Under the window seat in the library, we have baskets of toys to occupy guests’ children. These baskets fit perfectly under the seat, are a good size for the toys, and are very sturdy. The kids turn them over and sit on them and the baskets handle it just fine. The hand holds make them easy to cart from room to room. One basket has kitchen toys, one has baby toys, and one has toddler toys. The baskets came from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. We used to have six of these baskets under the window seat with toys for DD#3 when she was younger.

This basket of baby/toddler toys is in the guest room for the convenience of our company with small children. Another basket from Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

Another basket in the guest room armoire holds snacks, paper plates, napkins, etc., in case company needs a bite to eat. The basket came from Wal-Mart.

This basket, which I found at The Container Store, holds DD#3′s shoes under the pew in the front hall. Makes it a lot easier to find her tennies when it’s time to head out the door.

The pantry is kept under control with the use of plastic tubs to hold like things together. The first tub on the bottom (from the back forward) holds chocolate chips, baking chocolates, and candy coating. The next tub holds nuts. And the one in the foreground holds snacks. The shelf above has a tub for beans and pasta, and a tub for napkins and plastic utensils for parties.

I love these lined baskets for the coat closet. From the left, the first one holds light bulbs, the next holds electrical things like extension cords, electric outlet adapters, etc. The top and bottom shelves at the back hold cleaning supplies. The ones on the top are seldom used things, like refill bottles, extra swiffer supplies, etc. I think I found these baskets (sold in sets of three nesting sizes) at Joann’s (a fabric store).

One of my favorites is this basket which is just the right size to sit between the front seats in our car. It holds snacks for travel, an extra bottle of water, my planner, usually the camera, a tube of hand lotion, and anything else that happens to need contained in the front seat. The handles make it very easy to carry into the house when it needs to be cleaned out and/or refilled. This basket came as a Christmas gift full of delicious fruit.

And then there’s the attic…where I have more than 100 storage tubs of Christmas decorations. We won’t go there today, but you can get a taste of it here.

Contain it, define the boundaries. ~~Rhonda

Here is the cabinet after. Mug free and lots of new space. I am not sure what will go up there. Maybe a couple of casserole dishes I have in the pantry.

The cabinet to the right had quite a few things in it that I never or rarely use. A cheese grater, a veggie chopper (do use that at Christmas time for nuts), a couple of boxes of coffee filters (moved one to the pantry), bread pans (to the pantry), old postage scale (charity), a measuring cup for skimming fat (charity).

I moved the bowls I don’t use as often to the top. The serving bowls I use all the time and they stayed on the bottom. I love having these at the stove. Makes it so easy to dish food for the table, right off the stove or out of the oven. Most of my measuring cups are in the dishwasher. They will go on the middle shelf. The red object on the bottom shelf is my Thermapen. It’s an instant read digital thermometer, a Christmas gift from DH. Love it! The papers on the door are recipes we use often: Homemade rolls, Cranberry Bread, Pancakes, and Pie Crust.

The next drawer (to the right of the stove) didn’t have much in it and I didn’t take a before picture. The large whisk is in this drawer because it doesn’t fit in the kitchen tool drawer.

Spices. This drawer smells good! I do have other spices…oregano, basil, parsley, dried onion, etc., that I buy in larger quantities and those are contained in a box in the corner cabinet.

I got rid of some. And found I have some duplicates. The drawer is less crowded now. This drawer is the second one to the right of the stove. I love having my spices in a drawer. So easy to see, so easy to grab. The drawer is between the stove and the corner of the counter, right below where I put together recipes, assemble dishes, etc. Very convenient.

The lower cabinet to the left of the stove holds garbage bags for the most part. I wasn’t even sure what was in the back of this cabinet.

I removed old floral foam, an ice shaver, two bowls I didn’t recognize, a dozen tiny flower pots, and three cooling racks I never use. The top shelf now holds a plastic bin for my bouquet supplies which I use every week from March through November, and it holds DH’s fudge pan. Fudge is the only thing this pan is used for, so we store it here rather than in the pots and pans cupboard. When I begin making bouquets again, I will store floral foam behind the garbage bags.

