A little dab of paint here and a dab there.

Here's a look into my current project. I have never liked this dark red in my kitchen. It sucks all of the light out of the room. The color makes feel like I'm in a cave.  I have just started painting a few days ago.  I have to say that I don't like to paint anymore, but it is something I can do to save some money on our projects.   

I'm already liking it much better.  It takes a lot of paint to cover up all of this red.  I mean a lot...

I can live with good old dependable beige and punch it up with my accessories.

This is the view into my wash room and the back door entrance. I have a decorated shelf over my washer and dryer.  I used some of my grandmother's things that belonged to her.  Like her old iron and her cannister set.  More about that when I finish. 

I have made a huge mess in my kitchen. This drives me crazy.

In the mean time, I am trying to get this painted before we have the new flooring installed.  I'm  also having the cabinet doors re-faced with new doors and trim. 

 Then the counters are next on my list.  I am going to be busy for a long time. 

Tomorrow my sister moves to her new home and closer to her son and DIL.  I am going to help her organize her kitchen once she is settled. 

Divde and conquer

To save what is left of my sanity, I have been organizing and purging all things in our home. It all started with the kitchen pantry. It started out small, but turned into a big and expensive project.

I decided to use containers for most of our food items. I found the most amazing containers at Target. They are clear and have a wonderful lid that has a big pop up button to close it.

I'm using them for rice, flour, sugar, pastas, teas, and many other things. They come in all sizes and I feel like I'm in heaven for finding them. My pantry is not very big like the one I used to have in my former home.

This pantry comes with its own set of problems. Number one being that I try to cram everything into this small space. I had the mop, the broom, dust pan, the swiffer mop and all kinds of others things in there with our food.

It started with those containers I mentioned. One whole row is full of them. I did a snack basket with portion sizes and calorie counts for sister. She has been on a night eating binge. I thought the portioned out snacks might help her. Nope it didn't. She just ate more and more snacks. I still like the idea for myself, so I will keep it.

Once I finished the clear storage containers, I tackled the top shelves. I store things that I seldom use such as paper plates, bread baskets and the less used kitchen items. Things that don't look good or fit went into these green containers and they are stackable too. I wanted to paint my pantry or wall paper it but the top goes as high as my wall outside of the pantry and it wouldn't look good. I also wanted to changed the light fixture in the pantry, but it presented a problem as well. So I did the next best thing I could do. I adjusted my plan and worked with what I had.

The floor of the pantry is where I store my dog and cat food. The solution was to buy containers and store them in them. I'm liking my choices. I also prepared a basket for all of my baking supplies. That way I can pull out the whole basket instead of making multiple trips to the pantry.

I moved out the extra medicines I stored in the pantry as well as anything that was not pantry worthy. I moved the dog's heart worm medicine and the cat's things to another box in the wash room. I still haven't figured out what to do with the bread, but I'm working on it. Right now I'm about half way done with the pantry. I sort of work on the new bins and containers, but neglect the mess. In my mind it will all work out.

Every year, I feel the need to organize things in our home. As I said, it started with our master closet, next the pantry and now I'm on to the wash room. Some where in the middle of sorting...life got in the way and I am still organizing. The only bad part of all of this is I have to constantly keep it all in order. LOL! Some days that is just not going to happen.