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Have you ever noticed how some people just seem to have things figured out? Or maybe you ARE one of those people and sometimes the rest of us make you go, “What is WRONG with you? This is so EASY.”
I ask because my housemate Darby and I — we’re very similar — seem to be constantly figuring out really simple things, like what people use baskets for. Sometimes we feel like our brains just don’t work, especially when it comes to putting things away.
Because of this, we admire our friend Dani’s organization. Darby once told me she sometimes stands in Dani’s bathroom, marveling at how tidy it all is. A place for everything, and everything in its place.
She was searching for the difference between her own bathroom’s disaster state and Dani’s crazy neatness when Dani told her, “Darby. You can do that, too. Just buy some baskets.”
Darby’s mind exploded.
BASKETS!! Why didn’t I think of that!
And my confession is: I’d had the same conversation with Dani.
So now this is household shorthand. When Darby and I have a stupid-simple lifehack (“Use CONTAINERS to CONTAIN things!” “If you PICK UP SHIT then things WON’T BE MESSY!”) we say it’s a Baskets Moment.
As in, “….Oh, baskets!” It’s made my life lots easier to be able to share Baskets Moment with her — but think how much more I could learn with the whole Internet telling me what I should already know!
I know there are people out there who understood what I meant when I said I was long confused by how my shove-everything-in-the-cupboards style didn’t compare to Dani’s Container Store showroom — so this is the place to write up the dirt-simple realizations you’ve had about keeping house. We’ll be so much smarter after this!
What are YOUR Basket Moment realizations?
I had a very public and embarrassing basket moment at work last year when I realised that I could MAKE A WHOLE BIG POT OF SOUP and then FREEZE IT IN INDIVIDUAL PORTIONS. Eep. Yeh, duh.
I have this in my room: http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/holland-park/bedroom/freedom-clothes-rack/1001803801# and I use milk crates as drawers in the shelf-y areas and on the top for drawers.
Labels. Specific labels. I realized I could not only write “laundry detergent” on the side of the container (I make my own) but could also write the recipe on it, so I don’t have to look it up next time I make a batch. I marked the end of the 3-hole punch that you’re supposed to line the paper up with so I don’t punch things upside down any more.
Pretty much anything I find myself looking up/figuring out on a regular basis, I try to see if there’s a way to put the information on the item. Saves so much time and frustration!
PS – you can write on glass with sharpie and it comes off with a minimal amount of water and scrubbing, but stays on in normal circumstances.
We don’t have any counter space in our bathroom, but we’ve got a lot of wall space (it’s kind of weird). So I bought one of those skinny over-the-showerhead shelf things (similar to this: http://www.fixtureuniverse.com/shower-caddies-shelves/hardware-house-llc-58-39-shower-caddy_g1067749.html?isku=8208901&linkloc=cataLogProductItemsImage)and used two cup hooks to hang it up next to the sink. Now all my body sprays, rubbing alcohol, leave in conditioner, facewash, whatever is off the counter–all that stays on the counter is my makeup bag and contact case. Plus I got a shelf thing with hangy hooks on the bottom, so it doubles as a hand towel holder.
I use empty Tazo tea tins to store pens, pencils, scissors, random things etc… My husband painted old drawers we were getting rid of and attached them to walls for extra storage. Use one to hold cookbooks, the other is a liquor cabinet!
I’m living overseas right now and because I know it’s temporary and because I didn’t select my furniture, I had to come up with a solution for organizing all of my junk. One of the things I did almost right away was buy something to collect the underwear, socks, and then misc. things (bandanas, pantyhose, fabric headbands). The containers designed for such use were a good 7 Euros each and though pretty I didn’t want to spend 21 Euros out of my meager wages and then leave it here in a year! So I bought 1 Euro each plastic planters. They work perfectly.
I thought trash cans didn’t work because I was still having trash pile up all around me. Then my friend pointed out that actually the trash can was full, so it worked until it got full. So now I know about emptying it when it gets full.
I know this post is about the Basket Moment rather than specifically about using baskets, but I wanted to recommend baskets (plastic, not fancy ones) in the fridge. I use them to corral our cooking sauces–no more tipped-over skinny bottles. My mom keeps all her sandwich supplies in one so when she’s packing lunch, she can just pull the basket out and everything is right there.
My discovery was that the bathroom was much more likely to get cleaned if I kept some cleaning supplies in its under-sink cabinet instead of keeping them all centralized under the kitchen sink.
Fed up of constant arguements about how my partner could never find clean socks and how I could never find his to wash I bought lots of socks. When that didn’t work see above I bought 4 laundry delicates bags. On which I wrote our names. One for pants and one for socks for each of us. They live beside the bed till they are full or laundry day. When they are clean and dry we empty them into the sock box and undies box. Then the cycle begins again.