Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on January 28, 2013

My boyfriend and I live in a 2-bedroom apartment and those of you who live in small apartments know that storage is at a premium. We are lucky enough to have an extra bedroom to help out with storage. The only problem with having a second bedroom is that it does become basically that- another storage room.

We were having trouble with putting the room together after the move and up until the other week, it had been filled with boxes of things we hadn’t unpacked yet and random furniture we hadn’t been able to find a place for. We finally came up with a plan for the room and it started to come together. Once again, our second bedroom became the guest bedroom –slash- office-slash- craft room. The only problem is that because the room fills all of those functions, I need a different type of storage for my crafts so that I can I take out what I need when I need it.

This is what the craft closet looked like before:

Extra Closet Before Project

Total chaos. It was so hard to fine anything, which is not really conducive to creativity.

Storage Project

So what do you need? I bought a bunch of 16 and 6-quart Sterlite storage boxes from Target (they were the cheapest here: only $2.60 and $1.00 respectively) and a label maker from Amazon. You don’t really need a label maker to do this project- you can easily print out labels from your computer, cut them out, and put them on the box with clear mailing tape. Then, organize everything into all its own boxes and create labels.

New Closet Organization

You can box together whatever makes sense for you, but I had a box for: stationary, cookie cutters, fabric, ribbons and strings, sewing, paper cutters, paper, sprinkles and baking cups, and labels and markers.

Closet and Craft Organization After

Ta Da! I love the results- It is so much easier to find everything. Also, we finally got a tool box to fit both of our tools we have collected over the years. There are two file boxes on the floor for both of our files. I left them out in the open like that so we can put away important paperwork more easily and stay ahead of the piles of paper that build up so easily.

Closet Organization for Crafts

The games pretty much stayed the same, but I put the small games in a box together and it made them look neater.

My Favorite Label

This is my favorite storage label because I figured out how to use the icon on my label maker! A cupcake icon for the baking cups and sprinkles. Mmmm …makes me both happy and hungry for a cupcake! Yay for organization!!!

What projects have you been working on in the New Year?

sisterk (2)

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on July 26, 2012

I wanted to follow-up on my Ikea Kitchen Tour post and show you how I used the Ikea Expedit bookshelves in our playroom. I originally wanted to build some type of built-in bookshelves in our playroom, but after finding a few ideas on Pinterest and other blogs, I realized the Ikea Expedit bookshelves would do the trick (and would be much more budget-friendly!)

I did a little measuring in the playroom and determined that three of the 2 shelves by 4 shelves Expedit bookshelf would be perfect for the space. I wanted to include some baskets in the space because so many of my son’s toys come with so many parts (train sets, blocks, Duplos, etc.) I loved how the PJÄS baskets fit perfectly in the Expedit shelves. I originally bought 4 of the baskets, but I bought 8 more when I went back last week because I liked how they looked so much.

Without any further ado, here’s our Ikea Expedit playroom reveal:

Also, here’s a close-up of the Kritter table and chair that we bought at Ikea a few months ago:

Have you used the Ikea Expedit bookshelves in your home?

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on February 27, 2012

Yesterday, I was sitting down to write a post about my weekly menu and the process I go through every week. I looked at 2 Sisters 2 Cities and noticed M had the same exact post! Wow, are we sisters or what!

My weeks tend to be really busy with work, my commute, and going to the gym. I am also quite the stickler of getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night, meaning I have even less time to make dinner, clean up and relax before I need to hit the sack and start again the next day. Since the beginning of this year I have been trying to cook healthier and more often. To be able to do this I need to plan ahead.

All week I keep track of recipes I think I would like to make for the following week and keep them in a note on my iPhone. On Saturday morning I plan out the menu for the whole week and make my grocery list. I use Ziplist to make my list and am able to pull it up on my phone while I am at the grocery store. I am in love with this app and website because it makes grocery shopping so much easier and I hardly ever forget an item. The website can also pull a list of ingredients from a recipe online and add them to your list.

Here is an example of how Ziplist pulls the ingredients from a recipe. I used a recipe for Salted Caramel Chocolate Cupcakes from Annie’s Eats, as an example of how Ziplist works. This isn’t necessarily something I make for dinner, but I had this recipe up on my browser and they look soooo good. I am totally making these for my birthday… in July. After clicking on my Ziplist Recipe Clipper button of my favorite bar, the website pulls up this dialog box and you can then add them to you shopping list. Ziplist gives you specific directions on how to add the Recipe Clipper to your favorites bar.

