Showing posts with label Organising my home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Organising my home. Show all posts

Friday

Organising a Gift Wrapping Cart / Station


I like having a selection of wrapping paper and bags in our house ready for when I have to organize a gift for someone or my daughter or son need to wrap items when they are staying with us .

However for quite some time I've been complaining that I couldn't find the items I was sure I had already bought and I seemed to be wasting a lot of time searching around trying to remember where I had put them.

So when I saw a wooden kitchen cart for sale on Facebook marketplace and I knew it was a really good price I had the idea of creating a Gift wrapping Cart or Station as our American friends would call it.







I know I am not the only person who buys things in advance.

I know I am not the only person who puts them away somewhere which seems to be logical.

I know I am not the only person who hunts around frantically looking for the items I bought and put away in a logical place but now I can't find them.

Obviously I am not as organised as I would like to be or need to be.


So I really needed to organise my wrapping paper and gift bags

I had made a first attempt at getting everything together some months before I saw the kitchen cart advertised but it was not a great success.

The bags had been gathered up and put into this plastic 3 drawer container and it did hold many bags that were not too big







BUT

there were a few reasons why this was not a success

1.   There was a piece broken off at the bottom corner of one of the drawers and was quite rough so I had to remember not to grab the drawer at the corner.






2.   It was reasonably fine for holding bags which were not not large - I still need somewhere to put the really large bags I had.   (you know the bargains we buy when we see them)


3.   I do like to use gift bags as much as I can but the younger kids within the family tend to prefer paper wrapping on their presents so that they can tear it off as quickly and roughly as possible and the only way to keep paper in this set of drawers would be to have sheets folded up and although I do have sheets like this I do hate folds in the paper on presents.

    So Mostly I buy rolls of paper and they would just be too long to fit in the drawers so they were still in a green bag I had bought some years ago however each time I took out a roll even though I would put it back into the bag (eventually) I would often leave the bag down somewhere and then forget exactly where I had left it the next time I needed it.








4.   I also have tissue paper to use in the gift bags and it is always folded so it will in the drawers okay but when I hunt through a drawer for a suitable bag or paper or tissue I found that the tissue paper got rather messed about.





5.   Then I needed to keep gift tags somewhere plus sellotape and string and ribbon and bows and scissors.


6.    The main reason that I disliked my choice of the plastic drawers was not the actual drawers but the difficulty in moving the set of drawers as they were not on castors and the fact that castors could not be attached because of the style of the bottom of them and also that it was too low to do wrap anything on top of it.


So a sturdy wooden cart on castors with shelves 






and a rail







and a drawer

and has a top that could be used for wrapping

was looking great to me.







I am a great lover of baskets for storage and have in the past grabbed up some bargains when I have seen them so I knew I had baskets which could work with this cart.


I had 3 sets of these 3 baskets which were in 3 sizes.







I also had a lovely box which had come with Gin Sing as a gift from our in-laws in South Korea and it could be put to use with the cart too.







So how would I go about using the box & baskets?


Would I put a basket on each of the 3 shelves?







Would I put 2 baskets and the box on the shelves?







It would really depend on what was in the baskets and how they would fit into the shelves once they had the contents filling them.


So what I had would have to be sorted into types and sizes starting with the gift bags.


A lot of my gift bags were of the same size and I started to place them in the largest of my baskets






but there were many others as well






so they had to be grouped into 2 lots to be put in the other two smaller baskets.



Then the papers





and the tissue papers






Because of the more flimsy nature of the paper and especially the tissue paper I decided they should probably be all in the Box and I knew they would all fit well in there.





The box was able to sit on the top of the cart or it could go on the top shelf so a choice had to be made about that.

But before that I had that other paper to cope with - the rolls of paper but I knew exactly how I was going to store them and yes it was on the cart okay.

In fact those rolls were one of the reasons I was really drawn to using that cart because I knew they could sit upright resting on on of the shelves and held on by the side rail or handle.







So that after they were put on the cart I had to decide about the final placing of the box and the baskets.

Would it be box on top with baskets on the shelves




except that the top shelf would not hold the basket due to height so I had to take the gift bags out and lay them flat on the shelf.


Or

Would it be box on the top shelf with largest basket on the top and other two baskets on the bottom 2 shelves?






However 2 things were left to finish off

1.  How would the drawer be used?

2.  What about the really large bags I also had that never fit into anything?


Well

The drawer will hold all the gift tags, scissors, sellotape, pens etc. that we also need to have a fully working wrapping cart / station but at the moment I do need to go out and buy some more gift tags or make some as I only have about 2 left.

and as for the very large bags this picture of the finished project will explain about them










Now if anyone has any ideas what I could use the long ties (see pic below) that came around the sets of baskets for I would be grateful for your suggestions just let me know in the comments because I hate to not use something and hate to throw something out when it might be useful later.














Monday

Top 10 things I Do Each Day to NOT Keep a Tidy Home


Notice I DID write NOT keep a TIDY Home

AND

This was not a mistake





So here are my very simple honest


 Top 10 Things I Do Each Day to NOT Keep a Tidy House 


1.     Set my alarm and then repeatedly hit snooze


2.     Open the Post and throw it on the table


3.     Go right from breakfast to the computer before filling the dishwasher


4.     Do not read my Todo list until the afternoon


5.     Go through Social Media before lunch


6.     Set my timer, ignore and then set it again








7.     Last thing at night - say I'm going to turn off the lamp and clear the living room - then an hour later......


8.     Say to myself - I can fit some more paper in that waste paper bin in my study but no it overflows on to the floor instead.


