Mismatched Socks and Life's Other Great Mysteries - Solved!
Sometimes the smallest annoyances add up to be the straw that breaks the Mama Camels back. I've got 3 tiny but mighty organizing tips for you today. I hope they spark ideas or solve a problem for you, too.
1. Sock Renewal - Oh, the amount of socks in my house. Seriously. I only have two kids. Yet they both seem to take off socks and toss them in every corner of my house. Never in a pair. Always dirty. We have very few matching pairs and they can never find clean ones in the 1 minute before we need to leave to go somewhere! This drove me insane.
I removed all of the socks from their drawers, backpacks, couch cushions, my car and wherever else socks could be found (sigh!!!). I put together any matching pairs that were in good shape for a donation. The rest I put in a bag to take to textile recycling. Then I bought them each 14 pair of new socks, and they were even on sale. My son's are all black and my daughter's are all white.
I used these IKEA drawer separators to hold the new socks.
Total time: 1 hour including sock shopping (I had the IKEA dividers on hand)
Total cost: ~$40 for 28 pair of socks and set of 6 IKEA drawer separators
Joy Factor - 10/10! My life is complete.
2. The Spicy Shelf - I love to make soup in the winter, and it seems like they all start with sauteing onions and garlic in butter or olive oil, along with some variety of spices. Every time I'd open the spice cabinet, I'd just cringe! I'd literally have to take half of the spices out before I could even begin to search for cumin or whatever random spice I needed. Enter The Spicy Shelf, purchased on Amazon but apparently "as seen on TV" according to the box. Once again, game changer!
Total Time: 1 hour to take out every spice, declutter duplicates (because you buy 3 things of cinnamon when you can't find the first two cinnamons because your life is missing the spicy shelf!), and put together the shelf.
Total Cost: $27
Joy Factor: 8/10
3. Kitchen Laundry Drawer - See #1 above to understand why there are often socks in my kitchen. I also try to use minimal paper towels which means a lot of dirty wash rags and dishtowels. Add the occasional cast off sweatshirt or pajamas and you find yourself with dirty laundry in a weird place. Our laundry is in our basement so it's a pain for me to run it down there every time there is a new item. Tossing it down the stairs also annoyed me, because every time I'd go down the basement I'd step on a sock (!!) or a wet wash rag (gross). Instead I re-purposed a kitchen drawer to hold the dirty laundry. Game changer! Now I just grab the random dirty things that end up anywhere in the main part of the house and keep them in the drawer until laundry day.
Total Time: 10 min to clear out the other stuff that was in the drawer
Total cost: $0
Joy Factor: 7/10
What quick tips do you have that cost a little but have a high joy factor?
PS Speaking of spices, a friend just gave me some of the Trader Joe's "everything but the bagel" seasoning. I had no idea the cult following this spice had! People, this seasoning has 31,000+ tags on Instagram. I can't wait to try it!