Reorganizing Resolutions For The New Year With Caramelized

We recently teamed up with Cara Greenstein who runs the popular Memphis blog Caramelized to help her organize her kitchen to start off the new year on the right foot. Here’s a look at Cara’s post about the whole process:

I consider myself a fairly organized and well-kept individual.

It wasn’t until I was reaching three feet back into my “pantry” — a one-cabinet IKEA space that hosts every dry good from pasta to canned tomatoes to crackers and brown sugar — that I paused and thought to myself, “this is simply not the way to operate.” Sure, the small size of our townhome has established parameters for what can fit versus not (I am not a member of Costco because bulk doesn’t work at this phase of our lives, ha!). But the efficiencies across our kitchen shelving simply did not exist.

That’s when I called the dynamic duo behind Blue Pencil Home, Katie and Brooke, to bring a robust resolution to my 2019 mindset.

Whether you need to declutter or downsize, reorganize or relocate, Blue Pencil Home is your go-to source for a stress-free job. The process was seamless: First, Katie and Brooke popped in to see the current situation through a complimentary consultation. They measured drawers, got a sense for what they were working with, and took notes for some new organizational needs such as jars, drawers or liners.

Their rate is $125/hour for a duo of organizers or $175/hour for three. And trust me — they are all hands on deck!! You’ll also pre-approve and pay for the materials that contribute to your new look. For example, the most darling copper-topped spice jars from Target reimagined my once out-of-hand spice cabinet. And these brilliant pan dividers provided a new way to locate the right size for sautéing (versus stacking 6-8 pans on top of one another).

Read the rest and see photos of the finished product on Caramelizedblog.com.

(Photos by Christen Jones.)

How To Prepare For The Christmas Toy Explosion

As fun as it is to watch children open their gifts on Christmas morning, eventually all those toys and trinkets have to go somewhere. So to make room for the influx of new stuff and help you prepare for the holiday toy explosion beforehand we’ve put together a guide on how to start organizing:

Where to Start:

If you have toys in multiple places, plan to go room by room to avoid getting overwhelmed. If you have multiple toy rooms, we suggest tackling the one that stresses you out the most first, in order to get it out of the way.

Start the decluttering process by pulling absolutely everything out and separating the toys into categories.

As you make your way through the room there, are a few questions to keep in mind that will help you decide on what to keep or throw away:

• Does your child still play with this?

• Does it still work?

• Are any of the pieces missing, broken, or need batteries?

• Are there items in this room that should be somewhere else?

If most of your answers are no, then get rid of the item.

How to decide what goes and what stays:

1. We’ve found that the bottom of unlabeled bins and baskets are where all little and random toy pieces land. These odds and ends immediately go into the trash.

2. If a toy needs batteries it’s is an indication that your child has not played with it in a while and is no longer interested in it — so it’s time for it to go.

3. Games that don’t have all of the pieces don’t make the cut either.

4. If there is a random toy that doesn’t fit into one of the categories you separated all the other toys into, that should go too. The outliers are rarely things that your children want to continue playing with.

5. Keep in mind the toys that may have sentimental value one day. As your children get older there may be some toys that you want to keep for their children to play with like an old train set or American Girl dolls. If they are no longer interested in the item, but you are not ready to let go of it, box it up, and put it away for later.

Once you have decided on what to let go of and what to keep, pack up the items that can be donated and get rid of the rest.

After clean out, it is time to decide how you want to contain toys.

Be sure that you keep like things together — for instance all Shopkins items, American Girl dolls and their clothes, nerf guns and their bullets, lego sets, etc.

Another tip we use to keep board games intact is to keep them out of reach, because we’re more aware of when they are being played and can keep an eye out for any pieces that may go astray before putting the game away.

Make sure you have a place for everything. When toys have a “home” children put their toys away. As much as we may be overwhelmed with the mess and chaos of a child’s room, so are our little ones. Help them, and help yourself, by getting organized! Having the right organization  tools will be a big help during the process — check out this blog post for some of our favorite products and how we use them.

And, don’t worry too much about your kids getting upset about a missing toy or two. Our children have never been sad that we’ve gotten rid of something; they are always so excited to be able to see all the toys they actually have!

 While you’re decluttering you can also take the opportunity to take inventory of what your kids already own, and then come up with some fun ideas for holiday gifts.

You can find this post and posts from other wonderful blogs on Memphis Moms’ Blog.

Happy Holidays from our Blue Pencil Home family to yours!

How To Get Your Kitchen Holiday-Ready

As wonderful as the holidays are they can also be a little overwhelming — especially if you’re the one hosting all the festivities — but taking the time to get high-traffic areas in order beforehand can help tremendously. With Christmas quickly approaching we wanted to share a few helpful tips on getting your kitchen it tip-top shape before all those guests arrive.

We know with so much going on this time of year that you probably don’t have the time to declutter your entire kitchen, so we’ll just focus on the areas that are likely to get a lot of use during the holidays.

