FRIDAY FINDS

It is deep, dark winter here, but the new year always puts me in the mood to get things done. Today's Friday Finds bears that out.

Sow & Dippity has a great list of things a gardener can do to keep busy until spring. I have to check out some of the gardening apps she mentions.

North Coast Gardening image

I officially received my first seed order (just a few add-on things included with a dahlia order I placed last week) this week. So while we're in the gardening mood, I really enjoyed this 2015 gardening trend report from Gen at North Coast Gardening.

One of my favorite things to do at this time of year is organize. It's one of the few times that I don't feel guilty being inside and really getting into a serious organizational project. If you've not seen them, here are a few of my favorite organizational type things I've done including various kitchen nooks and crannies, designing custom drawers and keeping the laundry under control. I desperately seek a major organization solution in the finished portion of the basement and here's one that I just love. It's a playroom and a pricey option, but nice to look at. I just know there is a way to mimic this look with stuff from Ikea but here's a confession: I don't really understand how to shop at Ikea. Like how do you know that you're going to get everything you need (in one trip since it's far away)? How do you plan for it without being there? 

Know someone who is getting married this year? Erin at Floret Flower Farm lays out her 2015 wedding floral trends and I have to say they are a refreshing change of pace from the packed-tight ball of roses that was popular for so long. Her free-form bouquets are so beautiful.

The Prudent Garden has produced a handy dandy succession planting guide to help you get the most out of your small garden this year. It's one worth printing.

Happy workspace

I can think of nothing that makes Mr. Much More Patient happier than when I declutter something. Even if he took a rather active role in the original cluttering. He actually congratulates me when I fill up garbage cans or have him load up boxes to be taken to Goodwill. So when it came to getting a birthday gift for a notoriously difficult to shop for husband, I thought that sprucing up the "workshop" area of the basement would be well received.

The problems here were many, but mostly, that half of the basement (the unfinished side) became a bit of a dumping ground. I had half-finished projects laying around, stuff we thought we would use again but didn't gathered dust, tools never seemed to be returned to their rightful place and a fine layer of sawdust seemed to cover everything

For the last couple of weeks I've been working on the organizational issues while he's been away on weekends. I threw out three jumbo garbage cans of broken or useless stuff. I came up with a large box of things to sell or donate. I finished two projects that had been languishing for more than a year (it's like purgatory for DIY projects down there).

To give you an idea of just how bad it was down there, I did all of that and he never even noticed, despite being in that room every day. 

The most obvious change, other than creating floor space where a person could actually work on something without having to step over or around something else, came at the workbench.

The workbench came with the house and was clearly cobbled together with a bunch of scrap wood. But it's very sturdy and we like it because it reminds us of the workbenches we'd see in our grandparents' houses when we were kids.

But the top of the workbench was awful. It was a bunch of tongue-and-groove boards nailed to the workbench framework and topped with a leftover piece of vinyl flooring. And that piece of vinyl was ripped up, paint splattered (whoever could be responsible for that?) and generally unattractive. It wasn't the kind of workspace that made you want to keep it clean.

Here's what it looked like before (by the way, iPhones do not like taking photos in basements):

So with the help of my brother and my nephew, we pried off the old top and replaced it with a brand new composite wood top (I got the top from Uline which is a business supply company; you need an account to order from them but pretty much anyone can set up an account). The top doesn't fit perfectly; it's actually a little long, but we just allowed for a bit of overhang and now we actually gained a little more work area.

I also painted the workbench itself. I didn't fuss about it much, just cleaned it off and slapped on some paint I had leftover from one project or another.

Then I set to work organizing all the stuff underneath it. There are so many times when we need a part that we know we have somewhere but can't find it so we buy a new one. By separating everything into bins I kept it all corralled and then labeled them all so we know exactly where to look for something for a specific project. It's not exactly brain surgery, but it's better than anything we've done before in this area.

I also organized the peg board behind the workbench to keep the stuff we use the most out of the toolbox and at arm's reach. There are some great unique ideas for how to use pegboard on the Internet. One that I incorporated was the string to hang all the rolls of tape on. It has a big clip on the end to make it even easier.

