The Big Catch up!!!

I've Fallen Behind!!!! Gahhhhhhh

With all my party prep (and the party) I have fallen behind!! I didn't even get my oven clean! :(

So let Mission Catch Up begin!!!

Today's Tasks { Day 11} are to clean the Washing Machine, and De-clutter and Organise the Linen Cupboard! Here is your { printable }

Here are links on how to clean your Washing Machines :

• Top Loader Washing Machine 
• Front Loader Washing Machine

Talk to you tonight with today's progress and tomorrows tasks (and maybe a couple of party photos)....!!!  Have a good day!!

Meegs xx

Day 8, 9 and Oh what a weekend!

Week 2 and I'm already falling behind!! Gahhhhhh

Yesterday, as I don't have any of the rooms on the task, I decided to tackle Mr Magoo's room instead! Weeeeeeeell, that never happened!!! 

Miss Tilly had Dance in the morning, then I was bragging and showing off my nice clean rooms to my friend that came to visit, Mr Magoo was sleeping in it, then I had to take Miss Tilly to M+CHN (who wasn't there), do the school pick up seeing as I was in town anyway, then get Miss Tilly ready and back into town for a little Dance concert at a church hall....... It just wasn't going to happen!!! I felt like I had failed, so cheered myself up by doing my nails lol

Today, I decided to attempt it again! Seeing as the only main task was to de-clutter a junk drawer.  Weeeeeeeell............

Mr Magoo had a longer than usual nap, Miss Tilly nearly fell through a window and then Footy Training pick up! While Magoo was asleep, i did do the organising task, and got my Calendar/planner done.  I also spent some more time on the organising task for yesterday, which was to set up a Family Responsibility System. It's not completely finished, but I will share with you the drafts. :)

So my junk drawer.... It's supposed to be for kitchen wrapping stuff, like glad wrap and Zip Lock Bags etc, but it ended up with a whole lotta junk! Here is my before photo: 

So cannot see the kitchen stuff in it!

I took EVERYTHING out, wiped it out, then only put back in what needs to be in there! It looks so much better! Mr Mister said "Whoa! Now its a kitchen drawer again!" Here is my after photo:

After - Nice and neat!

All nice and neat again! Lets try and keep it this way ........

Also on today's tasks, was to organise a calendar or diary! I have my planner already, however it is still new and there were dates that Kat had suggested putting in that I hadn't added yet... So I went and did all that this afternoon.... I will be doing a full post on this when its finished, but here is a sneak peek:

This was before I filled it out.

I love it!! And I may have spent longer than needed playing with it....... and looking at it, and filling it out....

Here is a sneak peek at the Family Responsibility thingy:

The Kids' Special Jobs

Lets hope they stick to them, and that I can keep them motivated ! I have a tendency to just do it for them if they give up on it, instead of urge them to do it! I get into that frame of mind, that its easier to do that, than argue with them lol. I am going to make them up on the computer, all pretty, and interactive, so hopefully that will give them more incentive to use it and actually DO their special jobs.

So onto tomorrow! Tomorrow  { day 10 }we're cleaning the oven *groan*, de-clutter kitchen cupboards and do organise the Tupperware cupboard..... { printable }

OK - with everything else I have to do  tomorrow for my birthday party - the cupboards probably wont get done..... However I will clean the oven! 

I'm still feeling extremely deflated for not getting Magoo's room done this week like I wanted... and I am feeling a little overwhelmed at all I have to try and get done tomorrow. We have sports day, I need to pick up the cake, do the food shopping, and a few other bits and pieces that come with organising a party!! I wont be able to get Miss Tilly to Daycare either, so that means I will have 2 extra kids out in the miserable cold weather while I measure how far the kids can throw the discuss LOL { if I don't laugh I will cry hahaha }Oh and YAY!!! 2 weeks down..... we're half way through!!! 

So wish me Luck tomorrow! I hope you all have a great day! Enjoy your clean ovens!

Talk to you tomorrow night.

Meegs xx

OOOPS

Gahhhhh Sorry I missed last nights post!

