Project Simplify; Drawers & Shelves

I read Simple Mom. I actually got into it initially because I was looking for more podcasts to listen to during my commute. I didn't read the blog for a while. I just liked listening to her talk to her mom friends and found a lot of other great inspirational blogs to follow.

There's something crazy happening in your brain right now. You're right, I don't have kids. I'm fully aware of this fact. What am I doing reading a mom blog?  It's simple. I like what she has to say.

This month, Simple Mom is hosting Project Simplify, which - this year - includes less specific project guidelines to accommodate non-parents, like myself. I dig it. I'm in.

Week 1 - Drawers & Shelves

You know the ones… The drawers where everything gets crammed and forgotten, the shelves that you don’t want to touch because everything would fall. This week, you’ll tackle these. You’ll declutter, clean, and organize these little hideaways, whether they’re in the kitchen, the garage, the kids’ room, or—well, everywhere. Do as many or as few as you want. 

For me, this actually turned into more of an excuse to clean off a handful of surfaces.

I started with the sideboard...

Sorry about the less than awesome photo. The light was how it was and there was nothing I could do about it except wait and I didn't want to wait. It usually looks worse than this. A lot worse. But it still needed decluttering...

I emptied out the dish, got out some pledge, cleared off the random who-knows-whats (hair pins, pens, post-its, nail polish), bought some flowers, and put everything where I wanted it. Project 1; done.

Then I set out on the kitchen table. Same lighting situation. Now, I don't know about you, but I would like to EAT at my kitchen table, so this situation had to go...

Same flower trip. The only thing allowed to stay on the table were my salt & pepper shakers. :) I also put away the extra leaves. We have three of them and they should really only come out when we have company. Seriously.

I tackled the wet bar - also covered in who-knows-what...

Most of this stuff just got moved onto other surfaces, but some of it got put away or thrown away. Best of all was I finally treated the butcher block countertop.
Yes, I have faux flowers. They're silly to an outsider, but if you look closely, you can see they have love notes from my hubby written on them. He gives them to me every Valentine's day. It's one of our things. That's six V-days worth right there.

Next up were the shelves in the wet bar where we keep tools and dog things.

Not cute.

But after a few tweets like this and this, I managed to turn them into this. We may seriously have a thousand wrenches and no one knows why.

And this. I'm most proud of consolidating Panda Bear treats into two glass jars.

On a totally separate note, we had NO idea we already had two boxes of heartyhides when we bought two more at Target on Friday. That's how cluttered this cabinet was.

And the last thing before I went to bed - while the bread machine ran - was the bakers rack. I have so much love for this thing, but it always ends up being the place to throw stuff.

Most of the stuff on their just needed to get put away, but the biggest problem was that it was just dirty. I Pledge'd the main counter top and Windex'd the shelves and it looks SO much better.

The end result is me feeling amazingly productive. It was a huge weekend over at our house and a lot of that had to do with my simplifying projects - not to mention T finally bolted in the dishwasher, so it will no longer tilt forward when I open it (the crowd erupts into cheers).

Have you checked out Project Simplify? Are you in?