Most of the power tools live in the wood shelving that used to be in our pantry. So does the magnetic dartboard. Because you never know when you need that.

It was a race to get everything finished before Mr. MMP got home, but I got it all finished and even had time to wash the floor. It is so nice having space to actually work down there and better yet, Mr. MMP is thrilled with it.

Custom junk corralling

The blogosphere is absolutely filled with beautiful Christmas decorations and gift ideas right now. Am I the only person who isn't decorating yet? I just get so sick of all that stuff that I usually don't like to do much until about two weeks before Christmas.

Anyway, here's a blog post that has absolutely nothing to do with the holidays but a lot to do with keeping your sanity. You know what I'm talking about folks ... it's the damn junk drawer. 

I didn't even bother taking a before picture. You know what a horrible junk drawer looks like; I don't need to share my horror with you.

It's a bit sad that it has taken me this long to get the junk drawer organized after our kitchen renovation. It's just not one of those fun things to do and when the kitchen was all finished I just sort of threw all the stuff in it. When we could no longer open the drawer I figured it was time to do something about it. 

Let's just skip ahead to the pretty after picture, shall we? That way you can get all excited about doing it yourself.

Of course there are a million organizing systems out there for junk drawers, but there are two things wrong with them: 1. They consist of various compartments that do not necessarily fit snugly in your drawer so even after you install them, they slide around, and 2. After you add up all those little compartments they can be pretty expensive.

That's why I love this DIY custom organizing system. The only things you need to buy for this are the metal fittings that your compartment dividers slide in (I bought mine here) to and the wood strips for dividers (like this, although they come in multiple heights so if you have a shallow drawer you can buy the 3-inchers).

You can install this right into your drawer, but I didn't want to permanently commit to this layout, so I started by making a box frame to fit snugly inside the drawer. 

This wood couldn't be easier to work with. I used a chop saw to cut it but it is so lightweight and soft (for wood) that any kind of saw, including a plain old coping saw or handheld saw would cut it without much effort. 

Remember to factor in the width of the balsa (or basswood) on the two ends (it is a quarter-inch thick, so I subtracted a half inch from the width measurement) so you don't make your frame too large. I glued it with wood glue and then just tacked with staples. Normally I'd use brad nails, but I had the upholstery stapler handy so I just used that.

After that, you just have to decide what sort of compartments you want. For me, the only one that had to be a rather specific size was the one on the far right in the front. I wanted a place to put bills that wasn't out of the way so I'd forget them but kept them from sitting on the counter. So I figure out my length and then made a divider across the width of the drawer. 

The hardest part of this project (for me, anyway), is making sure to measure the same on both side so you don't end up with a divider that's all caddywompus. So I measured on each side and make a mark in the middle of where I wanted the metal bracket. There are four barbs on the bottom of each bracket, so I just made sure those were lined up on the measurement mark. The speed square (if you don't have one of these, get one. I use it all the time and it's just a chunk of plastic so it's cheap) came in very handy to make sure I was drawing straight lines when I was marking my measurements as well as marking my cuts.

When it comes time to pound in your brackets, it only takes a few taps with a hammer or rubber mallet. Make sure you use a scrap piece of the balsa wood as a tapping block or you will disfigure the bracket. Here you can see the scrap piece I used to tap in the bracket.

From there, you just keep dividing compartments as required. I did the front half of the drawer first and then did the back half. I had to take the dividers in and out several times to measure for adjoining compartments and install the brackets, but so long as you work a section at a time, it's really easy. 

And here's what it looked like when it was all installed (and before all the junk was back in it). I just put some shelf liner under it and slid the entire thing in the drawer.

The I used was 4 inches tall, which is a nice depth for the junk drawer because it keeps stuff from migrating from one compartment to another. I used the same system in the silverware drawer, but I cut down the wood to only be about 2.5 inches tall so it would be easier to reach in and grab utensils. We used the table saw for that, but again, a jig saw or something like that would also work fine.