Just a quickie to give you the links to today's tasks!

Today is { Day 9 }! Almost 2 weeks down!  { printable }

On the cards for today is to clean ceiling fans, de-clutter that junk drawer and organise a calendar/diary!!!

I'm off to get started! Have a good day!

Talk to you tonight

Meegs xx

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

Weekend Wind Up and Day 6!

Hello there!!

How was your weekend?

Mine was brilliant! I caught up with a great friend - The lovely Miss Catherine. I am so super excited about the early birthday present she bought for me!! It is so pretty, and I can't stop looking at it,and touching it, and playing with it! 

I will write up a separate blog post about it on the weekend, as soon as I've got it all together and working for me :) However here is a sneak peek!

This was my teaser photo! 

OMG I am in stationary heaven!!! I LURRRRRRRRRRRRVE it! THANK YOU SO SO SO SO SO SO SO MUCH CATHERINE!!! 

I am EXTREMELY excited haha

Going through all my goodies, with wine!

Going through all my goodies on the table after dinner with a glass of red! Oh how lucky am I to have such an awesome friend that lives so close to Office Works!!??!!

I WAS going to do a quick post yesterday, about my journey to becoming more organised (therefore efficient), but time ran away on me, so I will quickly touch on that now, before moving onto Day 6 of the Challenge.

I am determined to become more organised and efficient, and NEATER! Even on the INSIDE of my drawers and cupboards etc...

While cleaning my room on Day 2, I came upon a problem whilst trying to put all my clothes away! That problem would be, I have too many! I was in no mood to try and decide which things (my tops mainly) to keep or toss/donate, I just wanted to get them all away! I had so much trouble trying to get all my tops into my drawer, that I had to come up with a better way to organise them. I remembered seeing something on a you tube video, and thought I would try it out. I reckon it works well for me, and will be even better once we've gone through our clothes on Day 16...

I wanted to try and re-do it a little neater before taking a photo to share, but I didn't get time, so I will share this one.. Please keep in mind that it will only get neater and better than this!

My T-shirts and tops... I can see all of them!

Oooooh colourful! I can now see ALL my tops and T-shirts! No more stacking them on top of one another, needing to lift up the top ones, to see what's underneath, only to have them all fall over (or out) when you grab one from the middle of the stack!  On the far left of the photo, are my singlets, then my sleeveless tops, then all my other tops and t-shirts on the right! 

So that's my start to getting more organised... 1 small step for Meegs, 1 Giant Leap For MeegsKind!

So! What's on for this week??? For the Challenge this week, we will be cleaning the Bathrooms, Fridges, Toy/Craft/Spare Room, Junk Drawer and the dreaded Oven! We will also be de-cluttering the Bathroom Vanity, Cookbooks (sob), Toys, and Kitchen Cupboards (does the fact that I have drawers, not cupboards mean I am exempt from this task??).. hehe

So to start - { Day 6 }- Bathroom(s).  Your printable To-Do List is { here }.

I did a quick sweep through the vanity and cupboard under the sink a couple of weeks ago, so this challenge shouldn't be too hard (the de-cluttering part anyway) however I'm sure it could be organised better (need more baskets)....

My shower is disgusting - (its so old and previous owners didn't take very good care of it) and no matter what I use I can't lift the stains.......  Any tips before I get started??

Well that's it for me - I am still trying to catch up on washing and trying to implement that new laundry routine... I can hear my washing machine singing, so that's cue for me to get it out of the machine and onto the clothes horses to dry...

Have a great night. Talk to you tomorrow

Meegs xx

Day 5 & the Lipstick Bandit!!

What a Challenging day today was!!! And not so much because of  today's task's, BLOODY KIDS! I was soooooooo mad! You will see why shortly!

Today's Tasks were to do the floors and the pantry (get rid of out of date food and reorganise it a little).

