates. I didn't realize it until I dumped it out. There's also one more flat container and a small drawer full of yarn that I completely forgot to take out for the picture; that ended up getting dumped out and re-organized as well.



After 2 hours, I had all my yarn sorted and stacked up on the top shelf. You can see it all here in 4 flat storage containers and one large shoebox size container. The after-organization shot:



You can tell from the bottom container that it's still pretty crammed in. This is about 1/3 of the yarn I have; I still have another 4 of the larger storage totes in our storage unit full of yarn. I promised myself I would try very hard not to buy more yarn until 2009, and I promised Steve in February I wouldn't bring anymore in the house for another 3-6 months. I have plenty here to keep me occupied until May, that's for sure.

Tackle-It Tuesday - Drawer Disaster

A day late in posting, but oh well! Last night I reorganized our utensil drawers because they were so disorganized and full of some things we don't use that we couldn't even put things away anymore. Here's the mess before I reorganized:

Drawer 1: Before


Drawer 2: Before


And then, post reorganization. We can find things again!

Drawer 1: After


Drawer 2: After


Now we can get at things without digging, making a mess, and not being able to shut the drawers afterwards. How exciting!!

Tackle-It Tuesday - Cabinet Overhaul

In an effort to be more aware of what's in our cabinets so we can use what's on hand before buying more food and also to purge some of our stockpile of expired and bad for us food, I used this week's tackle to reorganize and purge our pantry and spice cabinets.

Here are our cabinets before the overhaul:

Pantry: Before

Spice Cabinet: Before

And here are our cabinets after the overhaul and re-org:

Pantry: After

Spice Cabinet: After

Next week... not sure yet. Maybe the bookcase...

Tackle-It Tuesday: Desk (again)

So my desk had gotten out of control again. I had accumulated a couple of piles that were making it very difficult to do anything besides push papers aside and it was driving me insane. I decided that a couple of things had happened:

1. I had no where to really put things and so they ended up in a pile. A big old unorganized pile.
2. Because there were nothing but piles everywhere, when I had something to do or file it ended up in the same pile as everything else. There was no system to my desk, and that was starting to get annoying.

I couldn't find anything, I could do any work - enough was enough. I had already overhauled the desk once, and because I'm the kind of person who needs a system to function I thought I'd better set one up. We set a budget of $25 for supplies, and I went off to Wal*Mart to get some stuff to set up a system. What we have is the DDS: The Danielle Desk System. Everything has a place and everything in its place. I even got myself some trays for a "To Do" and a "To File" area (they're not labeled yet, but they will be).

Because I'm an idiot, I forgot to take a "Before" picture, so just picture the below after as a big old mess with a bunch of paper all over the desk except for about a 6" square in front of the keyboard. That's what it looked like before. The drawers (black ones) are also a new addition and are housing crochet patterns, menus, and big coupons (which means that there's also more white space on our fridge where the latter two things were being housed on clips before).

So, here is my desk tackled:



Who knows what next week will be, but there's still lots to be tackled at Casa Athanas. Stay tuned...

Tackle-It Tuesday - Christmas Time

Needless to say the coupons haven't gotten done yet. I had more important things to tackle once the hullabaloo of Thanksgiving was over. Namely - decorating our front room for Christmas. Aw. Yeah.

Here's the before pictures. As you can see - very unfestive. At the time the picture was taken, I had already moved the DVD rack and put the table that now "houses" the tree in the front room. But nothing was decorated yet.




I took a trip to Wal*Mart to get a little tabletop tree. As I mentioned before, our landlord never took our tree to the dump last year in January as he had said he would, and while I'm all for having a real tree I'm NOT all for contributing to the random pile of trash that manages to appear on the lawn and stay there for undisclosed amounts of time. So - I got a little 3' tree and we decorated it as best we could. I went ahead and spread out some lights and garland around the room too since we don't have a big tree to fill up the room this year. It's super festive - and when Steve came home from work he was thrilled with the results: including the little hat I took 15 minutes and crocheted for our happy-face stress ball. Anyways... here are the "after" pictures:





And here are some close-up shots of our nativity scene, tabletop bowl, and the stressball's hat.

Nativity Scene - yes, I know that Baby Jesus isn't out yet. I put him out on Christmas Eve.

Our decorative bowl filled with... well... decorative things.

Steve's favorite - the stressball wearing a Santa hat!

Tackle-It Tuesday - Finished Football Pillow!

I FINALLY finished the stinkin' football pillow this weekend.

