Thymes

Oh, the organization. Or rather, the attempt at organization. Matt and I have been trying to overhaul our house into a more productive state and thanks to the combined effort of marthastewart.com and ikea.ca, we keep adding to what we want to do.
Our latest project in mind is our laundry room. I was drooling over a picture of a laundry room (odd, I know) that I had seen somewhere or other and got to talking to Matt about all of the changes I would make to our laundry room if I could. While some of those changes would have involved knocking down one wall and putting up another to give our laundry room an additional 18 square feet of space, I realized that some of the changes I actually could accomplish with a little ingenuity. Now, while I may not have ingenuity myself when it comes to organizational matters, Martha Stewart and her comrades certainly do. So I dug up some old magazines and hit up her website to find ideal laundry room layouts (an oddly common theme throughout the life of her publications). Now, while my laundry room will not include a gift wrapping station like one sample room, or a folding table (which was the thought behind the 18 sq. foot expansion), nor will I necessarily get my own Sheldon-esque folding board as seen on The Big Bang Theory, however, I will be reorganizing my shelves in a manner which ought to improve the efficiency of not only my laundry room but also my linen closet. We have ample shelving space in the laundry room and less than adequate shelving in our linen closet (which is a half closet), so a space will be made on the laundry room shelves for all linens excluding our nicest, fluffiest bath towels, all our face cloths and our bed sheets. The freed up space in our linen closet will now house jars of bath salts, our guest soap and towel basket and perhaps the surplus of shower gel that I have accumulated over the years. It's funny, I won't actually need to get rid of anything that's currently stored in the laundry room to make room for more on the shelves. I've merely stacked things in there in such a disorganized way over the past 2 years that by compressing and sorting I'll open up loads of room. I'm actually dividing the shelves into 6 areas: small, rarely used appliances (i.e. magic bullet, crockpot and George Foreman grill), Vases, bowls and other decorative vessels, Cleaning supplies and detergents, Linens, Overflow food storage, and Paper products. By putting everything in its place I ought to be able to make the room way more efficient and way tidier overall.
I did devote a chunk of time this evening to perusing the Ikea website for more organizational ideas for our house. The biggest ones I came up with were new wall lamps for over our bed to free up our bedside tables and some baskets for the laundry room project... until I remembered the adorable hanging pots that they have. I think they're actually classified as cutlery stands, however I intend to use them in many different applications. The cutest of these are the ASKER white ceramic pots ($6.99 for the pot and $4.99 for the hook) and the KROKEN mini galvanized metal pots ($3.99 for the pot and hook). I'm planning on getting three of the KROKEN pots for my bedroom and three for my kitchen - at very least. Oddly enough, the ones for my kitchen will actually be for organizing pens, coupons and general overflow from our mail caddy. The ones for my bedroom will be tasked with decluttering my bedside table so they'll hold mostly bobby pins, jewelry and coins. I may contrive to get a few more of these come spring to hold seed packets, garden gloves and my hand trowels as well as some for Gabe's room to hold things like coloring supplies and some select toys. Wall space is totally under-used in general and these little pots seem like a great way to take care of some ever-present and overlooked items in a space-saving way.
I've decided to start a file of dream home ideas for myself. It'll include articles and pictures from magazines with design and organizational ideas I really like. Martha Stewart, of course, will be the most dominant influence in my file, but a recent Style at Home magazine I got had a great little article on equestrian style and how to incorporate it into a neat entry way which I loved. Martha's article called Martha's 50 Top Kitchen Tips is full of great ideas if you ever have the good fortune to design your own kitchen (it was featured in her Sept. 2010 issue of Martha Stewart Living but can also be found on marthastewart.com) and the IKEA catalogue is always a great source of inspiration. By compiling things over the years I'll be able to have a pretty good idea of what I like and what ideas will be most useful. Hopefully, one day I'll be able to put some of those ideas to good use!
I had a bit of a pampering day today unexpectedly. Matt stayed home from work today seeing as he was still dizzy even just sitting up, so I left Gabe with him for a bit and went for a long overdue haircut. I've grown my hair out over the past couple of years and it was in desperate need of some layering. Now I won't be scared to wear my hair down in public! I then made a trip downtown to get some coffee for Matt (why buy cheap supermarket stuff that you have to choke down when you can buy freshly roasted Tanzanian beans from City Roast Coffee?) and picked up lunch for myself while I was there. I ordered it to go and while they were making it I popped around the corner to a tiny shop called Paper Crane that specializes in positive feelings and independant, hand-crafted products. They carry the Thymes line of fragrances and lotions (much more extensively and for a much longer time than Chapters ever has) and are my ever present supplier of Kimono Rose bath salts. If you have no idea what Kimono Rose smells like then go now to Paper Crane. Seriously, it is the most heavenly smell in the world. You know how everyone and their dog adores Love Spell by Victoria's Secret? Well Kimono Rose is a more elegant, less sweet, but just as universally attractive scent. Anyway, Thymes also makes a new Agave Nectar scent which is combined scents of Grapefruit, guava, lemon blossoms and, obviously, agave nectar. I bought a bottle of the bubble bath in this scent and had a bath with it already today. Mmmmmmm... So nice.
Well, I'd best get my brain winding down from all the organizational planning now or I'll be up all night!

Mrs. Vander Leek ;)