I have an issue with clutter and things on the bathroom counter. I put everything away after I use it and hubby does for the most part but he keeps his shavers out. I do understand they need to charge, especially because they’re old and the charge doesn’t last as long as it use too.

But I really hate it looking like this. How about we come up with a compromise? A shaver basket!

I found a basket the perfect size and shape and it even had a lid, that was a bonus. It was only $4 at Hobby Lobby using my coupon.

Doesn’t it look so much better? I was going to cut a hole in the back of the basket for the cords to go through, but decided I didn’t want to ruin the basket in case I wanted to use it for something else later. It works fine with it going through the lid. I like it , and the best part is that hubby likes it too.

Do you have something on your counters that you want hidden?

Closets come in all shapes and sizes. I’m sharing with you how I organized my master bedroom closet in my rental home. Let me start by saying that I’m thankful for a big closet in a house that doesn’t have much storage. I was able to store little used items on the top shelves and still have plenty of room for all the other things that belonged in there.

My boots are on the floor directly across from the door opening. You can check out how I made the DIY Boot Shape Keepers to make your own. My shirts are hung directly above my boots. I keep all the long sleeve shirts in one area and the short sleeve shirts separate but right next to them. Yes, I do keep the clothes equally spaced. By keeping my shirts like this, I can see exactly what I have and pick out what I want to wear in seconds.

To the right of my shirts are my pants and skirts and dresses. I use skirt hangers with clips available for 4 skirts, to save on space.

On the next wall to the right of my dresses, are my sweaters and scarves. I use a scarf organizer to hold my scarves and belts and keep them organized. It’s easy to see what I have at a glace. This organizer can be purchased at Ross, Target, WalMart, etc.

On the same rod opposite my sweaters are hubby’s shirts. The rod right below that hold his pants. I like to use the same hangers throughout the closet. It makes it look nice plus it helps keep the clothing neat and wrinkle free. Someday I’ll have beautiful hangers, but for now these will do.

The left side of the closet holds all my shelving units. Since we only have one dresser I store most of my folded clothes here. Exercise pants and tops, shorts, t-shirts, tanks, and folded sweaters. I bought my shelving units at Target, but they are also available at WalMart, Lowe’s, Home Depot and other similar stores. I placed them right on the middle shelf at about eye level.

Right below the clothing shelves are my shoes. I try not to store anything on the floor in closets. It can easily become a dumping ground so it’s better to have things off the floor on shelves or in containers. I’ve talked before about how I have a lot of shelving units. My reasoning is that I can move them around and change them whenever it’s needed. Since we have lived here I haven’t had to buy one shelving unit, I was able to bring them all from my other house and reconfigure them here.

To the right of my upper shelving units are my bags. You can see what I do to keep them in shape here.

Baskets are some of my favorite things to use in organizing the closet. Things can be easily accessible but also hidden from sight. The one on the left holds sewing and mending projects, the center one holds sheets and bedding, and the one on the right holds bags and other things for travel.

These baskets on the very top shelf hold gifts and other things I want hidden. A lot of the time they are empty, but are perfect for those things I need to keep out of sight until the time is right.

Since we’re just renting I don’t have the option of moving things around, taking bars down, or adding hooks. I hung our pj’s and my jackets on the back of the closet door using Command hooks. These are a renters dream!

Hubby’s ties and hats are also hung using Command hooks.

I hope this gave you ideas on how to organize your own closet. Since I’m renting using non-permanent things work best for me. If you don’t have the option of built-ins they’re a perfect solution. Even if you own a home I like the ease of using them and being able to reconfigure them on a whim. Sometimes I just like to move things around.

I know I say this all the time but I really can’t wait to make this. I’m going shopping today and buying everything I need. I have a busy weekend coming up and this would be perfect to have on hand and ready to eat. Here’s Melissa sharing another great recipe.

I love experimenting in the kitchen. I try new recipes all the time, but for some crazy reason I didn’t start using curry until last month. I discovered how much I love curry and then I became a little obsessed, I have been throwing it in everything I can! This curry recipe has been one of my very favorites. If you have some left over shredded chicken in your fridge then this recipe only takes 20 minutes. If you happen to have any leftovers don’t throw them out, this tastes even better the next day!

