Project Simplify: Hot Spot #5

For the last week of Project Simplify, participants were free to choose our own hot spots. I chose three small spots: our toiletry stockpile, our medicine storage, and a stretch of kitchen counter which serves as our home’s main clutter magnet.

I started with our toiletry stockpile. Previously, stockpiled toiletries were messily housed in two separate bathroom cabinets:

I found a cardboard box in our utility room, cut off the flaps, and placed all the toiletries inside:

The toiletry box found the perfect home atop a shelf in the utility room. I didn’t photograph the bathroom cabinets after I removed all of the excess toiletries, because there wasn’t much left to organize in them–just some lotion, baby wipes, and other things we use every day. We do have other bathroom cabinets for storage, but they were already organized, so I didn’t bother with them.

Next I looked at our medicine storage, where all of this junk was shoved onto a top shelf of a kitchen cabinet:

Whenever I tried to get something down, I ended up knocking medicine droppers and boxes down on my head. So I went to Target and picked up this snap organizer for only $4 after using a coupon:

I organized the three inner compartments by category: adult medications, child medications, and pet medications/supplies:

Now our medicine is stored neatly in an easy-to-pull-down container, with a little tin of band-aids nearby:

And the last spot I tackled was our kitchen counter, which is where we drop any and all items that we need to bring into the bedrooms, recycle, hang up, or deal with in general. It often looks like this, and usually looks worse:

But we’ve been making an effort to keep it looking more like this, though there’s frequently a book or cell phone resting here anyway:

Much as I enjoyed Project Simplify, I’m a little glad it’s over. That was a lot of work!