Start by giving your kitchen a good, deep cleaning. Wipe down the counters and cabinet fronts. Sweep and mop the floors. Clear off all countertop clutter and keep only the bare minimum on the counters. You’ll want your kitchen to be as calm and easy to tidy up as possible.

Next, go through your serving platters and baking dishes to get rid of any you don’t love or use. Once you’ve decided on the keepers use a divider to keep them organized and more easily accessible when you are entertaining. Our favorite dividers to use for pans and platters are the YouCopia StoreMore Adjustable Kitchen Cabinet Rack, Ikea Variera Pot Lid Organizer, and the Ikea Utrusta Partition.

You’ll also want to pay attention to the silverware drawer — you don’t want guests to reach for a fork and find the crumbs from lasts week’s breakfast. Yuck! Take everything out and wipe out the drawer, then place items back in using drawer dividers like the Container Store’s Interdesign Linus Shallow Drawer Organizers or InterDesign Linus Expandable Cutlery Organizer. Another great option is to get a set of Stori Drawer Organizers from Amazon, which come without any annoying stickers that can seem impossible to remove.

Don’t forget to tidy up your baking zone, which is sure to see plenty of action over the holiday season. Do a quick inventory and make sure you have a full set of measuring cups and spoons. Remove anything that doesn’t belong then take note of any baking staples that need to be replenished. You never want to run out of flour or sugar during holiday baking!

Chances are your fridge is going to be working extra hard this holiday season and you’ll want it in order, so before you do your holiday shopping make sure you give your fridge a little extra love. Take everything out and wipe down all the surfaces. Throw away anything old, expired, or food you no longer want. When you replace everything categorize like items together. We use the Container Store’s clear Interdesign bins for cheese, meats, and individually packaged snacks. Once you’ve organized your items and can easily see everything, take inventory and start a shopping list for any staples that need to be replaced.

Now that your kitchen is in order make a menu and shopping list. If you are hosting holiday festivities it’s important to make a menu in advance. To stay organized we keep our menus from years past in recipe binders to make it easy to adjust year to year. Traditional Christmas recipes are kept in separate tabs in a binder as well. 

Our best advice for staying sane in the kitchen during the holiday season is to use helpful shopping and delivery services like InstaCart or Shipt! Nobody wants to be in the grocery store during the holiday rush, so do yourself a favor and join one of these services. InstaCart has seriously changed our lives! There is an annual fee to sign up, but we have found that we spend a lot less money on groceries using it than we typically would shopping in the store and picking up random items. And since we order more frequently we no longer have items that spoil in our refrigerators, and we can completely avoid impulse purchases!

One extra tip, after the holidays are over do a full declutter of your kitchens. Sometimes we tend to hang on to serving pieces or holiday items “just in case,” but if you find you didn’t use something this year, chances are you won’t use it next.  

We hope these tips will help your holiday season go a little more smoothly! 

Halloween Costume Storage Made Easy

Halloween is always a lot of fun. Little goblins, witches, unicorns, and superheroes run amuck in search of candy, pictures are taken, sugar comas ensue, and then it’s officially November and time to pack away those festive costumes and pumpkin pails that won’t be used again until next year.

Costumes can take up a lot of space that could otherwise be put to good use, so it’s important to take the time to sort through them and store them in a way that’s not only efficient, but also easily accessible. Below are a few tips on how to get started and factors to consider while sorting.

Start by pulling everything out and go through costumes piece by piece to figure out what items to keep or toss. Here are a few questions to help determine whether or not to throw out a costume:

1. Does it still fit?

2. Would it be hard or expensive to replace?

3. Are any pieces of the costume missing or torn?

4. Is it a one trick pony? Get rid of anything that won’t be worn again.

Tip: Always keep costumes with decade themes like the ‘70s and ‘80s, because they are often used for all sorts of parties. Also keep items that can be used for multiple costumes — think capes, wigs, and masks. Try to keep in mind any traditions at your kids’ school that might require costumes — for example: a ‘50s-themed father daughter dance.

Once you’ve decided what to toss and keep, donate the items that you’re getting rid of and pack up the keepers in a clear storage container, so you can easily see what’s inside.

Once the trick or treating was done this year I went through all the steps listed above. Here’s a look through the process from start to finish:

First, I pulled out everything in the closet to see everything all at once.

The goners — what didn’t make the cut and why:
1. Superheroes and Storm Trooper — my kids are too big for these, good bye!
2. Transformer??? I don’t know what that is, good bye!
3. Random single boot, sunglasses, and other junk, good bye!

The keepers — what I kept and why:
Definitely keeping the Morph suits, because they are hilarious and my kids really love them.

Banana and cheeseburger costumes, because the kids won’t grow out of them and strangely enough they have worn them for many things. 

This dinosaur costume was very expensive and has been used for many plays and skits. 

I also decided to keep some masks, a bandana, and plastic weapons, because they can be used for many different costumes. 

Now that I’ve cleaned out a decent sized pile of costumes the playroom closest has plenty of space to store other items like extra bedding for sleepovers, nerf guns, balls and costumes. 

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