I love how this DIY solution maximizing every inch of the drawer and that I could suit it specifically to our needs. Really, the most time consuming part was loading all the stuff back in and filtering out all of the things that shouldn't have been in the junk drawer in the first place.

So ... what's the state of your junk drawer?

Slip slidin' away to trash organization heaven

You know how sometimes I publish a little to-do list that shows you what I'm all working on and what's been finished? I am going to spare you that because reading it would take up FAR too much of your time. I have balls in the air, folks. Lots and lots of them.

I feel like I have about 20 projects that are this close to being finished enough to show you, but very few are actually finished. I sort of hate that feeling.

I did finish up one small project last night though.

As you know, I have an almost unnatural love of gadgety things and you'll find more than a few of them in the new kitchen. I am all about smarter storage and part of that is finding things that come to you.

Even though people swear by them, we just weren't willing to give up an entire cabinet for a pull-out trash can. At the same time I have developed an obsession with things on sliders, especially if they have a soft close feature that sucks them up the rest of the way.

A lot of companies make slide-out shelves, baskets and storage solutions that are easy to retrofit into your cabinets and although we had some things built in by our cabinet maker, we opted to do the undersink storage ourselves.

Even though we have a 36-inch cabinet for the (monster) sink, by the time you stick plumbing and a garbage disposal in there, there's not a lot of room left. The garbage disposal, which is a first for us in this house thanks to the fact that Insinkerator now makes one that is designed to work for septic systems (I'm not sure if that's just a marketing ploy or a real thing but I read good reviews of it so we went for it), actually takes up much more room than I had planned but I'm so happy to not have to clean out the drain basket every day.

Originally I ordered a two-can pull-out unit for the garbage and recycling, but when it arrived I realized there was no way it was going to fit so unfortunately I had to send it back. That was a rather expensive lesson in making sure to measure really well before you order something. When they say 22-3/8 inches, they mean it. Plan B was to order a single can pull-out trash basket (I believe it is made by Rev-a-Shelf) and move the recycling to the pantry.

Ahhh, a fresh, clean cabinet. Other than all those holes in the back. Clearly someone was looking for a stud and had a hard time finding one.

There are always the occasional misses when it comes to hitting the garbage can and I know from experience that cabinets that house garbage cans can get pretty grungy. I wanted to line the bottom of the cabinet with something that would be wipeable and not easily stained. The old kitchen had a piece of leftover vinyl flooring in the bottom of the cabinet but it curled up at the edges creating an even bigger mess. They sell plastic trays for this purpose but I discovered that they are pretty stiff and meant to be installed before the counters (and presumably the plumbing) are. They are also upwards of $50 which seems pretty darn steep to me.

I thought it would be so easy to find cheap rubber matting to cut to size and slide in there, but believe it or not, the only thing I could find was black, and that seemed so, um, industrial. Then I thought about peel-and-stick vinyl tiles. I was able to pick up six of them for 99 cents each at Home Depot.

Everything laid out before sticking it all down. Looks just like marble doesn't it? Right? 

 I installed them the same way you would install tile: with the main tile you see centered and a full tile. That was the front center, so I had to trim down the tiles in either side of it by about a quarter inch. The tiles in back had to be cut to fit around various plumbing bits and pieces. I had no idea how easy these tiles would be to cut. Originally I started with a utility knife but I made the last cuts with a regular old scissors and that worked just fine as well.

They cut easily with a utility knife, but I found later that a scissors worked equally well. And yes, once again I was doing a project during cocktail hour.

But I may or may not have been really careful about making square cuts. I'll be honest. I was too lazy to go to the basement and get the square so I just used another tile to make straight lines and I was more successful in some cases than I was in others and some tiles have small gaps where they butt together. I didn't want any crumbs or bits of dirt getting in there and being permanently gross, so I used a clear silicone caulk between all the joints just to seal the whole thing up.

Everything all stuck down with the joints caulked with clean silicone caulk.

Installing the pull-outs was actually easier. The garbage pull-out came with a paper template, so we just had to decide where we wanted to mount it, tape the template down and pre-drill our screw holes. This unit is actually meant to attach to the cabinet door, so you remove it from its hinges and pull the entire door out to access the bin, but we didn't want to do that, so we mounted it back about an inch so you'll open the door and then pull out the bin.