The drawer over the garbage bag cabinet was a sort of catch-all. Labels for school, coupons for the store, two long wooden spoons, a ladle, miscellaneous junk, etc. And it had a few recipes in it.

Whoa! Where’d it all go?? The labels are going to school tomorrow, the spoons and ladle are going to church, and the recipes went to the recipe binder. The red kitchen took belonged to my MIL and DH uses it when he makes fudge. I don’t know what will go in the drawer now. Maybe I’ll move a few things over from the kitchen tool drawer when I get to it.

The pots and pans cupboard had a few unneeded items in it. I got rid of the juicer, the teapot, and the old green Dutch oven. Now we have more space for the pots and pans. The toaster was moved to the shelf as we do not use it unless we have company at breakfast.

After I put everything away and had lunch, I took Christmas down in the bedrooms of our two older daughters. DD#1 will be home for a wedding in a few weeks and DD#2′s room will be occupied by guests coming for the same wedding. Once DH gets all those Christmas boxes carried on up to the attic, the rooms will be ready for occupancy. While I was upstairs, I cleaned out under the sink in the hall bathroom. I wanted to tell someone “it’s not MY fault!” when I looked under there. Quite a mess.

But now it’s neat and tidy. Everything else was put away elsewhere.

Back downstairs, I tackled the knife drawer. Not tooooo bad before…

But definitely nicer after. I got rid of a few old knives and did some rearranging.

The kitchen tool drawer was the worst thing I decluttered today. Too much stuff in too small a space.

But look at the after!

I moved the chip clips to the drawer to the right of the stove.

And all serving utensils went to the drawer to the left of the stove. I *knew* I’d find something to put there. I plan to find some boxes or dividers to organize these items, but I think they are going to work well here.

We spent about an hour and a half in the basement this evening while severe storms rumbled through. Now it’s about time to get DD ready for bed and I am going to spend some time reading. I’ve had a productive day…now for some down time. ~~Rhonda

The garland is simply silk flowers (red and white carnations and roses) cut apart and tucked into the branches, in a long spiral all the way down the tree, with a garland of ivy. The ivy and the lights stay on the tree during storage.

To store the flowers, I put them in a plastic bag. They are placed on top of other items in the storage box and I haven’t had any problems with crushing. They look fine each year.

I made the picture ornaments on the tree. Some are decoupaged onto balls.

In this picture, you can clearly see how the edges of the pictures are clipped to make them fit the curve of the ornament. That’s a pawpaw blossom above the butterfly, BTW.

Some ornaments are simply printed, cut into circles and laminated.

DD#3 on the wood chip pile. It’s springtime…the bridal wreath spirea is blooming. They always remind me of home. We had the same kind of spirea along the driveway.

We collect hostas. This particular one has beautiful variegation.

Weeding. A perpetual occupation, though not necessarily for DD#3.

The balls are stored in a plastic bag. I put tissue paper around the picture ornaments and the rest (all green) are just plopped in the bag with the wrapped ones.

The storage box for the downstairs bath…the plastic bag on the left has the silk flowers, the one on the right has the ornaments. Other items in the box…the fabric for the tree skirt, a tin (to the right of the pillow) containing a small five piece glass nativity for the bathroom counter, the bubble light night light wrapped in red tissue paper, a pillow from the wing chair in the laundry room, and a wheelbarrow decoration from the laundry room.

After finishing the bathroom, I also put away what remained of Christmas in the laundry room. The small garden tree in the laundry room had been removed a few weeks ago, so there wasn’t a lot to store.

I “unwrapped” our children’s baby pictures in the hall and put away everything on the hall counter opposite the pictures except the grandbaby tree. That will stay up for a few more weeks.

Last evening we had our 4H meeting here which was good incentive for putting away this part of Christmas. Takes me a long time to get it all put away, but I don’t mind.

~~Rhonda

I didn’t know I could use tinsel on an artificial tree until my sister Margaret told me five or six years ago that she always uses it on her own tree. We had a cut tree in the living room until I found that out. Then we went to artificial, which I had wanted to do for some time as we decorate so early and leave the tree up so long. I had stayed with using a cut tree so I could use tinsel.

