I recently read a brochure in a magazine, which shall remain nameless, and I became very upset the more that I read. This brochure was put out by the National Association of Realtors, and it’s called The Field Guide to the Benefits of Home Ownership. As I read on and on, it was as if a huge guilt trip was being pulled over me, all because we don’t own our own home….we rent. There, I said it….we rent. And I’m darn tootin’ proud of it….and I’ll tell you why in the next few paragraphs. Do we want our own home? Sure, we do. It’s not always that easy, though. Right now, our focus is on getting out of debt (the debt we mistakenly got into when we were first married, as well as debt from losing our first home) and saving money….so that when it is time for us to buy our own home, we’re ready. Frankly, I’m not that into “keeping up with the Joneses.”

Read more over on MamaBuzz….

So, once again, I’m accepting Sandy’s organizing mission and working hard on my home this week. Last week I focused on my pantry, along with my baking pans/lids. I was super excited to conquer this area of my home because our pantry is a huge part of our daily lives. The clutter and mess was really getting to me. So, without further adieu, here are the before pics (which I am truly blushing over….they are horrid)….As you can see it’s just a big, cluttered mess. Somehow our big container of sandwich cutters got opened up and just thrown in the bottom.I wasn’t sure what to do with all this stuff. We have our dehydrator, lunch cooler (for hiking and bike trails), pressure cooker buried in there, as well as our food processor and some other stuff. Oh my.The food is just all over the place. I had gotten the door shelf kit at Walmart just a couple of weeks ago, and Dan helped me put it up, but I still hadn’t gotten around to organizing it.Notice the top is cluttered up with all kinds of stuff too….plastic tableware all over the place.Ok, so here is after!!!:) Dan is going to build 1-2 extra shelves in this closet and move the middle two up a bit; that way we don’t have all of the wasted space, and we can stock more non-perishable foods, which is one of our goals over the next year. We keep all our extra food/drinks in here; I stock things like soup, beans, rice, pasta, Ginger Ale….I was able to move our cooler to our entryway closet, since we had space there, and that’s a really good place for it. I got rid of a few things, moving them out to shelves in the garage. I mainly moved things we don’t use very often at all.I didn’t show you my top overhead shelf above our heads in our laundry room, but I also cleaned all the empty jars off of it, so now I have that space for canned foods; we keep all of our home canned foods up there. Our food shelf is looking much better now, though.Our top shelf is completely organized now. I found an empty plastic container with lid for all of our loose plastic tableware and moved the baby bottles to the back; that way, we could keep things we use all the time out front, like paper towels, paper plates (we use these a lot for school projects), jar lids, etc.The door is organized too and just works so much better.Finally, here are before and after pics of my cabinet with baking pans….so messy before.I bought this $5 organizer at Walmart, which I’d seen on another blog, and was able to get them in order….so much better.All in all, I’m really pleased. I will be glad to get the extra shelves put in because then it can be a bit less cluttered.:) Have you organized anything lately? Why not join in Organizing with Sandy’s Organizing Mission Monday? It’s fun, and you can get a LOT of great inspiration! Happy Monday to you all!

Shoes, shoes, shoes….our entryway closet was filled to the brim with shoes, and frankly, I’d just grown so tired of it that we were just throwing them into the closet in a huge pile. (blushing) Yes, it was that bad. Take a look….(Before you look at the pics, I put my MamaBuzz watermark on every single picture….I claim temporary insanity….it should say Real Heart Prints.)

Finally, I said, “Enough is enough. I’ve got to get this mess organized.” This weekend I set to work organizing both our coat/shoe closet and our movie cabinet, so I’d love to share before and after pics. Ready for the after pic on the coat closet? (Drumroll, please….) Voila!It was a lot of work, but I went through things, overwhelmed at first, but finally getting into a groove. I had a donations bag and a trash pile. Anything I thought we could bless somebody else with went into the donation pile, including purses, coats, even shoes. I actually brought my purse box out of our bedroom closet, cleaned it out, and made that box into a hat, mitten, glove box to put in the top of our coat closet; that way when we’re needing hats or gloves, we’re not searching. We know right where to find them. The boys had a hat box in their closet too that I emptied out and cleaned up, putting them in this little crate instead.It freed up a bit of space for them.Then Dan built some awesome tiered shelves for me with some scrap wood he had in the garage. They work great for keeping our shoes neat and orderly. Boots went up top, and I tried to put the kids’ shoes down low, so they’d be easier for them to get out and put away. I also had a flat mirror, hiding out in that closet before, that we put on the inside of the closet door; that way, we can see if our shoes match as we get ready to walk out the door.Finally, I also organized our movie cabinet and transformed it from this….

into this….yay!

Games are organized by game system, old cases and things are thrown away, game controls are put away in the two green fabric boxes (I got for $1 at Dollar tree, incidentally) out of sight, and exercise equipment/videos are all together. Even our music is stacked neatly, including all the kids’ CDs, easy to find, easy to put away. Our board games actually went into our boys’ closet, since they had a whole top shelf to work with, which really gives so much more room for everything.

I had games stashed anywhere and everywhere, so this freed up room in all parts of the house.:) I actually had no idea how many games we have until Jacob made a huge stack in his room….pretty much as tall as he is. My word….(we are so blessed here in America, I might add; we have so much, and this picture really brings that fact home for me).

So, next week, I’ll share my pantry pics with you….yikes! I’ve totally got my work cut out for me this week.:)

Join in on Organize with Sandy’s Organizing Mission Monday; get inspired, get organized, and have fun with it!

I’m still here….albeit snowed in, but just been dealing with the monstrous cold/flu that it seems everyone is dealing with these days. While I’ve been down, I’ve been particularly inspired to start some crafting projects, even to make some cute Valentine cupcakes with my boys. I am picturing them in my head, but I know they’ll likely not turn out as beautiful as I picture them.:)LOL Oh, but fun it will be.

I’m hoping to be back at it here in the next few days, even if it means I have to bite the bullet and go to the doctor tomorrow….ugh.

Are you watching all the coverage from Egypt? I try not to watch the news too often because sometimes I think things can be drummed up to be more than they really are….but my heart just aches for this country right now. Some of the footage they’re showing is so disturbing; I’ve gotten sucked into watching while sick. What are your thoughts? One thing I was shocked by is that some of these people actually have their children out there with them, amidst all of the rioting. That totally disturbed and shocked me. I canNOT imagine EVER taking my child into the midst of a rioting crowd; they have to have had an inkling of a thought that this could go terribly violent. I don’t know….just my thoughts.

That’s about it for now. Stay healthy, stay well, and hopefully, I’ll be back to normal next week!:) Oh, and stay warm!:)We have about a foot of snow outside; it’s beautiful!