A few little things that help keep my sanity...

Recently I enjoyed my friend Lindsey's blog post about staying organized. It reminded me that I've been gathering some pics to show you a few little changes I've done around here to help keep my sanity... ;o)


My favorite little organization tool I've implemented this year is this plastic drawer stand. It sits on a small cabinet in between our washer and dryer, and it holds everyone's socks. I LOVE not having to carry socks upstairs and put them in dresser drawers. Not that they were heavy ;o) it's just that we don't seem to come up with as many loner socks if they don't leave the laundry room until they're worn! The top two drawers also hold Seth and Haddie's underwear.

Don't worry. This spaghetti jar in particular isn't still in our fridge! I did start putting the date on opened jars in the fridge this year. It is effective especially for pickle jars, which we don't seem to use up very quickly. Now I don't find myself wondering how old the pickles are anymore! Hehe! It's easy to know if I need to throw something out!

Maybe this is something lots of people do and I just didn't find out about it until a couple years ago... I'm not sure. Anyway, I used to save my plastic grocery bags for other uses, but they were always such an eyesore... overflowing from a corner of the pantry or falling out of a cabinet. A couple years ago I noticed my friend Marcy kept her plastic bags in an ice cream pail with a slot cut in the lid. I tried it and it works great! (I just realized that you can't put the bags inside each other or they don't come out.... you have to lay them on top of each other like Kleenex in a tissue box.

When I was 7 months pregnant with Haddie we decided it was time to move Seth from his crib to a toddler bed. Considering his extremely determined personality, along with the fact that I was too exhausted by the end of the day to make a dozen trips back up the stairs to put an escapee child back in his room, this half-door was a huge blessing!! A man from church made it for us. Seth was comforted by the fact that he could see out, and we were comforted to know that he wouldn't be wondering around the house at night. If he needed us during the night, he simply called and one of us would go to him. Once we put this little door in, Seth transitioned quite quickly.

View from inside Seth's room. We always left the big door open at night and shut the little door.

My final item on this post is a table cloth I purchased at the local dollar store. When Haddie was just starting to wear underwear, I was really determined to not have any accidents on the couches, as we were fortunate to get new furniture for the first time in our married life this past winter! First I tried having her sit on a garbage bag, but that was way too slippery. Then I found this table cloth. One side is some kind of wipeable, water-proof plastic (but it's not slippery like a gabage bag), and the other side is soft, kind of like flannel, so it stays in place. Although Haddie ended up being trained really quickly and didn't need the cloth on the couch for long, I thought it was perfect and I will definitely use it again if we have any more children!