In this picture, I’ve started taking the tinsel off the bottom of the tree…grabbed it by handfuls, saved some just because it came off so well, and the rest went into the trash.

After the tinsel was removed, I took off the ornaments. I store plain balls in a cardboard box without wrapping them in tissue. I’ve never had a problem with this method. I used a storage box lid to hold the other ornaments as they were removed. Then they were carried to the dining room table where they were sorted.

At the table, I had a lid for each of the three kids and for my and DH’s ornaments. When they came from the tree, I sorted them onto the ends of the lids…DD#3 at the far end, then DD#2, DD#1, and DH and my ornaments at this end of the table. After sorting all the ornaments I had carried from the tree, I stopped long enough to wrap the ornaments in tissue paper and place them into cardboard boxes which were also sitting on the storage lids. Each cardboard box has the name of the child whose ornaments are in that box. They have always enjoyed putting their own ornaments on the tree, so I have always kept them stored separately.

I don’t wrap unbreakable ornaments with tissue. I like to have a box or two of ornaments I can hand to children who want to “help.” They like having an entire box of ornaments they can put up without constantly being told “be careful!”

I did tier one – what I could reach sitting down, and tier two – what I could reach standing up. DH did tier 3 – what had to be reached from the ladder. BTW, we love our Little Giant ladder! It’s a wonderful tool for “this old house.” I gave it to DH for Christmas several years ago and we are constantly commenting on how glad we are to have it.

Once the ornaments were removed, we took the red beads and the popcorn and cranberry strings off. The beads are stored in a large zippered storage bag. They are thrown in together and never tangle, so they are easy to store. The popcorn and cranberry strings are pitched. We tried putting them outside for the birds a few times, but never found any interest in them, so now we throw them away.

Then it was time to remove the lights. Most years, we remove the lights from the lower four branches, remove the branches for storage in black bags (because the tree is too wide to fit through the attic door otherwise), and leave the rest of the tree intact. This year, we removed all the lights because many of the strings are old and fading. They need to be replaced. We were able to buy the commercial grade of light strings after Christmas for 75% off. A great deal and we will use those to replace the lights on this tree and the library tree next year.

I wrap the lights around my hand and store each string in a plastic shopping bag. I begin wrapping at the female end (the end without the prongs) so the male end (prongs) are on the outside of the roll. That makes it easy to plug the string in next year to check it, without unwinding the entire string.

This year, we took the tree completely apart, then replaced the branches. Some were obviously out of order (not sure how that happened!) which gave the tree an odd shape. As we removed each layer, I lined up the bundles in the front hall, with layer #1 at the front door and coming down the hall in order. We checked each layer to be sure all the branches were there and that all the branches in each layer matched. Now the tree is in good order and looks better.

With the tree down, DH was able to remove the window garlands and that was the end of “undecorating” the living room.

This is the two foot tall box DH made for the 9′ tree to stand on. The round things are sliders which make moving the tree across the floor very easy.

And now the living room is back to “normal.” It looks bare after all the decorations are removed, but now we’re ready for our 4H meeting tomorrow evening!

~~Rhonda

One storage box is an ornament box, which holds most of the tree’s ornaments. The plain glass balls are stored separately in a plastic sack. I don’t bother wrapping each one of those. Balls with decoration or glitter go into the ornament box, without wrapping. Fragile ornaments are wrapped with tissue paper and placed around them to keep them from shifting.

Unbreakable ornaments are not wrapped in tissue paper before being placed in the ornament box for storage. Small ornaments are tucked into leftover spaces.

The other boxes hold the plastic bag of plain balls, a bag of silk flowers for the tree, tulle for under the tree, the three trees for the top of the bookcase, etc.

We have a lot of wreaths in the house during the holidays. This one decorates the door to the guest room. It will be covered with a white garbage bag and hung in the attic until next Christmas.

There are three trees left on the first floor. Tomorrow, I will start taking down the big one in the living room. ~~Rhonda