The garbage can that came with the unit just barely fits under the sink, but it fits nonetheless.

On the other side I mounted a little pullout to hold cleaning supplies and the roll of paper towel, which we decided we didn't want cluttering up the counter anymore. (Funny story: Cabinet maker extraordinaire Ryan actually devised a very cool gizmo to make the paper towel roll actually fit up into an upper cabinet so you wouldn't see it but could easily access it from below, but Mr. Much More Patient nixed it because he didn't want to give up the space in the cabinet, which I understand). We don't have children, so we can safely keep cleaning supplies under the sink but I understand this is a no-no if you have kiddos. I did make a bit of a mistake in mounting this one, which was equally easy to mount even though it didn't come with a template. I mounted it a little farther back in the cabinet, not realizing that when we pulled it out it would be still half in the cabinet. We decided to live with it like that for awhile to decide if it really bothers us before we drill four new holes and fill the old ones.

All organized and geeked out!

We're loving the pull-out trash, which is a huge improvement over the old way, which pretty much involved pulling the entire bin out anytime we were cleaning up and the geek in me is quite content with having all our cleaning supplies corralled on the other side. And there is still a little room in the middle for the dishwashing detergent.

Pretty organized paint

Last week when I randomly went on a painting spree and suddenly painted the back door black, I was totally irritated when I couldn't find the can of tinted primer that I know exists somewhere in this house. I never did find it, but when I realized the sheer volume of paint in this house I decided a little organization was needed.

I nice little display of paint cans that are all pretty and matching was never going to happen. All my paint cans have drips of paint going down them (here's a little tip: when you pour paint out of the can, do it so the front of the label is down so that when you spill paint over the edge you're not covering up the information on the back). They get thrown in a closet in the basement.

But it would be nice to know what's all lurking in there before I start a project without having to pull it all out. So I made a little spreadsheet that now lives on the inside of the paint closet door.

I figure I can update the spreadsheet when things change drastically and cross off things when I use up that paint. Because you know, you never know when you're going to use up the sample can of Killala green paint (what do you suppose that was going to be for?)

It's called Killala Green, but you can call it Kermit green. And I have a can of it.

How do you keep track of your paint? Or do you do the "Take a guess" method?

Everyone's dirty little secret: the junk drawer

Busy, busy, busy. That's the theme around here lately. The weather took at decided turn towards downright chilly over the past week reminding me of all the things that need to get finished outside before the snow flies.

But you know how you can be flying along checking things off the to-do list and then everything comes to a screeching halt until you get through one really unsavory project? That's what happened this past weekend. I was alternating between gardening and my first upholstery project (can't wait to show you) when everything had to stop. Enter the junk drawer.

We never really had a junk drawer when I grew up (my mom is exceptionally neat). We had a drawer by the phone with a lot of pens, paper and phone books (remember those), but nothing else except maybe a roll of scotch tape ended up in there. At the family cottage though there was a junk drawer that could have swallowed a small child. And that's what mine was looking like this weekend.

The drawer had been getting difficult to close lately so I knew a reorganization was imminent. And then I found myself needing something in that drawer. For a split second I thought about driving to the store and buying a new one (of whatever I needed, I can't remember what it was) rather than face that drawer. When I realized how pathetic that was, I just pulled that thing out and went at it.

And here's the sad state of things when I pulled it out (and I'm pretty sure a bunch of stuff fell behind it when I did that):

Let's take a closer look. At a glance I see plant label stakes, fishing line, sewing needs, hairspray, soil testing kits, a first place ribbon for a dog obedience competition, pinking shears, metal polish, audio cords and a measuring tape. These items should never all be in the same place.

And this is what it looked like once it dumped its guts.

This cute little guy—a piece of driftwood colored with markers—came with the house and I thought he deserved to stay. Poor guy was stuck in the junk drawer and I'm so glad I rescued him.

