So this year, I had a hard time bringing myself to give something up for Lent. After having to give up wine and wheat earlier in the year, and now having to cut way back on caffeine more recently, I felt like enough was enough with giving up my vice foods. Even though I am finding I can eat wheat in limited amounts, I still have to be careful. I gave up ice cream with my daughter, but since I rarely eat it anyway, it wasn’t much of a sacrifice.

So instead of giving something up, I decided to take something on. I am going through my house, one problem area at a time, and ORGANIZING it!!! And trust me when I say, there are MANY problem areas. Yesterday we tackled the closet under the stairs where we store our games…now it will also hold our coats (which were cluttering up the hooks in the front hall) and all our DVD’s (which were squeezed into a shelf in the bookcase, taking up much needed book space.)

We also tackled the Lego problem…before they were stacked on top of the toy cubbies in plastic shoeboxes. It always looked so cluttered. But now:

I’ve said before, I am good at organizing, not so good at STAYING organized. But thanks to a little newly discovered and very addictive website called Pinterest, I have been inspired to rethink how I organize. (If you haven’t yet discovered it, go check it out!) Usually I do one space at a time…for example, one cabinet. But what I see over and over is that you should take out EVERYTHING and rethink your space. My cupboards have not been rearranged since I moved in 15 years ago…they’ve been cleaned out and organized, but never rethought. Baking goods went on one shelf, and there they have stayed…I know for a fact that I am not using my abundant space efficiently. That’s probably why….my cupboard space is incredibly abundant, so I haven’t been forced to conserve space. Well, that’s about to change!

And my fridge??? ALWAYS a problem, with things shoved in willynilly. Every time I shop, I clean it out and tidy it up, but then within days, everything is crowded in and crazy once again. I saw this blog, and was inspired to redo my fridge. Off to Walmart I went yesterday to stock up on containers, and this morning I tackle the fridge first. It is fairly low on stock right now since I will need to shop early this week, so that should make my task a bit easier.

Here’s the “before” shot….later I will share the “after.”