Football Pillow: Before


Football Pillow: After, in its rightful place in the Football Chair with the Football Blanket (no, I did not make that)


Yay! I am so glad to have that done, you have no freakin' idea. I'll come up with a fun tackle between now and next Tuesday. It'll be great.

Tackle It Tuesday - Someone Tackle ME Please

I'm having one of those days. You know the ones... the ones where no matter what happens it's always something that ends up frustrating you to no end and then there's the one thing that sets your patience over the edge? I was having one of those days. Then at 12:11 PM, the one thing that set my patience over the edge happened. I got an email from one of my customers asking if AMETEK is prepared to maintain deliveries in the event of an Avian Flu pandemic. Yes, I'm serious. The following is a real excerpt from said email:

We also believe that our suppliers' ability to continue to provide us with products, materials and services is essential. Accordingly, we are strongly urging our suppliers to implement reasonable and prudent Avian Flu plans.

The first step in this process is to assess where you stand in terms of your planning for a pandemic. This survey is designed to determine the status of your planning, and thus, your readiness to support [customer] in a pandemic environment.

True story. I can't make up stuff like that.

At any rate... my tackle of the week. I have a tackle finished, with unfortunately no pictures because it's a dark crawlspace. Saturday I went into the under-stair storage space in our apartment and completely reorganized, threw some stuff out, washed our winter scarves & hats, and it looks much better (you'll have to take my word for it, unless Steve wants to comment and back me up). We can now access our Christmas stuff easier, and have plenty of space for the 2 air conditioners to come out and be stored.

Update on the football pillow: I actually got a lot of sewing done on it last night and I really and truly expect to have it done by the end of the week. Should be stuffed by Saturday night at the latest, I would think.

Next week's tackle: coupons!! I have a ton to clip and sort, so I'll do that before next Tuesday.
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Current Music: Lucky Dube, "I've Got You Babe"

Belated Tackle-It Tuesday

With everything going on since last week, I didn't end up finishing my football pillow and in fact just started it last night. However, I did tackle two other projects with my crochet hook and some yarn so I'll throw those up instead. These were both done in time for the end of the day on Tuesday, I just didn't get a chance to post yesterday. I don't have a picture of the specific balls of yarn for "before", so just pretend that this is the "before" picture:

Generic Picture of Balls of Yarn - Before


So starting with a bunch of yarn, I finished a scarf for the homeless and I also started and finished a small purse for a Christmas gift to one of my cousins. Here are the "after" pictures:

Scarf, made mostly of scrap blues and grays


Purse, using light purple and pink with an off-white trim. Since this picture was taken, I've also added a button.


The football pillow has been postponed for next Tuesday's tackle, and between now and then we'll also have re-organized our storage area and taken the air conditioners out of the windows. I won't have pictures of that because the storage area is dark and dusty, so I'll just advise if it's been completed. Also in the tackle queue are our scrapbook, going through magazines to clip appealing recipes, and our laundry room (which needs to be reorganized).

Also - an update on the office tackle. It's been two weeks and so far I've been doing a relatively OK job with keeping it neat. It doesn't look as great as it did two weeks ago, but it's not a disaster. I have some coupons to clip and a couple of things to put away but that's really it. I'm impressed with myself that it's not a disaster yet.

Tackle-It Tuesday: Football!

Before I get to this week's tackle, here are the after pictures as promised for cleaning my half of the office. Click on this link to refer to before pictures: The Office: Before. You'll notice that the bookcase looks a lot better and I was able to get the stuff picked up off of the floor. The biggest thing was straightening out the shelves; I picked up a couple of those photo boxes at Target and they came in quite handy and freed up a TON of space, allowing me to get my yarn off of the floor. I also cleaned out the Sterilite drawers which gave me space to store my extra yarn and my next two projects. Steve helped out with the drawers because I discovered one of the drawers was full of old software manuals. My half of the office looks MUCH better in person than it did a week ago, believe me.





Our camera battery is dead, so I'll post before AND after pictures for my next project next week. My first tackle ended up yielding two more tackles that I'll be heading into; the first of which is a football pillow that I finished the latch-hook for about 3 years ago and after initially putting the fabric on backwards and had to take off - I never went back and finished. I've been saying that I would put it together for a while now, and needless to say I still haven't. It resurfaced when I cleaned the office last week, so I think it's about time I get it out of the way. Say a prayer for me that I actually get it done - I have no sewing machine so there's a huge need for motivation to do this one.