Day 7 - The fridge, Cookbooks and Meal Planning

*Waves*

Hiya! How was your day? For some reason I am sooooooo tired! (its not even 8pm and I'm trying not to fall asleep!) 

Today was fridge cleaning day! Something I've been wanting to do for a loooooong time! But before I get onto that, I wanted to share something I forgot to add last night....

I mentioned on the Facebook page, that my washing got rained on only 10 minutes after I hung it out, but then it stopped as quick as it started, the blue skies returned, so I left it out there!

At about 3:30pm, when Boo and I saw this out the front window:

We ran outside to quickly grab the washing (it was 'colours' day on the new laundry routine) off the line. By the time I took this photo, grabbed a washing basket and bolted outdoors it was pouring!!! I was saying "nooooooooooooooooooooooo"!!!!! We even got hailed on!!! Now that hurt!!!

The hail stones on the almost dry washing

They felt so much bigger than that though!!!

LOL I just wanted to tell you that we got hailed on, and that it hurt and, and, and, and *sad face*

So onto the Fridge! Mine was disgusting! It had been quite a few months since I cleaned it last.

Before -  Fridge { inside }

There was a lot of out of date food in here! Mustard that went out of date in 2011!!!! OOPS...

Before - Fridge { outside }

Sooooooo much crap and clutter!

Once I had emptied the fridge of all the food and science experiments, I removed all the shelves and drawers and washed them in the laundry sink... Not only is the sink bigger - it kept them all out of the way while I washed the inside of the fridge....

I was out of hot water today, so had to boil the kettle a few times, to get some hot water to fill the sink, so as it was boiling, I cleaned off and wiped over the outside of the fridge.

The bright, white and shiny after photos:

Oooooooh shiny!

It is soooooo bright! I felt so much better after it was done. 

So nice and shiny it needed a close up lol

HAHAHA Purty!

With the food put back in

First thing Jman said when he opened the fridge to get a drink after school was "Whoa! the fridge is VERY clean!" That made me smile!

It looks so bare - but I wasn't about to go and do the grocery shopping, filling the fridge, knowing that it would only create extra work for myself when emptying it to clean it. So there is a tip for you - clean fridge before you clean it.

The next part of the challenge was slightly more challenging! De-cluttering the cook books!! Although it needed doing! 

Before - What cook books?

Can't see the cook books though all the medicinal crap in front of them! 

Before - Nup - still can't find them!

That is a shelf in my pantry with my cook books and overload of medicines! (that have mysteriously fallen from the shelf above) Not a pretty sight at all.. 

I find that with technology these days and especially the readiness and ease of the interent, that I was using that more than my cook books to look up recipes.. It is so much easier to "Google" it, or search online, than it was to find a cook book...

So what I decided to do was go through the magazines first, rip out the recipes I liked and add them to my Recipe Binder, then recycle the rest.

Here are some photos of my Recipe Binder, and I will do a full blog post on it soon. 

I have had this binder for about 5 years, it has 3 sets of 5 dividers. They're all pretty self explanatory, but will go into depth on what recipes I put in each one in another blog.

Once I went through the magazines, I went through the actual books! I kept the books that were gifts or handed down to us from Parents or Grandparents, and flicked through the others, looking for recipes I have tried and liked, or ones that I have wanted to try but haven't yet, marking the pages with sticky flags.

Once I had done this, I photo copied the page, removed the tags, and put all the books in a box to be donated (have a sleep over) to the lovely Miss Catherine x.

Setting up to rip and tag magazines and books

The books I tagged

The books I tossed { sorry the image is sideways }

Ready for their new home!

It feels a little bitter sweet to let these go - but I know they're going to a good home and my shelf looks a lot better for it....

After - recipe book cull

Much better!

The last part of today's challenge was to organise a Meal Plan... I have been doing meal planning for aaaages now, and if I don't do it, my grocery bill is almost double what it is when I do! Again I will do a seperate blog post { if anyone wants me to } on how I do my meal plans another time. 

Here is a picture of an example meal plan that I put up on the wall to avoid the "what's for dinner?" questions EVERY day! I find that the only people in my home that 'ask' all the time, are the ones that can read! The young ones don't ask at all! Or they ask "When is dinner?" Never 'what'.