As I had told you before, for Valentine’s Day this year, the boyfriend got me a bunch of items from Martha Stewart’s office line at Staples that I wanted. One of the items that I picked out was a weekly calendar dry erase board that clings onto the refrigerator for menu planning. I have been using this since to write out the menu for the week. It is a helpful reminder for both of us to see what dinner is going to be that night and gives us something to look forward to. Sometime I even send out an e-mail reminder of the weekly meals to his work email. May sound silly but who got flowers today for no particular reason?? Oh yeah… ME!

My menu for the week:
Sunday
LUNCH- French Onion Soup (I will post this later this week)
DINNER-Rotisserie Chicken, Steamed Green Beans, and Roasted Potatoes
Monday
DINNER- Ziti with Turkey Sausage (Posting this later this week)
Tuesday
DINNER- Stir-Fried Honey-Ginger Chicken with Peppers
Wednesday
DINNER- Chicken and Broccoli Noodle Casserole
Thursday
DINNER- Linguine with Clam Sauce
Friday
DINNER- Panera Bread (this is our Friday Tradition after the gym- I get the Pick 2 Greek Salad and Broccoli Cheddar Soup which is 10 PointsPlus Weight watchers Points)

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on February 26, 2012

It’s a quiet Sunday morning and Baby T has decided to take his morning nap on the early side today (maybe since he woke up so darn early this morning!) I’ve been using the time to clean up some household paperwork and plan our meals and grocery list for the week. While I was starting to file away all the recipes I had clipped out of magazines or had printed, I came up with all our meals for the week.

Last week, I found a free printable menu planner and grocery list at mommy trackd. I’m all about these adorable printable lists lately! My week is looking very organized with this printable, although I’m sure baby boy will tear this list to shreds as we are grocery shopping.

Our menu for the week starting Monday, February 27th:

Monday: Cod Al Forno with Roasted Tomatoes
Tuesday: Broccoli-Cheddar Soup with Toasted Bread
Wednesday: Go out for my birthday! Leap day only comes along once every 4 years, so I need to celebrate 4 times as much :)
Thursday: Slow Cooker White Chili
Friday: Cashew Chicken Stir-Fry
Saturday: Spaghetti and Meatballs
Sunday: Chicken Tikka Masala

What’s on your menu plan for the week? Can you believe we are heading into March this week? Time to get in all those winter comfort foods before spring arrives!

-m

This post is linked at:

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on February 23, 2012

Even though it’s not quite spring in the Boston area, I’m definitely starting to get spring fever. While I was at Target yesterday, I decided to restock some of my favorite cleaning supplies and make another cleaning caddy so I have one on each floor of our house. (I have so become my mother!)

Here are some of the essentials I put in a cleaning caddy:

Products for Cleaning Caddy (going clockwise, starting from the left):

-Sprayway Glass Cleaner- I recently switched to this product from regular Windex and I love it!
-Scrubbing Bubbles- For deep-cleaning bathrooms
-Clorox Disinfecting Wipes- For general use all over the house
-Method Wood for Good Wood Surface Cleaner- I love the almond scent
-Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner
-All Purpose Cleaning Spray- Seventh Generation shown in the picture
-Micro-fiber cleaning cloths, rags, and cleaning gloves
-Scrub Brush- Great for cleaning bath tubs and showers
-Scotch-Brite heavy duty sponge
-Feather Duster- Great for hard to reach spaces
-Magic Erasers- Target up & up brand shown in picture, but I sometimes use Mr. Clean Magic Erasers as well for getting spots off walls

My new cleaning caddy ready to go:

Here are a few of some other cleaning products that I keep around the house:

Other Household Cleaning Products:

-Method Squirt + Mop Wood Floor Cleaner- again, I love the almond scent!
-Homemade Cleaner- Solution of white vinegar, dish soap, and water…great for cutting through grease and all purpose cleaning
-Method Antibac Kitchen Cleaner- This is probably the top cleaner we go through in our house…love the scents that it’s available in- lemon verbena and orange zest. Claims to kill 99.9% of household germs
-Woolite Oxy Deep Carpet Cleaner- This cleaner has taken red wine spills out of carpet many times in our house!

I am personally a huge fan of to-do lists. I love being able to check off things as I accomplish them (even if it’s a simple task to complete!) There are some great free printable lists out there to help you stay on top of cleaning. I love this one from evelyn kate designs (visit her site by clicking on the picture below and download the list from there):

If you need more cleaning motivation, check out some of these cleaning & organizing blogs:

What are some of your favorite cleaning products?

