Peace of Mind Organizing

January 2025 tiny projects challenge: Day 5

18 January 2025

Here’s my last post for this month’s tiny project challenge. I’ve had fun taking on little organizing projects that have made my home feel more enjoyable because they’ve eased little irritations.

Today, I focused my attention on my two elfa drawer banks that knitting and needle felting supplies. Before we moved, I had three banks of elfa drawers for yarn but three wouldn’t fit where I wanted them in my office. So on moving day one the narrow banks was moved to my kitchen overflow closet. (It was my focus on Day 4 of the tiny projects challenge.)

Before I moved, I donated a lot of yarn and knitting supplies. But after I moved and discovered I had to repurpose one of the drawer banks, I had to let go of more. I did a great job, I think. I kept just the yarn I knew I liked to knit with. It was a stressful moving-in time (and my husband was in the hospital) so I couldn’t give it much careful deliberation. But the good news was that everything fit in the drawers.

When I turned my attention to it today, I was afraid I was going to have to empty and reorganize the drawers. But once I took a close look, I saw that I had put everything away in an organized fashion. (High five to my brain-dead self!) I just needed to put words to the categories I’d instinctively come up with. For example, I had a drawer with multiple balls of two specific yarns. And I had a drawer with luxury yarn it it and another with more run-of-mill yarn that I would still be happy to use. I had a couple of drawers with project bags and I did evaluate those works-in-progress (WIPs), choosing to keep some and unravel others. I do still have one WIP drawer to go through.

Once I came up with categories for all ten drawers, I turned my attention to labeling them. At the house, each drawer had label clipped on to it. (You can see them in the post linked above—I used elfa label holders that are no longer sold.) I had kept the labels, so I took them out and re-used the ones I could. (On four out of ten drawers.) The other drawers were new categories and I couldn’t match the font for the new labels. I had used a retro font way back in 2008 to create those labels and now, many computers, later I no longer have access to the font.

I decided to let it be easy and make hand-written labels for the six new categories. I used black Post-it® notes and a white gel pen to easily make relatively attractive labels. At some point, I may choose to up my label game but for now these work great.

Here’s a photo of the labeled drawers.

And here’s a close-up of the labels, in case you’re interested.

It’s a relief to have this little task done. I like knowing that I should be able to easily find what I’m looking for when I’m looking to get creative, rather than hunting for it. And it was fun to rediscover some great yarn and also some great works in progress!

January 2025 tiny projects challenge: Day 4

14 January 2025

For today’s tiny project, which took about a half hour, I turned my attention to a bank of elfa drawers in a closet in my office. We have a three-bedroom apartment and my office is in the third bedroom, right off the kitchen. It has a clothes closet in it that we’ve converted to kitchen storage. We downsized from two kitchens to one and my husband is a serious cook. So we have more than our share of kitchen stuff, despite a valiant effort at letting go of excess when we moved.

I had repurposed a bank of ten-runner narrow elfa drawers that in the old house had stored knitting supplies and put it in this closet. There are two one-runner drawers and four two-runner drawers. One of them, the bottom one, holds the attachments for our Dyson cordless vacuum. That’s handy because the vacuum is mounted on the opposite wall. Two of the two-runner drawers are used to hold culinary-related tools and gadgets. I didn’t really mess with them today. Instead, I focused on the three drawers (one two-runner and two one-runner) that housed a bunch of random junk-drawer type items.

Here’s a photo of the drawer bank in the closet so you can picture it:

One of them held the contents of our old kitchen’s junk drawer, complete with the containers that were in that drawer. Another was an accumulation of hardware from either storage solutions we have purchased since moving in or things we took down to crate space for different storage solutions. And the third had a fairly random assortment of batteries and matches and lightbulbs.

After taking some before photos, I moved the top three drawers to the dining room table. To be honest, junk drawers are my favorite type of organizing projects—I find it easy and satisfying to sort stuff out, make categories and toss excess. So this project was my idea of fun.

In the junk drawer, I made the categories make sense and I even tested all the Sharpies—I had no idea we had so many. (I tossed just three.) Once I finished, I moved it from the second slot to the top one.

In the deeper drawer (the third one) I put together the extra hardware from a recent installation of blackout curtains in our bedroom, bringing in some stuff that we’d stashed in the bedroom closet so everything’s together. I moved the AA batteries to my central stash of AA batteries in my office and stored the other batteries together. With all three drawers, I generally made it so that when I’m looking for something I can find it quickly rather than just hoping I’ll find it.

The before and afters are pretty boring, but here you go. I’ll put them in the drawer order they’re now in:

Drawer 1 before:

Drawer 1 after:

Drawer 2 before:

Drawer 2 after:

Drawer 3 before:

Another easy but fairly high-value 30-minute tiny project!

January 2025 tiny projects challenge: Day 3

13 January 2025

Today I turned my attention to a charging cables, which are a constant challenge. My husband and I organized a bunch of them into Ziploc bags, which are stored in a container under the console table in our living room. That table is our charging station and so far it’s worked out well.

But I’ve always had my own stash of charging cables that I store in my office. In our house, which started its life as a two-family house, my office was on the first floor and our living quarters were on the second floor. So it made sense to have cables in two places. And it seemed like I was always trying to organize those cables. (Here’s the most recent blog post about that.)

But in our apartment, my office is just steps away from the living room so there’s no reason for me to have my own stash. Even so, I had a bit of a hard time convincing myself to let go. I decided today’s the day. The last time we were looking for a particular type of cable, I took one of the containers I store cables in out and left it on a surface. It’s been there mocking me since.

Here’s how it was looking.

Today, I decided to integrate the cables. I went through the container in my office and sorted the cables into the Ziplocs in the living room container.