Example Meal Plan

So what are you cooking for Dinner tomorrow night?

Now - Onto tomorrow's task!!! Tomorrow { day 8 } is kids toy room, craft room, spare room OR extra living room (only one of these).  Your { printable }

As I have neither of these rooms, I will be doing Mr Magoo's room instead..... His room is a mess (although not as bad as his brothers') 

Well that's me for now! Good luck with your Toy/Craft/Spare rooms...

Talk to you tomorrow...

Meegs xx

Day 6 - Bathroom

Today was a tough start! I woke up late, with a headache and my ear playing up, and I was in no mood to clean AT ALL!

It was while reading through Facebook notifications with a coffee, that I read Tracey's comment on a status I posted on The Developing Housewife,  and it was that, that got me motivated to get up and get moving!

SO today was Bathroom Day! Mine wasn't as disgustingly dirty or messy as other rooms in the house (surprisingly). And it was only a few days ago that I cleaned the bath (and all the bath toys) as Mr Magoo poo'd in it!

I also went through and reorganised the cupboard under the basin, and tried to clean the shower.

Here are my before photos:

Before - Bathroom, standing at the door

It's clean, but not very tidy....

Before - The shower

I lose hair like no tomorrow - so the drain is forever getting clogged!! That's the kids' flannels on the bottom there.....

Before - The cupboards under the basin

Mr Mister and I went through this a couple of weeks ago and threw out a bag of stuff, but I can get away with tossing more stuff when he's not around...

Before - Bathroom, standing at the vanity

So much stuff on top of shower, that definitely doesn't need to be there! Also the mess and shoved in flannels in the wire basket shelfy thingy.

So after cleaning it all up, and reorganising things (I even added a couple of hooks for the kids' loofas above the bath....) it now looks like THIS:

After - Bathroom, standing at the door

How much BIGGER does it look?

After - Bathroom, standing at the vanity

All that crap on top of the shower is gorrrrrrrn! Oh and the wire basket shelfy thingy! However It is back - for Mr Magoo's nappies (and to hide the rotting wood).

.

Close up of the Vanity

The Vanity looks so clear and pretty I had to take another, closer photo of it LOL

After - Cupboards under the basin

Not a lot went on down here - I threw out a few more things, and put the extra hair products in a basket...

Moved and Reorganised the Flannels 

Oh and this is where I moved the flannels to... Miss tilly's, Jman's and Mr Magoo's.... In the back is Mine and Mr Mister's (we usually use loofas) and some spare crappy ones that I use to remove make up etc)

After getting all this done, I moved onto to toilet....

Here are the Before Photos:

It's a bit dark - I should have turned the light on :/
but you can see the silhouette of all the
rubbish on window sill 

I took the curtain down the other day - and it revealed all this web and dust covered stuff that I had forgotten about.

Rubbish on floor

Just yuck! Load of rubbish on the floor, and an extra toilet brush that I hadn't thrown out after buying the white one.

View from the loo

This is what you see, and look at when sitting on the loo.... Dirt, Miss Tilly's knickers and paper... but hey! The flowers were lovely!

So enough of the bad, onto the good! I held off the urge to pee, as I didn't want to dirty my nice clean toilet hahahaha

I turned the light on!

I moved the Toilet Brush up onto the window sill so the kids (Miss Tilly) couldn't 'help' clean the toilet any more. Especially before she had actually flushed it....

Rubbish be gone!

The floor looks so much nicer with no stuff on it! I even Hoovered!!!

Mr  Magoo helped organise the Toilet Paper 

No knickers!!! And the flowers look much better from this angle lol

So tomorrow, { day 7 } we're cleaning the fridge, and de-cluttering the cookbooks....  { printable }.

I am looking forward to cleaning the fridge - as I've been wanting to do it for a while now, but I'm definitely not looking forward to going through and/or purging my cookbooks.... So wish me luck on that one!!! Do you have loads of cookbooks? Do you see a picture on the front of those food magazines at the registers of the supermarket, and drool, so have to buy it, then never actually make it?? GUILTY! So maybe I can purge them......

On that note... I best be off. Talk to you tomorrow

Meegs xx