an organizing machine
i've spent the weekend organizing and cleaning. while i'm sad to see them go, it was time to take down our christmas decorations. the time has passed, quite frankly. it's unfortunate that we spend weeks decorating and planning only to see the big day pass so quickly. oh well, while i enjoy the smell of pine in my living room, i was feeling cramped and stagnant with everything in our living room. while marshall finished his MBA application, i gladly participated in the yearly ritual of delicately taking each ornament from the tree and place it into it's box or in a wad of slightly yellowed tissue paper. we accumulated a few extra ornaments this year and so our christmas decorations box bulges a little. this year might be the year to invest in another storage box, just to make sure that our more delicate ornaments, which don't have a box, are safe from harm. anyway, after the tree was added to the stack of tired and used christmas trees from our apartment complex, i went about dusting and cleaning our living room. i took on refreshing our movie/TV collection. our organization of these had lapsed recently. we've slowly started adding blu-rays to our library and originally we had set them apart from the rest. this soon seemed silly, so i integrated everything together (still keeping TV separate from movies, though) and moved things around. while we're still keeping to the confines of our billy bookcases, i know our collection will only grow from here. that being said, there are a few titles which i wouldn't be sad to see get traded in for some better titles. i know i've got a running list in my head of title i'd love to add to our personal library. anyway, vacuuming was next and it was quite satisfying. it was desperately needed. what with the changing of our sheets yesterday, our home is nice and clean. i love that feeling.
continuing my need for organizing, i took on implementing some order to my recipe and cooking magazine collection. i've just been throwing used cooking magazines in my bin, but so to it were dumped men and women fitness magazines which might have ONE potential recipe, but there was absolutely no organization to it whatsoever. i also had a binder of recipes which were a mix of printed websites and hand-written recipe cards. they were added willy nilly with no mind for any kind of organization. plus, some of the recipes were duplicates of ones in our cookbooks. i spent all night friday going through all our magazines, flagging recipes or simply tearing out one recipe here and there from different issues and adding them to my binder. once i whittled down our magazine collection to about 10 or 15, at the most, i looked to my binder and finally organized the recipes. i plan on buying some binder dividers so i can separate the appetizer section to salads to soups, etc. i might even invest in a larger binder, since i can see this binder getting way too full. or i might find a similar-sized binder and have a series of binders. that would be fine, too. i'm still waffling about what to do with the magazines i'm keeping. i want to develop an easy and fast way of finding recipes without relying on post-it flags, which can tear, and certainly better than just flipping through trying to find that one recipe i want. i was thinking of creating a master list to keep for all magazines with each recipe noted and its corresponding page number(s), magazine title and issue. i also had this other idea of pasting or taping a list to the front or back of the magazine issue with the highlighted recipes inside with their correct page numbers; kind of like a brief table of contents. that way i can still pick up an issue, find the recipe on the front and go. or perhaps a combination of both methods. it might be nice to have a master list. last night i took on typing out all my hand-written recipes, either my own or from my mom, saving them onto my computer, printing them out and putting them into my binder. it's an arduous task, but i'm almost done.
while i'm not quite done with my recipes, i keep finding other areas of our apartment that i'd love to organize. up next is under our bathroom counter. i know there is SO MUCH in that cabinet that can easily be chucked in the bin. we have a million bottles of lotion; travel bottles of who knows what; half-empty bandage boxes; expired pain killers and cold medicines. i would love to get some plastic drawers to put in there, so we can find things easily or make sure we don't keep buying the same thing over and over again. all the stuff we use on a daily basis make it to the front, while everything gets shoved in the back where it collects dust and gets old.
it seems even though i wanted to just play video games over my winter break, i've started to feel compelled to better our living environment. if we aren't moving any time soon, i need to do the best with what we've got in the apartment we have. i got used to changing things every few years. i need some kind of change to happen and unless i do it, i'm just going to be stuck where i am. it's time to make my own changes happen, if only to keep my sanity. :) i've got some interesting plans for our bedroom and possibly a furniture change in our living room. while those might not happen right away, i would eventually like to see them happen at some point. ;)
continuing my need for organizing, i took on implementing some order to my recipe and cooking magazine collection. i've just been throwing used cooking magazines in my bin, but so to it were dumped men and women fitness magazines which might have ONE potential recipe, but there was absolutely no organization to it whatsoever. i also had a binder of recipes which were a mix of printed websites and hand-written recipe cards. they were added willy nilly with no mind for any kind of organization. plus, some of the recipes were duplicates of ones in our cookbooks. i spent all night friday going through all our magazines, flagging recipes or simply tearing out one recipe here and there from different issues and adding them to my binder. once i whittled down our magazine collection to about 10 or 15, at the most, i looked to my binder and finally organized the recipes. i plan on buying some binder dividers so i can separate the appetizer section to salads to soups, etc. i might even invest in a larger binder, since i can see this binder getting way too full. or i might find a similar-sized binder and have a series of binders. that would be fine, too. i'm still waffling about what to do with the magazines i'm keeping. i want to develop an easy and fast way of finding recipes without relying on post-it flags, which can tear, and certainly better than just flipping through trying to find that one recipe i want. i was thinking of creating a master list to keep for all magazines with each recipe noted and its corresponding page number(s), magazine title and issue. i also had this other idea of pasting or taping a list to the front or back of the magazine issue with the highlighted recipes inside with their correct page numbers; kind of like a brief table of contents. that way i can still pick up an issue, find the recipe on the front and go. or perhaps a combination of both methods. it might be nice to have a master list. last night i took on typing out all my hand-written recipes, either my own or from my mom, saving them onto my computer, printing them out and putting them into my binder. it's an arduous task, but i'm almost done.
while i'm not quite done with my recipes, i keep finding other areas of our apartment that i'd love to organize. up next is under our bathroom counter. i know there is SO MUCH in that cabinet that can easily be chucked in the bin. we have a million bottles of lotion; travel bottles of who knows what; half-empty bandage boxes; expired pain killers and cold medicines. i would love to get some plastic drawers to put in there, so we can find things easily or make sure we don't keep buying the same thing over and over again. all the stuff we use on a daily basis make it to the front, while everything gets shoved in the back where it collects dust and gets old.
it seems even though i wanted to just play video games over my winter break, i've started to feel compelled to better our living environment. if we aren't moving any time soon, i need to do the best with what we've got in the apartment we have. i got used to changing things every few years. i need some kind of change to happen and unless i do it, i'm just going to be stuck where i am. it's time to make my own changes happen, if only to keep my sanity. :) i've got some interesting plans for our bedroom and possibly a furniture change in our living room. while those might not happen right away, i would eventually like to see them happen at some point. ;)