The Obligatory Pinterest Post

A crazy thing happened over the weekend. I gained over 1000k followers on Pinterest.

That seems like a lot for this little dog and pony show. I must have an eye for pretty, shiny, things.

So far the top 3 most repinned pins of mine are:

 

source

 

source

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The top three most pinned pins from The Good Wife are:

 Cowboy Sushi

 Cleaning Schedules as part of the Brains of the Operation series

My Weekly Organization Challenges

So to celebrate, I am giving one lucky person any ONE printable in my Brains of the Operation, aka Household Binder series. I will even personalize it for you!

Choose from any of the ones found here!

How to score the complete customized Brains of the Operation Binder
Leave me a comment below for each entry to be counted. This is mandatory. Include your email address somewhere in your comment.

Score more entries
~Become a follower of the blog and post telling me

~Subscribe to the blog via email

~Follow me on Pinterest and pin this post.
 

~Follow me on Twitter and tweet this. Tweet: "Customized Household Binder Printable Giveaway from @thegoodwifeblog bit.ly/WO4ipM" Leave a comment with a link to your status.

~Like me on Facebook, The Good Wife Blog. Leave me a comment telling me you did.

~Post about this giveaway on your blog or elsewhere. Leave a comment with a link.

Good Luck!

The giveaway ends Friday, December 14 at Midnight Central. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on the blog on Monday, December 17. I will contact the winner via email and they will have 24 hours to respond. If they fail to respond, a new winner will be chosen.

If I do not have an email address for you, you cannot win.

This giveaway is sponsored by The Good Wife.  

Let's pretend this never happened. 

Week 37 of the Weekly Organization Challenge

This is week 37 of The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenge! This week focused on mail.

I talked about what we do with our mail when I showed you our Family Mail Station. I got the mail holder at Jeffery Allens a while back. 

I like to have the mail station in the dining room, since it is the first place we come into after coming home and getting the mail. I put incoming mail in the top - bills on the right, statements on the left. I put the outgoing mail, along with some stamps on the bottom.

Having the mail station in a central location allows me to do several things - I can easily sort the mail into bills, statements and junk. Like I said, I put the bills and the statements in the mail station. I recycle the junk in the recycle bin in our pantry. Having our Command Center next to the mail, allows me to add anything to our schedule - like dentist appointments and activities - when I get a notice for it. Having an outgoing mail spot allows for The Good Husband to throw his shit in there and know I will take it to the mailbox when I take The Good Daughter to daycare in the morning.

What do I do with all the bills and the paper work?

Week 38 will cover bill paying with Week 39 covering receipts/tax documents and Week 40 covering my filing system.

Organize along with me in The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenges

Holiday Farmer's Market

I love the idea of the Holiday Farmer's Market. You are supposed to go the Saturday before Thanksgiving and get all your shit for Thanksgiving dinner. Except nothing I ever buy makes it that long.

Pictured is the second bunch of carrots I bought, b/c The Good Daughter ate the first bunch in the car on the way home. No way will what I buy make it to Thursday.

But I still love going.

This year I bought carrots, beer, brats, broccoli, beef sticks, soap and cheese.

TGD also made a turkey. We enjoyed apple cider and turnovers while The Good Son slept and TGD colored her paper plate turkey. I got to talk to our CSA farmer's again and scored free samples of beer and cheese. I think both times they gave me extra out of pity for dealing with two, at that point, screaming kids.

The cheese stand was new this year, as was the bread stand where we got our turnovers. The cheese I bought is a Camembert style goat cheese that I ate with a spoon when I got home. I learned they are part of a cheese CSA that also offers bread made by the same baker at the HFM. I am trying to convince The Good Husband it is worth a weekly hour drive to get bread and cheese.

There should be one more farmer's market before the end of the year and I will stock up on the bread and cheese and beer then to carry me through the winter.

Antipasti

This year we had Italian for Thanksgiving. I don't remember what we had last year. 

 Since we are broke this year and cereal isn't acceptable for Thanksgiving fare, we had pasta and salad. 

But before we could stuff ourselves on salad and bread and noodles, I put out this antipasti tray.

Like any good Midwestern girl, I love me some meat and cheese trays. But instead of cheddar cheese cubes and summer sausage, I put out fine Italian meats and cheese. 

I had prosciutto, coppa and salami, marinated mozzarella, green and black olives, grapes, crackers, bread sticks and goat cheese covered in fresh, chopped parsley. 

Yum!!

Dresser Organization - Kid Edition

I talked about how I organize The Good Son's room here. So far the room is sparse but functional. I mentioned that this time around I actually had something that doubled as a changing table. With The Good Daughter, I just changed her on the floor but I am too old for that shit now.

So I knew as soon as I got pregnant, after the "OH HOLY FUCK!! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!" shock wore off, I needed something for storage. Since I had been watching too many episodes of Mad Men, I also knew I wanted something mid century style.

But thanks to Mad Men, anyone listing something they knew as mid century on craigslist also knew they could up the price. I searched for months and months trying to find something that was wide enough to fit a changing pad and tall enough to not break my back and cheap enough to not drain the bank account.

