Starting The Year Off Right

I have set quite a few goals for myself for this year. Mostly small ones, like meal planning, eating healthier and making better use of my time, and I have set a few bigger ones as well. 

One of those bigger goals is to organise my home in a way that works for me.

Decluttering and organising my home is something I have been working on for a while now, but there were still a few areas that I hadn’t gotten to yet. One was my pantry. It didn’t matter how often I cleared it out and reorganised it, it always ended up a mess and I was fed up with having to move six things to find the one thing that I needed.

So I started looking for a way to organise things that looked good but didn’t cost a fortune. I finally decided on these black wire baskets.

L. T. Williams stacking basket $12.00 from Big W and this smaller one from Kmart which cost $4.00.

So my pantry went from looking like this

to looking like this.

It’s still not perfect, but it’s so much easier moving one basket to get to the one behind rather than moving multiple things. I also added another shelf riser for the canned goods, which has made them much easier to access.

There were also a couple of cupboards in the kitchen that, while they weren’t terrible, could use some improvement. The spice and oil cupboard and the cupboard where I keep the baking trays.

The spice cupboard wasn’t too bad, but like the pantry, I had to take things out to reach what was in the back. 

 I took before photos, but I cannot find them so here are the afters.

For the spice cupboard, I bought a bamboo Lazy Susan from eBay and a plastic one from Kmart so that any spills were easy to clean up. They made such a difference to the amount of space in this small cupboard.

The bamboo one holds all the herbs and spices we use regularly with the less used ones to the side. The plastic one holds oil, soy sauce and other condiments we use in our cooking.

I used this adjustable kitchen rack from eBay to organise the baking trays; it has made such a difference.

I also organised the pantry cupboard in the laundry, which not only holds the dog food and cleaning goods but also the overflow from the pantry.

Much better!

The bathroom cupboards are next on my list and, after that, the garage. The garage is one space I have been putting off as it was my housemate’s space and he was not the tidiest of people, so it is a mess in there. That will have to wait until autumn when the weather is cooler though as it is just too hot to do it now.

Have you set any goals for the new year? Is organising and decluttering one of them? Let me know in the comments below.

*I apologise for the less than perfect photos, but the lighting in my kitchen and dining is terrible.

 

Read More

Catching Up - It's Been A While

Hello friends, I apologise for being away for so long, but with the horrific bushfires here in Australia at the start of the year, then coming down with shingles (something I wouldn't wish on anyone) and then a worldwide pandemic I haven't much felt like writing. But now that life is slowly starting to get back to normal, I thought it would be a good time to catch you up on what's been happening since my last post.

Due to COVID-19, I was off work for ten weeks as my workplace is a community house and they had all been ordered to close, I have been back at work for five weeks now and I have to say that as much as I enjoyed my time at home I really like where I work and it is good to see my work colleagues again.

The first week of staying at home I didn't really do much more than wander around aimlessly, but the second week I got stuck in and I did a massive decluttering of my house, every single room (apart from my daughter's bedroom and her craft/art room) has had a thorough decluttering and deep clean. I have decluttered enough stuff to fill the boot and back seat of the car which is amazing seeing that I did a declutter about six months ago. It took me a good two weeks to finish the decluttering/deep cleaning, but it was so worth it as the house feels so much lighter.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

After getting the house in order I turned my attention to the backyard and finally ticked off all those jobs that I had been meaning to do but had been putting off, why do I do that?

I spent some time in my vegetable garden putting in new brick borders along the path, I removed the plants that had died over summer from the flower garden and pruned those that needed it, and I planted out my winter vegetable garden (I will be writing a garden update post soon), and everything is looking very healthy.

The two bright spots in this year so far have been the long-awaited marriage of my second daughter (she is the oldest of my twin girls) in mid-March on Kangaroo Island. She and her husband first met in high school and have been together ever since, and they celebrated nine years together one month and three days after their wedding. The day of the wedding itself was cool and overcast but it didn't affect our spirits and the wedding itself was beautiful, very simple, but perfect for my daughter and her husband who are both easy going and don't like a lot of fuss. It was only a small wedding with just close family and two of their closest friends from high school.

It was a beautiful day!

We stayed on the island for five days which is more than enough time to see everything. We stayed at Rose Garden Cottages, and we could not have asked for better accommodation, the couple who own the cottages have renovated them beautifully and anything you could want has been provided for you even down to the Vegemite just in case you forget your own. I can highly recommend the cottages if you're looking for somewhere special to stay. The wedding was actually held in the gardens of one of the cottages that's how nice they are.

The only negative thing I could say about the island is that it is expensive. If you ever plan a trip there make sure you take everything you think you'll need as groceries are about three times that which you would normally pay as everything has to be brought over from the mainland.

The other bright spot this year is that I became a great aunt again for the fourteenth and fifteenth time when my niece gave birth to twin girls in early June, and just like my own girls they were born two and a half months early, both girls are doing fine, putting on weight and hopefully they will be home with their parents very soon. My niece and her husband had been trying for three years to have children and to find out they were having twins was just amazing news. I am so, very happy for them.

I think that is just about it, for now, it's good to be back posting, and I will be back to regular posting, at least once a week from now on.

 Before I go tell me how have you been coping with the COVID-19 pandemic? For myself personally, being an introvert and a homebody, nothing really changed apart from the fact that I couldn't go to work.  I did find going to the grocery store a bit stressful as not everyone was willing to stick to the social distancing rules so I started ordering my groceries online, something I will continue doing for the time being.

 Now that restrictions are being lifted will you be going back to your "normal" life or are there things you were doing during the lockdown that you will keep on doing.

Until next time, stay safe and be kind to each other, Jan.

Read More