a place for everything...

...and everything in its place!

i baked today! but the jury is still out on the results so say tuned. for now, two household ideas that have been keeping me sane. the first needs a story...

{ door sixteen }

when my great aunt gave me a cookbook of her favorite recipes, some of them old family ones, she not only gave me the treasure of her time, her sweet and patient instruction, and her recipes but she, i think inadvertently, taught me a really useful cooking tip.

{ door sixteen }

it was because they threw away food in a trash can in the garage, that she would keep a plastic grocery sack on the counter while she cooked. as we chopped, peeled, wiped up and the like, we threw everything away in that sack right there on the counter, we could move quicker and keep things cleaner throughout the meal prep. at the end, we'd tie it up and take it to the garage.

{ that kitchen }

in truth, my first household sanity tip, with that practical example, is rooted in my perfectionist psychosis which causes me to crumble at large and seemingly daunting {read: unable to be done perfectly} tasks and often results in me never even embarking upon jobs i perceive to be daunting {read: cinnamon rolls}. so, to keep the final cleaning task small and therefore less overwhelming and craze-inducing.  

{1} clean as you go.

{ una mosca en la luna }

haven't you enjoyed these shots of beautiful shelves and clean kitchens, where everything is stacked and sorted neatly in nice little containers?

{ki}

my second sanity epiphany involved cellphone chargers. the cell phones always ended up getting charged the bar in the kitchen closest to our bedroom door, cords then littering the floor or the kitchen counter. pencils, pens, notepads and eyedrops always ended up out of the study, out of the bathroom and on the couch. loose change always ended up on the tv cabinet. my bobby pins, rings and earrings ended up on the counter rather than in the drawer.

{johanna}

so i put a basket right inside our bedroom door, nearest that odd bar outlet, that now houses all the chargers to our random electronic devices, cameras, cellphones, ipods etc. it also now holds the little little devices and their little accessories as well.

a little tin bucket went on a shelf near the couch for all those random tools needed for some reason near the couch: pens, eye drops {law school}, notecards and even now outgoing mail.

a change catch-all went on the tv unit and it also holds our restaurant gift cards so they're out in the open, not easily forgotten and easily snatchable.

a fleet of little shallow bowls for the earrings and rings.

{26oliveetsy via we heart it }

{2} sometimes its "place" needs to be wherever it ends up. so find a cute basket, bucket or bowl.

now, even though bobby pins allegedly live in the drawer, in reality they are ubiquitous when i want to clean and elusive when i need one. so perhaps epiphany two and a half:

bobby pins will haunt us.