-m

This post is linked at:

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on February 8, 2012

Physical Storage of Recipes

While I often pick out recipes from cookbooks I own, I also love to peruse magazines and blogs to get inspiration for meals. After years of tearing out magazine pages and printing out recipes from on-line, I was left with mounds of paper. I rarely ever made a recipe from the pile since it was such a pain to find the piece of paper it was on. I finally got my act together a few months ago and organized all the recipes into two large binders.

This involved a few steps to get to this point:
-I went through all the recipes and threw out ones that I changed my mind about keeping
-I trimmed away all the excess paper around each recipe (for example, if I had tore out a page from a magazine with four recipes listed, I cut out only the one recipe I was interested in)
-I sorted each recipe into a category. The full list of categories I used are: Veggie Sides, Starch Sides, Chicken, Beef, Grilling, Pork, Lamb, Seafood/Fish, Italian, Indian, Mexican, Asian, Pizza, Chili, Cajun/Creole, Sandwiches, Appetizers, Drinks, Salads, Soups, Breakfast, Smoothies, Bread, Desserts, Cookies, Thanksgiving, and Cooking Classes.
-I purchased several large binders, plastic binder sleeves, and binder dividers.
-Using double-sided tape, I taped each recipe onto a blank sheet of 8.5×11″paper. I tried to fit as many recipes onto each piece of paper without overlapping the recipes.
-I put each sheet into a plastic sleeve, made a tab for each category, and filed it in a binder.

Before:

After:

Virtual Storage of Recipes

I recently received an invitation to try an online storage website called MyReci:

It has a concept pretty similar to Pinterest, but it solely focuses on recipes. After installing the MyReci bookmarklet, you can save any recipe you find on the internet to your virtual recipe box. You can then organize your recipe box into cookbooks (for example, a cookbook that just focuses on desserts.) Another cool features is that you also have the ability to edit any recipe you add to your recipe box.

After playing around with MyReci for awhile, I found it to be a very helpful recipe storage tool. I will probably still end up printing out any recipe before I attempt to make it as I like to have a physical copy of the recipe I am reading. (For me, using the laptop while cooking is just a disaster waiting to happen!) However, this would be a great tool to use to collect recipes when you are perusing the web.

One limitation I found was that it did not recognize blog recipes very well. I tried to save recipes from several different blogs, and each time I had to type in the name of the recipe. When I went back to my recipe box, it only provided a link back to the recipe. It did however work great with the large recipe sites such as foodnetwork.com, epicurious.com, allrecipes.com, etc. This would be a great tool to use if you had multiple accounts across these websites and wanted to aggregate all your recipes into one place online.

How do you keep your recipes organized? Do you prefer a soft or hard copy of all your recipes?

-m

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on January 12, 2012

It’s been our first full week back since Hawaii so now that we are unpacked and no longer jet-lagged, I have been trying to focus on doing a little bit of organizing each day.

This week I tackled my junk drawer. When we first moved to our new house in October, Husband M and I each picked a kitchen drawer that would be ours for personal items (a huge luxury since our city condo definitely did not have enough storage space for this!) I had just been throwing random items in it up until this week, but I finally sorted it down to the items that I would need every week and put all the other miscellaneous items away where they belonged. I also repurposed a Crate & Barrel drawer tray to hold all the items. Behold, my new junk drawer:

While I was shopping at Target today, I stumbled across some super cute items from the brand Greenroom. I found this adorable binder for a little over $7:

In my resolutions post, I said I was going to re-use my old gray college internship binder to hold our important household papers, but how cute is this one?!? I decided it would be worth the splurge since I have been using the binder on an almost daily basis lately. There were a few other really great designs and I it was really difficult trying to pick just one (baby T was ready to jump out of the shopping cart I was taking so long!)

In this month’s Better Home and Gardens, there was an article about organizing all the papers that start to pile up every week. They recommended setting up a filing system with three sections: Do Now, Do Later, and Pending. I loved the file folders they used in their picture and here they are!

For 2012, I am also attempting to ditch the paper planner and do all my scheduling on my Apple i-Cal (using the new iCloud on my Mac and iPhone.) However, there are always instances where I need to jot something down on paper quickly. I found this little notepad for a little under $3:

Wow, these items definitely excite me way too much. I’m such a sucker for office supplies:

What organizing tips and products do you recommend for the new year?

-m