Plugging along

My organization and diet missions hit a big ole speed bump recently. A good friend and co-worker passed away on Jan 17...part of our ITS team went to see her in the hospital on Jan 13 and we were told she would be going home for Hospice in a few days...she went home on Monday and passed on Tuesday...she was diagnosed with cancer this summer and the treament did not help...she was only 50. So the grieving process was sort of rough, complicated by the total insensitivity of some of the leaders at work; but the service was nice...a celebration of her short life and that has kind of helped us move on.

That week, I was on a total comfort food binge; but I'm back on track now. We started our 100 day challenge at work and I lost what I had gained plus a little more. I really like having this challenge thing to keep me focused, even though the tools from the website we use are not as good as those from sites like Spark People...it's OK...it's the fact that we are doing it together with close friends.

And if it is OK with you...let's not even talk about exercise...I'm only managing to get on the eliptical one day a week...I'm pondering that problem and trying to come up with a solution.

Now for some Organization. I've started with the closet outside of our bedroom. I even remembered to take some before pictures! For containers to coral "the stuff" I came up with a great idea....I went to the Container Store for inspiration...the plan was to come up with ideas...then buy on the cheap at either WalMart or Target. While at the store, I fell in love with some wrapping paper and bought 3 different rolls in coordinating colors...with the idea that I would cover some shoe boxes...the girl who checked me out asked what I was going to do with the paper...I guess it was obvious I was not wrapping gifts...I gave her my idea and she thought it was great and suggested when I get it done I should post it to their website...and I might just do that. As I was covering the boxes...I thought this would make a great "How to" post; so I took pictures of each step...but that will be a post all by itself. Stay tuned! The other issue I ran into was....I didn't have enough shoeboxes for my project...during some recent clean up sprees, several got thrown away since I didn't have a specific plan for them at the time...I guess I could always go buy more shoes :-). So let me share the pictures of the messy closet before I started.

As you can see, I have my work cut out, stay tuned for the results. Right now that Hallway is a hot mess, with stuff everywhere.

Now on to share the laundry room...this was a small easy project that did not take alot of work. My machines are red...but I couldn't find everything I wanted in red so I also used a sort of tourquoise shade of blue, which is one of the colors in the valance. In hind sight I think this worked well...because if I had gone all red, it would have been too much.

The red and blue bins are from Walmart...less than $2 each...score! Then I had some extra tags from the last project.

The second picture is just a view of the laundry room from the door.

And the third picture shows the $5 milk crate, also from Walmart that is now holding all of the reusable shopping bags...the idea is I grab the crate when I go shopping.

Last but not least for the laundry room...I got this lettering from UpperCase living when we first bought the house...2008...but just now got it done. Bill made me a plaque and I applied the letters....it says "Laundry Room Loads of fun" We still need to hang it up, but it's done.