9.     Go to check the washings in the Utility room but get waylaid by the draw of a cup of coffee and then forget what I was going to do and end up back at the computer with my coffee mug.


10.    Any other form of procrastination I can think of at any time of the day.



Why don't I keep my home tidy?


I know I sort of filed this in my mind as part of  Coffee & Conversation  because it is one of my short chatty posts but perhaps it actually falls under the category of  Home Organising as illustrated above because let's face it there wasn't actually any housework was there!







Or perhaps it truly belongs under the category of 10 Things because I like numbers






You can choose for yourself where you think it belongs.










Friday

The Best thing for Bare Walls - Organising My Home


Disclaimer:
I did / will not benefit in any way from this post

No matter where we have lived "Bare Walls" have always been a bit of a problem for me.







Fred & I have lived in several houses during our 40 year marriage and we have never been the type of people to immediately decorate any of them and get those family pictures or any pictures up on the walls simply because I (yes I do take the blame for this) can never make up my mind exactly what I want and where I want it.

Sometimes like in this house I have had little ideas each year but haven't even put all of those into effect until months or years later, if at all.  Of course it doesn't help that when you have been married for so long and lived in different countries or even just different houses, you have ended up with loads of items that you can use to decorate your home.

Through the 7 years in our present home I have taken different times to declutter my boxes of ornaments and other decor and have not missed having them around the home but have also gained a few things which I really wanted to have up on display (one of which you will see below).






This is a beautiful wall hanging given to us as a gift from the Korean parents of our son-in-law Pildu (Stephen). 

As soon as I saw it I thought about where would be just the right place to put it and could not make up my mind.  One spot in my hall was a bit too narrow to house it and another was far too wide for it.

Then just before Christmas when we were making up the bed in the guest room for Linda and Stephen to come home for their first Christmas with us I realised the perfect place to hang the gift was in the guest room.

The only other thing up on any of the walls was a large painting over the head of the bed.






So with a large painting on one wall,  two windows which take up most of another wall and a third wall completely covered with built in wardrobes that just left the wall opposite the window which has the door to the hall at one end and the door into the ensuite at the other end leaving just a nice size of wall in between to be perfect for the new wall hanging.


It was a brick wall.

My husband has drills and bits and plugs and always used them to put things up but this was so lightweight that he didn't feel like getting out the drill and having a large hook or nail up so he grabbed his new gadget called the Takker and we set to work which took so little time and effort.

I of course said "hold on I need to get my phone" at one stage, not because I heard it ringing or wanted to make a call but he knew immediately I wanted to take pictures for the blog.

Not only did I take pictures but I took some very short videos as well.

There are two types of Takker.       
UPDATE Or Instanhang as it has now been renamed.


One drills a small hole and the other doesn't - I'll write another blog post sometime about how we have used it as well.


The one we needed for this job was the one that drills a hole but it's not a large drill and it doesn't plug in or work by battery.






You do it by hand and it is so easy.






The instructions are clearly printed and illustrated on one sheet of paper for ease of use.






On the centre of the flat edge you can see the drill bit neatly inside, 
not protruding to catch on anything.


After marking the place for your hook or "Tack" to go to hold your object you simply line up this centre drill section with the mark and drill by hand - see the video below





When the hole is drilled, the "Tack" needs to be inserted and the red part along the curved handle is the hiding place for the Takker Tacks






Just pull the red part open and you can easily lift out the tack.










The Tack is placed into the round hole on the side of the Takker.






Then you can see in the video just how easy it is to insert into the wall





Now when I first saw the Takker and asked my husband what he thought of it he was quite interested but then said "Probably a hassle to get more tacks for it."

To which we quickly saw that quite a few tacks came with it and also some other larger hooks to fit over the tacks to hang other things.

Then also more Tacks can be bought in separate packs.

So far we have only used tacks for each thing we have hung up but I'm sure we will use the other hooks later.






So I put all of the tacks and hooks from both Takkers into a plastic storage box which is about the same size as the Takker Drill and now everything can be easily stored together in a small crate.


Also in the box you can see part of the other Takker  which is used instead of hammering a nail into your wall for small and light pictures etc.








This should mean as well as being easy to use it is easy to bring out and put away so that we do not put off the jobs we can now do more quickly & easily.








Now back to the Korean Wall Hanging.

It is very light and easily hangs on the one tack which you can hardly see in the picture below under the ribbon.




This means that it is hardly noticeable on the wall of the Guest Room and just leaves the beautiful hanging to be admired.







Having bought the Takker a few months before Christmas we realised we had now had the idea for a great, useful and appropriate gift for our second son who moved into a new house a few months previously.  So although we may have had a strange look from him when he opened his gift on Christmas Day because he had no idea what we had bought him; now has made good use of it in his home too.


You can also see how I have recommended the Takkers in my post
  10 Gift Ideas for the Men in your Life











Disclaimer:
I did / will not benefit in any way from this post