20 Days to Organise & Clean your home Challenge – Day 1

Today is Day 1 of Katrina at The Organised Housewife's 20 Days to Organise & Clean your home Challenge. If you haven't already signed up, it's not too late to start! Just follow this link to subscribe.

Today's focus area is the kitchen and below are some photos of my attempts at the challenges set for today!

CLEAN the kitchen & DE-CLUTTER the bench tops

I relocated everything that didn't belong on the bench tops over to the dining table for sorting. The only items that were allowed to remain on the bench tops where things that I used every day like the coffee machine, knives, toaster, wooden spoons etc. The one exception was my cook book stand which is currently holding Donna Hay's Simple Dinners as I think it just looks good!

I sorted and found homes for or threw away everything on the dining room table. I then wiped down all the bench tops, wiped over the appliances and scrubbed the sink. It probably took me about an hour in total, spread over the day while wrangling Master two-and-a-bit and Master almost-one.

ORGANISE under the kitchen sink

After seeing all the little baskets Katrina uses for organising her cupboard under the sink, I popped into the local discount store this morning while out grocery shopping and picked up a few myself. I also replaced our small dish rack with a bigger one. I again relocated everything to the dining table for sorting. I threw some things away and found new homes for other things as I wanted to have a dedicated space to store my dish rack when not in use as it has the tendency to become a dumping ground if left on the sink permanently.

DEVELOP A NEW HABIT: clear bench tops and clean dishes before relaxing for the evening. 

CHECK! I now love walking into my kitchen and looking at the clear bench tops free of clutter! Now, I just have to keep it that way :)

SPEND 5 MINUTES ONLY on tidying a bookshelf

CHECK! Hubbie and I both really enjoy reading books and have accumulated A LOT of books over the years. I now have a Kindle but hubbie still likes the feel of a good book so our collection is still growing, but now only by half as much! We have a large wooden book case in our hallway which I tidied up not that long ago so for this challenge rather than spend 5 minutes on one shelf, I just set the timer to see how much of the whole book case I could tidy in 5 minutes! ... Well, I was able to tidy and dust 5 out of the 6 shelves and the 6th shelf has been put on my to-do list for follow-up tasks that I don't manage to complete during each challenge day.

The Day 2 email has arrived and tomorrow's focus area is the main bedroom. Eeeeek! This is probably the biggest clutter zone in our house at the moment so tomorrow is going to be a big day! Wish me luck!

Mel xx