Curried Orange Chicken Salad

(serves 4)

3 cups shredded cooked chicken breast

3 stalks finely chopped celery

1/2 cup raisins

1/4 cup slivered almonds

1/3 cup light mayonnaise

1/2 cup fat-free plain Greek yogurt

1 teaspoon finely shredded orange peel

2 tablespoons orange juice

1 tablespoon yellow curry paste

1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper

1/8 teaspoon salt

12 lettuce leaves

3 oranges, peeled, sectioned, and seeded

Directions:

• In a medium bowl combine chicken, celery, raisins, and almonds.
• In a small bowl stir together mayonnaise, yogurt, orange peel, orange juice, curry paste, pepper, and salt. Add to chicken mixture, toss to coat.
• Divide lettuce leaves among plates. Top lettuce with chicken mixture and orange sections.

I have a feeling I’m going to be making this a lot. Don’t forget to also check out My Mommy Style where Melissa blogs regularly.

I just love little kids in aprons! When my kids were young they would run and get their aprons whenever they heard me in the kitchen. My boys seemed to like helping me bake and cook even more than my girls. Their aprons were just plain but they still loved them. I wish I would’ve been able to use heat transfer vinyl back then to put a cute image on the front. That’s why I was so excited to make these cute children’s aprons for my grand kids.

Here’s What You Need for This Project:
Aprons (mine are from Hobby Lobby)
Heat Transfer Vinyl (mine is from Expressions Vinyl)
Iron
Personal Cutting Machine or scissors

Working with heat transfer vinyl is a little different than working with regular vinyl. There is a shiny side that is clear plastic, that needs to be down (dull side up) if you are using a cutting machine. Also images and lettering need to be reversed to appear the right way once it’s adhered to the material. Since I didn’t have anything that had to be a certain direction I didn’t worry about it. I used my Cricut to cut out the kitchen images.

This is 100% my own opinion, but I have to let you know that this is the easiest heat transfer vinyl I have ever worked with. Weed off the excess vinyl from the clear sheet that is not part of the design to be adhered to the fabric. Then place the image on the apron where you want it to be applied. Make sure the clear plastic side is up.

Iron the image on the medium-high setting for about 15 seconds. There is no need to cover it with a cloth and the clear backing can be pulled off right away.

They were so quick and easy to make. I love how cute the aprons turned out and can’t wait to see the kids wearing them. I have another really fun addition to the apron I’ll share with you next week.

I shared my St. Patrick’s Day mantel last week and introduced you to my Lucky Printable. I love how this printable turned out! I thought I would share it with you in hopes that you love it as much as I do. I also shared a way to display it if you don’t have a frame available. I printed mine at 5″x7″ but you can print it at 8″x10″ or any other size you would like.

If you would like to use this printable for yourself, just click the link below. Printables are for personal use ONLY and are available to subscribers of Organize & Decorate Everything. SUBSCRIBE NOW to get full access to all printables.

Lucky Printable

The larger St. Patrick’s Day printable is also available by clicking on the link.

Visit my Printables Party Pinterest board for more awesome printables.

Happy 1st day of March!!! How about let’s celebrate with a St. Patrick’s Day mantel reveal. I like to see what I can come up with by using things around my house and in my craft room. I went with green and yellow for the theme this year. It’s so fresh and Springy!

Let’s start with the hoops. I searched through my fabric stash to find these fun prints in the right colors. If you don’t have the hoops at home, they can be purchased for as little as a dollar each. Stretch fabric across each hoop and cut off the excess. They’re also easy to change with the seasons and holidays.

Want a super easy way to display printables when you don’t have a frame? Try attaching them to a clip board. I’ve used 2 different sizes here for the prints in sizes 8×10 and 5×7. The 8×10 is a print I made last year. You can print it off here. The lucky print will be available next week.

I made the little button rainbow and put it in a 2″ frame I bought from Michael’s last year. I love those little frames! The old book adds nice contrast and the empty frame is perfect for adding layers. The green plate that’s to the right and not shown in this picture, is from a set that I will probably be using on my Spring mantel.

The banner is made from using washi tape and bakers twine. I just eyeball spacing and cutting by doing what looks good to me. I’m lucky to have so much washi tape to choose from.

That’s my no-cost St. Patrick’s Day mantel and I love how it turned out. Look around your house and see what you can create without spending a dime. You might be surprised.

You want an organized pantry but you don’t want to spend a lot of time or money? You can do it fast and inexpensively in 3 easy steps. It’s not fancy but it’s organized and you can easily find everything you need. I helped my friend get her pantry organized by using a few things she already had and a few things from the dollar store.

