Making a kitchen handbook - Part 1

For a while now I have kept a handwritten book of my favourite recipes in the kitchen. This has worked quite well, but there is more to the kitchen than just recipes. I wanted somewhere to record not just recipes but also shopping lists, cleaning schedules and more.
There are numerous blog posts online about home management binders and this is sort of the same thing, only I'm concentrating on just the kitchen for now.

The first step was to find a suitable place to keep everything. I decided to use an ordinary ring binder with plastic wallets. This keeps everything in one place and I can shuffle the contents about as needed (unlike my handwritten recipe book!).

For today, all I'm putting in there is information about the electrical equipment I use in my kitchen. I've put all of the instruction booklets in there and have also drawn up a cleaning schedule for the equipment.

The cleaning schedule is very straight forward, it is simply a table with a list of the equipment, how often it should be cleaned and how it should be cleaned.

You can download my cleaning schedule from Google Drive and edit it to suit your own purpose if you wish.

Just another day...

I've had a super busy day today. Firstly, this morning I had to go to work (yawn, right?). After I got home I had some Amazon sales to mail out, I'm selling things quite fast over there, although not really making much money yet! I then did a bit more decluttering, today I followed FlyLady's mission to clear out my underwear drawer.

I also had to do some college work. It's IT and I'm not struggling because it's hard, I'm struggling because it's too easy! My tasks for this week are to write instructions on how to create a new save folder and how to insert a picture and labels into a Word document. I used to help teach an over 50's computer class, so these tasks are a breeze, the problem is getting the motivation to do it.

I'm planning on making pepperoni pizza for dinner and then I'm going to sit down and have a read through my new issue of Mollie Makes magazine and maybe have a go at the cute fox brooch kit that came with it.

Decluttering, Part 2

My last post (over a month ago, oops!) Decluttering My Home listed some of the tips I'd found useful as I began to declutter my home.

I've already got rid of anything that was rubbish, that is anything that was broken, worthless or just plain trash. I've also set aside some things that can be donated to charity. this includes things like clothes and any free gifts that came with magazines that I have no use for.

There are of course some things that I didn't want to give away or throw away even though I didn't really want to keep them either. These were the things that I had paid a lot of money for, or that I knew were worth some money. I've decided to try and sell some of these things myself. Obviously I don't want to hang onto this stuff forever in the hope of making some quick cash, so I'm going to set a time limit. That way if I haven't managed to sell something within a month I'll feel less guilty about giving it away.

So where's a good place to sell these things? I don't have a car, garage or yard so car boot sales, garage or yard sales are out. I do however live in a block of flats where people are always moving in and out. This makes it very easy to sell the larger household items that I no longer need, all I have to do is put a notice on the noticeboard. I have also found some local groups on Facebook which are useful for selling items locally, however I did have some issues with trying to get the group administrators to approve my posts quickly and I also encountered a few timewasting buyers.

However, I intend to sell most things online. I am using Amazon for selling books, DVDs, CDs and games. Although I'm not likely to make much money through this because their fees are quite high, there is quite a quick turnaround and I managed to make 3 sales in the first 24 hours.
For craft supplies I'm thinking of using Etsy and/or Folksy as I have had good experiences with these in the past.

For everything else I will probably turn to Ebay. One issue I have with Ebay is that listing items can be a lengthy process, also it can be hard to get your items noticed.

I think I'm going to concentrate on using one selling site at a time. For the meantime I'm quite in love with the simplicity of listing on Amazon. I love that all you have to do is type in the barcode and all the information is already there for you.

In case you're curious here's my Amazon storefront.

Decluttering my home

My boyfriend and I live in a one bedroom apartment. It's not overly small, but after being here nearly two years things are starting to look a bit cluttered. I've been slowly going through everything and deciding if we really need to keep all of the stuff we've accumulated. Here are a few of the tips I've been following during this process:

1. Don't try to do everything in one go. I found it easier to focus on one area at a time, for example the desk or the bathroom cabinet. This also ensures that you don't pull out too much in one go and end up with more mess than you started with!
2. Take pride in what you have achieved. Decluttering is frustrating, but it's worth it once you've cleared an area and it makes you happy.
3. Clean as you go. If you take everything off a shelf, wipe the shelf before you put stuff back. Also clean any ornaments and pictures at the same time.
4. Be ruthless. If something has been sat in a drawer for over a year without being used, chances are you won't miss it if you throw it out.
5. If you want to sell something or donate it to charity do it as soon as possible. If you put things to one side to deal with later you might forget about them and they'll still be there three months down the line.
6. Rearrange furniture. This can give your room a fresh new look and almost make you feel like you've moved house!
7. Instead of buying new things try to make use of what you already have. You might find a use for something if you move it to another room. For example, I had a chest of drawers in the bedroom that wasn't being used, so I moved it to the hallway and it now stores gloves and hats as well as making my hallway more welcoming.

8. Don't throw away other people's stuff before checking with them. I filled a box with my boyfriend's things and gave it to him to sort through. He ended up throwing it all out anyway, but at least I hadn't unintentionally thrown out something that he needed.
9. Keep at it. I still have a long way to go with sorting out our home, but I do a little bit each day and it gives me something to do if I get bored.
10. Don't feel guilty. I was feeling guilty about getting rid of things that I'd received as presents or things that I'd spent a lot of money on. But at the end of the day, if you're not using it, why keep it? You can sell things or donate them to charity and hopefully they'll go to somebody who can use them.

I hope these tips help you if you're trying to declutter and organise your home.