Conley and Friends: My Little Helper

Conley is such a good little helper - he is such a busy body and loves moving things around and putting things away. He is especially helpful with putting away groceries, paper towels and toilet paper, diapers into his drawer, empty boxes in the garage for recycling and especially throwing away trash (unfortunately not everything is actually trash). The other day we finally took all the ornaments off the tree and he put every ornament into the bin for me and was very proud of his work afterwards. Based on this, I knew he could be quite a help with my January Cure projects as well, which he did today! :)

Taking a much-needed break from all the hard work
in his new favorite reading nook - dad's still packed
suitcase from New Year's

Day 5: It's Time to Commit
Today's task was to decide on a project from the big list to commit to finishing this month. Even though I remember from last year that a complete kitchen cleaning is likely one of the upcoming weekend chores, I decided to pick that as my big project for the month. I know from last year that there is no way I can do my entire kitchen in a weekend, so this gives me a few extra workdays to successfully complete it. Also, I've expanded it a bit to include coming up with some sort of organization system to corral all the inevitable junk that ends up in our many junk drawers along with the various utensil and dish towel drawers. I see a trip to Container Store in my future. I also want to purge a lot of my older (and food encrusted) bamboo utensils along with older baking supplies, dishes, glasses and so on. I really loved this photo from today's post and I dream of one day having a dish collection this colorful (just maybe not quite so big.) I already have some cute pieces (mostly from Anthropologie of course), so I've decided that while I want to keep my kitchen collection to a minimum, the pieces I do buy in the future are going to be along the lines of the cute and colorful. Anthro's end of season sales are a great time to pick these pieces up, as I did after Christmas this past year. So one day I'll have a mini version of this photo.

Love these colorful dishes l Apartment Therapy

This is actually not that bad - need to purge some of
Conley's stuff, but I like most of my existing dishes
in this cabinet

Love the colorful mugs - and that top shelf has space
for more!

Do a clean out and replace some of the boring utensils with fun colorful ones

Needs a purge of those gross bamboo utensils and some
dividers

Not too bad, but some organization needed

Way too many dish towels in here - can barely close it!

Day 6: Making Your Home Your Own: Prep Artwork for Framing and Display
Sadly, this was another major fail on my part from last year. We are supposed to pick one piece of artwork to frame and hang on the 28th - so in the meantime, work on getting any supplies needed to frame it ourselves or drop it off to be framed.

Last year I picked a print that I had bought in Amsterdam on a work trip way back in 2006. I love the teal color, the book-ish vibe and that it reminds me of my one day exploring Amsterdam and the cute little shop that I found it in. It's not a standard size (of course!) so I had purchased a frame for it and then was just going to do a quick DIY matte job with white poster board because it really only needed to be expanded by less than an inch on all sides. I bought the poster board but that's where it ended last year. The print, frame and poster board are still sitting on the window seat in the guest room in the endless stack of unhung prints and frames that never seems to go away, So not only did I decide that this was the year, as soon as I read the post I went and framed the print and it took all of 3 minutes to do it! How did I not do this last year? I still need to attach some hardware to hang it - seems like I have misplaced it in the last year - but that print will be hung on the 28th!

Since I was feeling ambitious after finishing the matte job, I decided to commit to a second print as well - the canvas collage of photos from our Italy trip. This requires no work as it is already framed and ready to go, just need to figure out where it will go.

I was on a roll from those two small tasks, so this afternoon Conley and I decided to get going on our big project and clean out the number one junk drawer in the kitchen. Conley was oh-so-helpful with removing things from the drawer and making trash runs and I divided things into different piles: trash, recycling, medical stuff to be scanned and shredded, memory box items, and then a few things to keep in the drawer that I like to have easy access to. It's so nice and clean now, but I do think I need to find some sort of organization system to keep it from getting out of hand again and to keep things seperated. Fo now I've got a few different types of items in there, not all of them should be there permanently though: coupons, gift cards, art stuff for Conley, note pads, checkbook, user manuals, recent pictures that I printed out, my "pregnancy folder" from the doctor's office, extra sunglasses and then a few other odds and ends. I think the hard part is done, but I'm not quite finished yet. Think we will take our first of many trips to Container Store tomorrow!