I pulled out all sorts of stuff that didn't belong in there, including two handfuls of tools that should be in the basement with the rest of their friends but had apparently been stranded upstairs. I also threw out a lot of stuff including any cords that didn't have an obvious purpose (which was all of them), some random seeds. And then I gave the whole thing a good scrub before a quick reorganizing. 

Ah, much better (for whatever reason I took the picture of the drawer sideways so the layout makes a little more sense if you rotate it in your mind).

So fess up: Do you have a junk drawer and what would I find if I opened it up right now?

A garage goes from grubby to great

I'm not an overly organized person, but I aspire to be. That aspiration is perpetuated by my affinity for organizing systems. I could never go to The Container Store because I'd  top my credit card limit in a matter of hours.

I've organized a few spaces that needed it pretty badly in this house, but the most successful efforts have always used some kind of system. Our walk-in closet is still in really great order more than a year after we moved into it after we created it in the renovation.

When it came time to clean up an area that has been untouched since we bought the house (save for adding to the clutter), I knew we really needed some sort of system. The little lean-to addition on our garage was jammed with stuff when we bought this house almost 10 years ago. Among the treasures I have dragged out of it was a really pretty console table that has been in our living room ever since, a hammock that we frequently use in the summer, 1,000 terra-cotta pots and a nice collection of garden tools. But the space was such a disaster we couldn't find much in it and every time I walked in there a rake would jump out and try to trip me.

Two weekend ago we emptied the entire room and it was unbelievable how much stuff was jammed in there. Our neighbor even yelled over asking when the yard sale was because there was so much stuff spread out on the lawn.

Ugly before pictures:

Sadly, all this stuff was already out of there by the time I took this picture:

We were pretty relentless in deciding what went in the trailer to the dump and what got to go back in. If we hadn't used it in a year (and in lots of cases, ever), it had to go away. There was a cute rush-seat bench that I have been wanting to paint and bring in the house, but I decided it had to go to Goodwill because I have way too many to-be-painted projects sitting around. A couple cute folding side tables were donated as well. Almost all of the terra-cotta pots that came with the house went off to the dump. The good news about our dump is that on any given Saturday afternoon it's full of people just hanging out waiting to see what people are throwing away, so I knew that when I sent Mr. Much More Patient off with a trailer-full of castoffs that most of it would be snatched up before it got anywhere near the Dumpster. And I was right. Mr. MMP reported that there was a horde of people digging through the trailer as soon as he pulled in.

This bench had to go to Goodwill even though I'd long planned to paint it and bring it in the house.

This is what the yard looked like once we got everything out. This is AFTER we took a trailer full of stuff to the dump.

It was so nice to be able to sweep the entire room out. We've never been able to do that. Once we got everything taken out and pared down, we put up Rubbermaid Fasttrack system rails. There are some really cool garage storage systems out there, but they can get expensive quickly. We wanted some flexibility to move things around and we wanted a step up from pegboard or nails on the wall and the Fasttrack system, which has a variety of hooks, baskets and holders that fit on the rails.

I can't tell you how geeked out I got about hanging up all our rakes, shovels, hoes, etc. on one wall. I couldn't wait to organize them all and once they were all hung up, I couldn't stop staring at them. The machinery (lawnmower, snowblower and mosquito eater) had to go back into the far corner, and I put the shelving unit that used to be on the back wall around the corner from the door. All of my small gardening tools including my pruners, hori hori, trowels, small sprinklers and huge collection of gardening gloves went into a cavernous basket on one of the rails. Golf clubs, skis, snowshoes and other sporting goods equipment went on the opposite wall. With my pot collection almost cut in half, Mr. MMP built three widely spaced shelves out of brackets and wood on our neighbor's burn pile (it's nice to have a contractor for a neighbor because he always has scrap wood around) for me to put them all on.

Ahhhhh, after:

The difference is unbelievable. I don't even mind going in there anymore and I'm not afraid to reach out for something (before I was always afraid that some sort of creature would be lurking). And even better yet, I can actually walk through that part of the garage to get to the main part of the garage, so I don't have to open up a big garage door to take the garbage out.

I'm not sure how long it will stay so nicely organized but I sure am enjoying it in the meantime.

What's on your organizing list?