1. Empty – Start by emptying your pantry. You might be surprised the things you’ll find in the back of your pantry that you didn’t even remember having. That’s actually the whole point. Now is also a good time to check for expired food. Clean the cabinets while they’re empty, there’s bound to be some food spills. In my experience the baking shelf is always the most disorganized. Do not put anything back in the pantry that doesn’t belong there.

2. Sort – Decide how to group things by how much you have of certain items. Do you bake a lot? You might need 2 shelves. Do you have a lot of canned goods? They might need a shelf all their own. Now is the time to rearrange a little if you need too. Think of each shelf as a separate unit and contain what you need to in that space. Store “like” with “like”. Little used items are placed on the top shelf.

3. Contain – We bought 6 baskets (3 green and 3 navy) from dollar tree to help in the pantry organizing, plus we used a few containers she already had. Look around and see what you can use, you might not have to spend a penny. Her pantry shelves are really deep so the baskets were also a necessity. They can be pulled out to reach the items behind, plus they help contain all the similar items together. She has little kids so we devoted a whole shelf to “grab and go” snacks.

Before pantry is on the left and After pantry is on the right. To give you a little reference, each cabinet is about 36″ tall, 24″ wide and 24″ deep. Having the pantry organized helps you see at a glance what you have and what you need. It’s easy to put groceries away when you know where they go. If you want to take things further you can also label the shelves and baskets.

Organizing your pantry might be a good weekend project. What do you think?

The dishwasher in our rental home has bugged me the minute we moved in. We brought our fridge with us and it’s black, the front of the stove is black, but the front of the dishwasher is almond. Yuck! I like things to match a bit better than that, especially since you can see the whole kitchen from the family room.

It also has 2 gouges in the front of it. So what do I do?

I decided to cover it in black vinyl. It will be fast and easy to remove when we move out and I’m going to be able to enjoy matching appliances while I’m here. I had to use 2 sheets for the front of the dishwasher. Peel off the paper backing a little at a time.

I used a wallpaper seam roller to smooth out the vinyl as I applied it. There were a few small bubbles I had to work out. Roll from the center out for the best results. Then apply the second sheet. The vinyl has guides on the back so you can easily cut it to the length you need.

For some reason the bottom of the dishwasher is textured. That was actually easier to apply. The texture helps the air bubbles escape making the application smoother.

You can see the seam a little in the picture, but it isn’t recognizable in person. I love how it looks now. When you’re renting, every little thing you can do to make it feel like home helps. Think outside the box!

I might be a bit biased but these printable jar labels make my organizing heart go pitter-pat. Sarah is here again sharing an awesome printable with delicious colors. Now you have no excuse not to get that pantry organized, you just have to decide which color you love most. Here’s Sarah:

Hi again everyone! Welcome to another month of cute printables with me!

Last year, I set out to organize my pantry better. I decided to put all of my baking supplies, nuts, seeds, etc, into mason jars so it would be neater in my cupboards. While I transferred things, I taped little pieces of the old bags or boxes onto the jars until I could make labels. Fast forward a year, and my jars still have little scraps taped onto them. That ended today, however, when I created these cute labels that fit the lids of mason jars perfectly.

To organize your own pantry with these cute printable mason jar labels, all you need to do is download your copy from here. Choose the color you like, and print that page as many times as you need. If you print on sticker paper, it makes it really easy to print, cut, and stick! Otherwise, use double sided tape to stick them on. They are also 2″ wide, so if you have a 2″ hole punch, you’re really in luck! To keep them in good shape, cover them with something like contact paper. You can also use packing tape! Just put it on carefully and smooth out the bubbles. If you cover it with packing tape, you can also write the labels on with a wet erase marker (like vis-a-vis non-permanent markers) so that it’s interchangeable.

I created 8 different colors for you, so you can coordinate with your color scheme or pick the color that makes you smile! There is aqua, green, orange, yellow, red, brown, grey, and black for you to choose from – now how’s that for selection?!

Download your copy here!

Trust me, the mason jars really help keep your kitchen cupboards organized, and they’ll even look beautiful while they do it with these labels! Hope you enjoyed this months printable, and make sure you check back next month for a fun Easter one. I can’t wait to share it with you!

I have to second using mason jars to help keep your pantry organized. I use them in my pantry and baking cupboard. Thanks again Sarah and don’t forget to check out her blog, Becoming Martha, for more printables and great ideas.