I left the cables related to powering my MacBook in the office, as well as a few random adapters that didn’t really fit into the categories stored in the living room. Not perfect, but good enough.

Here’s the after photo:

And in case you’re interested, here’s a photo of container of charging cables that we keep in the living room. It has a nice lid, so it’s not too unsightly.

That tiny project took maybe half hour, but I was watching TV at the same time. It feels nice to have the office container out of my sight line. And I know that I will be glad not to have to search in two places if I’m looking for a particular cable!

January 2025 tiny projects challenge: Day 2

10 January 2025

Today my tiny project was the deep drawer in our kitchen that holds dish towels, cleaning cloths and aprons. When we moved in June, these items were placed in the drawer without much thought (the drawer was a different shape than the ones we used in our old house). It’s been functional but for the last six months I’ve frequently thought to myself, “I need to organize this better.”

So today was the day.

Here’s a before photo. What you can’t see are the many towels and rags lurking beneath the dish towels.

I emptied the contents of the drawer onto the dining room table and sorted them out. I had various types of dish cloths and cleaning cloths, as well as aprons in there.

Here’s a photo of the sorted piles—that drawer was like a clown car!

My husband is the cook in our family and he sometimes has strong opinions about things. So I consulted him. I learned that he hates the cloth diapers I bought for cleaning cloths years ago. (I typically use high-quality microfiber cloths now.) So it was easy for me to let go of those.

There were five aprons in the drawer, one of which is mine. He said he needs only two, so I kept the two with the longest ties. (His criterion.) There were a few dish towels with big holes, so those went into the discard pile as well.

I put the keepers back in the drawer. It doesn’t look that much different, but I love that the excess is gone and that it’s going to be easy to find what we need. I’m trying to avoid using paper towels for little clean-ups, so I kept a small pile of rags I’d cut from an old dish towel awhile ago and placed them next to the aprons.

Here’s the after photo.

Is it beautiful? Heck no. But it’s more functional and now I can check it off my mental list.

The project took about a half hour since I had to involve Barry. But it was a satisfying tiny project!

Stay tuned for more—the other three projects next week!

January 2025 tiny projects challenge: Day 1

9 January 2025

Yesterday, I wrote that I was going to take on five tiny projects around my apartment in the next five days. I want them to be tiny so they can be fun to achieve and not take too much time.

My first tiny project was the top drawer of the elfa rolling cart I keep under my desk for easy access. This drawer houses the supplies I use daily for bullet journaling. It also houses dry-erase supplies because my desk has a dry-erase surface (!). I use those supplies every day as well.

Here’s the before photo. It was pretty functional but not particularly tidy.

And here’s the after photo.

I use Washi tape in my bullet journal each day to designate the date and I’ve accumulated a collection. (I change up the style every month.) I tidied them up and added a yogurt jar to hold the Washi tape sets that come on small tubes. I contained the dry-erase supplies more nicely. And I moved the frequently accessed Post-it® notes to the front of the drawer, so I don’t have to pull the long drawer out as far to access them. I also changed up the rubber stamps I’m keeping in the drawer. I used the containers that were in the drawer plus added one little box to put the dry erase pens. I used negative space for my small Post-it® notes and for the white board spray cleaner.

I took me longer than 15 minutes because I got distracted creating an envelope to hold a little pile of stickers. I then abandoned the envelope. Ignoring that fun little diversion, I think the project took about 20 minutes. It’s a fairly subtle difference but it’s actually very pleasing. And I had a good time doing it!

January 2025 tiny projects challenge!

8 January 2025

Back in 2020, during the lockdown, I did a series of personal tiny projects challenges to create order in my home and keep me sane. I repeated it a few times over the next couple of years. (Check out the tiny projects tag to look back on those posts.) We’ve been in our apartment for six months now and there are a few little spaces that either never were fully organized or have become disorderly in that time. I thought I’d try to address five of them in the coming five days.

My goal is that each project will take no more than 15 minutes to accomplish. (We’ll see.)

I jotted down a few ideas so I’ll have plenty to choose from each day. They include:

• The two drawers of our primary bathroom vanity
• Our dishtowel/rag drawer in the kitchen
• The two kitchen pullout shelves that serve as our main pantry space
• The bank of elfa drawers that serve as kitchen overflow and junk drawers
• The elfa drawer bank under my desk where I store pens, washi tape and other important things. I access them daily.
• The bulk spices drawer in the kitchen
• Charging cables (a constant challenge)
• My fountain pen collection (which I started in the 1980s and haven’t touched in probably 20 years)

Keep an eye on the blog in the coming days to see the results of my challenge!

I encourage you to join me in decluttering and organizing a small space for a few days. If you’re in, let me know in the comments.

My word of the year for 2025: Flex

31 December 2024

I love coming up with a word of the year (WOTY) each year that inspires me throughout the year. Some years, I go through exercises to come up with it, but this year it came to me while I was floating in a flotation tank. I was contemplating my WOTY when the word FLEX popped into my head. It just felt right.

So in 2025, I’m going to embrace flexing my physical and mental muscles as well as work on my flexibility in body and spirit. Now that my husband and I share a car, I need to be flexible with my schedule as well.

The practical applications of my word of the year include:

• working with a personal trainer (I found one and have scheduled four appointments!)
• doing at-home yoga regularly (I’m now putting down my yoga mats at night to make it easier to just do it in the morning)
• pulling open the doors in my apartment building, rather than opening the door with the button intended for people in wheelchairs (why not take advantage of an opportunity to flex?)

I can’t wait to see how the word FLEX pans out for me. I feel like this is a good one.

How about you? Do you have a word of the year? Feel free to share it in the comments!