I didn't do tooooooo bad! My pantry needs a complete overhaul! I need to rethink its layout and storage ideas - Its chaos! I have a large pantry that all my friends are jealous of (and it may have been the selling point when looking at the house ha-ha)! One day would not be enough time to completely gut it and start again, I would need a full weekend and Mr Mister's help for that job. So thank goodness Kat wasn't asking us to do that today *wipes brow* phew

I did my pantry first so I could hoover and mop in there at the same time as the kitchen and dining room, and also just in case something spilled (which it did) I wasn't going to be cursing as "I just bloody mopped that!!" 

So here are the before photos of my pantry......

Before - My disgraceful pantry

See! Massive!

Before - My disgraceful pantry again 

This is the side with all the food! On the opposite wall (the one you can't see hehehe)  is baking trays and cake pans, corningware, cook books and  medicines....

I pulled out 2 green bags of lunch boxes/tins the kids don't use, a couple of appliances that we either don't use or were broken and a whole 'big, heavy, split as you try and lift it into wheelie bin' bag of out of date food.... *hangs head* oops.   

I didn't do a great deal of reorganising, except for the floor. But now there is loads more room on the shelves, and I did shift some things around.

Here are the after photos..

After - My Un-disgraced pantry

How amazing is it? I love my big, giant walk in pantry!!! It's going to be great when I can create some better storage solutions and REALLY get it organised and pretty!

After - My Un-disgraced Pantry floor!

Oh Em Gee! You can SEE the floor!!!!! We created so much room on the shelves after purging all the off food, that I was able to shift things around and get the things that were on the ground up onto a shelf! 

I have 1 more after photo (of the pantry) to upload - this one is especially for my Mum xxx

The entrance

Look Marjar!!! Nothing in the doorway! *gasp*

The Floors! OMG, in the lounge room, I had to empty the hoover after having just done the rug! I did the rug first, then had to empty it before I could move onto the rest of the room! How awful is that......  

I wasn't going to take any before and afters of the floors - although I did take 1......

Before

This is beside the fridge, where the rubbish and recycle bins were kept.... gross

After

See - clean. But not that exciting...... It was while I was doing this that the kids started playing up... Especially Miss Tilly! I was ropeable!! 

I wont even begin to tell you what she did - I will just show you.......

Stay put { even when you spew }
lipstick 

She did a great job putting
it on her lips.....

And the rest of her face!

OH! And all over her hands { including the backs of them }

And the wall........

It was also on the bathroom floor and after she used my lipstick as hand cream - she went and touched the sofa!!! Gahhhhhhhhhh! 

Needless to say, no other floors were hoovered or mopped today, and My pretty 3yo went up for adoption! { not literally, of course }

It took an eternity to get it off her, which called for a message to my Beauty guru, Katy, for tips to get it off! Thanks love! You're a lifesaver!! { you can find Katy and her Beauty Blog here }

This was the bath after we finally got her clean......

I don't know if you can tell in the photo, but the ring around the bath is pink!
As is her hand prints on the bottom 

Just what I always wanted!! MORE cleaning! *sigh*

On a happier, less grumpy note... Week 1 of the Challenge is DONE!!!! 

The last to-do list of week 1
I didn't tick the "relax while floors dry" box, as I was scrubbing lipstick off my daughter 

Now we can relax a little over the weekend, remembering to keep up with our daily chores (which I am going to rename 'responsibilities' as I hate the word 'chore') and routines! I have been so good, making sure that all my dishes are done and every kitchen surface is wiped down every night after dinner. I have surprised myself and gotten up at 6:30 am { almost } every morning, and although I'm still trying to get used to it, I am feeling a lot better for it. I get so much more done!

Anyway - I hope you all have a fantastic weekend! I will be! My friend Catherine { Girl from Three Birches } (go check out her blog) is coming to have a sleep over tomorrow night to make me what looks like a delicious frittata, and give me my (early) birthday present!! I am so super excited about it, and will share it with you in a week or so!  I also have a shite load of washing to catch up on after cleaning my room! 

First up next week is 'Bathrooms' so rest up! 

I 'may' have a special 'inside Meegie's organisation journey' post tomorrow - depending on how it works out! LOL

Talk to you soon

Meegs xx