The trick was to find something listed as retro, vintage, or old since the seller probably didn't know what they had. I found this dresser for $40 from a girl that was moving out of town and didn't want to move it. We did have to drive 50 minutes to get it, but I think it was worth it.

It has so much storage and is super cute.

Since it doubles as a changing pad, I like to keep all of the diaper stuff within reach, in the first row of drawers.

Diapers, wipes and covers

More diapers

The top drawer also had this super cool divider. I use it to organize spit up rags, socks and shoes, hats, bibs and mittens.

The next row of drawers contains all the clothes for TGS.

Starting from the left and working to the right, I have the clothes organized by size.

9-12 months

6-9 and 3-6

0-3

And so I and The Good Husband can tell what from what, I labeled everything. So TGH knows where the jammies are vs. the onsies.

The bottom drawers contain the things we don't use all that often.

Extra sheets and mattress pads

Receiving blankets and towels

Diapers for when he is bigger

When TDS is out of prefolds and covers in the next month or so, that will leave me an entire drawer to fill with the clothes I know he will get at Christmas. Meanwhile, the old clothes get washed, folded and packed away.

Week 36 of the Weekly Organization Challenge

This is week 36 of The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenge! This week focused on home office.

I work from home so I need a dedicated area where I can work - not just a computer in the corner of the living room. We decided to turn a room in our unfinished basement into my home office. 

That is what we started with.

 

And this is how it looks now.

It's still a little bare bones right now b.c we are in debt payoff mode and there are more pressing things that need to be done before I can decorate my office. Plus The Good Son gets to stay at home with me while I work, so his shit is taking up some space down there.

The closet only has some functionality, since it houses the water heater and the furnace. 

 

I would love to get more storage down here - shelves and another bookcase and table, but I haven't found anything that I love love love, so it remains bare. 

Meanwhile, I am pinning things I like for inspiration.

 

Organize along with me in The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenges

Week 35 of the Weekly Organization Challenge

This is week 35 of The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenge! This week focused on kids' games.

Since The Good Daughter has her own room, she keeps all her toys in there and out of the living room, like we had in the past. But I don't keep any of her games in her room.

One, I don't want her getting into them when I am not in her room and everything gets lost or messed up. Two, I love family game night and it is easier to have the games in a common area so we can get them out and actually play with them.

So the games live in our entertainment center.

Right now we have a good mix of adult and kid games.

We also have games that The Good Husband loves (Up Words, Chess, Checkers, Scrabble) which I hate and games that I love (everything else). Right now, TGD can play Candy Land and Operation. Everything else will just have to wait.

Since I couldn't fit all the games into one cabinet, this side doubles as game storage and DVD storage, mainly box sets. I have some card games in here as well as other kid games.

See that game Pictureka! in there? It is one of the best games I have ever played. I love it to death and play with anyone, anytime. I highly, highly recommend it. Everyone from my 88 year old grandma to my 6 year old niece loves it and we all have an amazing time.

This post rounds out kids' bedroom organization. I have highlighted how I like to group like toys, separate clothes by size and keep games in common areas to facilitate family game night.

Organize along with me in The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenges

Week 34 of the Weekly Organization Challenge

This is week 34 of The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenge! This week focused on the kids' closet. 

I will admit that I haven't done much organizing of the kids' closets. The Good Daughter has too much shit and The Good Son has almost none at all. So I started with his closet and will hopefully continue on to TGD's soon.

TGS mostly has clothes in his closet and not a lot of much else. Other than boxes I still haven't unpacked from when we moved into the house four years ago.

But organizing his clothes can be a pain, since little babies have so many different sizes of clothes in the beginning.
 

So, one way I like to keep them organized is by making clothes labels. This way I can divide the clothes by size and once he is out of the smallest size, store or sell them.

I have labels until to size 2T. By then I figured he would have mostly all the same size in his closet at once.

To make the labels, I just used old CD labels I had around the house. You know, from back in the day before MP3 players. I made a simple design for each one, printed them out and then stuck them on some cardboard. I cut a slit on the left side so the label would fit on the bar and then organized the clothes until my heart was happy.

Organize along with me in The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenges

Week 33 of the Weekly Organization Challenge

This is week 33 of The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenge! This week focused on kids' books. 

I love to read. I was reading Steven King novels in 6th grade. I blame The Stand on my zombie/survival/end of civilization obsession. It was very important for me to show my love of books to The Good Daughter. At Christmas and on her birthday we ask that everyone get her books or clothes. I tend to buy her just books. 

So she has a lot. And we keep them in her room so she can read them whenever she wants and I am able to read them to her each night before bed. 

There are two ways that I organize her books.

The super anal retentive way {by far my favorite} by placing them on the shelf in order of height. 

And the group by colors.

While I prefer the almost OCD organization practice of sorting by size, I don't want that to rub off on TGD. So I let her hand me all the books at the end of the night and I put them on the shelf in the right order. However, she can group her books together by color, so I found that at the end of the night, both of us can help clean her room and feel good about it.

Now if only I didn't have to sing that damn clean up song every fucking time.

Organize along with me in The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenges