Reader Tips: Cleaning and Organizing!

The powder mess in the photo above is what can happen when you have two toddlers and you decide you can leave them alone for five minutes so you can take a shower. Hahaha! They emptied an entire bottle of baby powder in the living room. I asked them what I should do about the mess and they told me, "Clean it up!" (Then Noah ran and got some cloths to "clean it up" with. I don't even know if there is a hack for cleaning that much powder!)

I wrote a fairly recently about wanting to put together a whole post of cleaning and/or organizing tips from readers/followers. I've been in a cleaning and organizing mood lately, but there are some things that I despise cleaning because there is no simple way to do them!

So I reached out on Facebook as well (it's easier to comment there than it is here) and got a ton of useful tips. I'll share those here and hopefully you'll get as much out of them as I did--some are so smart that I wish I'd heard them ages ago.

I'm going to try to do the "Reader Tips" regularly--I'll just ask a question and you can comment or email me tips/suggestions/pictures/products that you would be willing to share. Then I'll compile them into a post like this. I'll leave my next question at the bottom of this post (as well as post it to Facebook--you can find my Facebook page here). 

Just let me know if you want to remain anonymous; for the Facebook tips, I'm including names only because the Facebook comments are public anyway. Please don't feel too shy to share something! An idea that is obvious to you may be totally new to someone else (as I learned from putting this post together--there were so many simple tricks I'd never thought of).

If there are photos to go with each tip, I posted those below the tip itself. Also, I will include links to any products mentioned (in full disclosure, these will be Amazon affiliate links, which just means if you buy through that link, I might get a small commission). 

Okay, here goes...

What are some of your best cleaning or organizing tips/hacks/products that you find helpful?

Link to book: How to Keep House While Drowning

Link to @gocleanco on Instagram

Amazon link to leggings organizer

Amazon link to Rain X

Link to Mr. Clean Magic Eraser on Amazon

Link to shoe organizer on Amazon

Here is a link to Vildea mop and O-Cedar mop on Amazon

Link to stackable wine rack on Amazon

Amazon links to: standing corner pot rack, 

Link to Clutterbug

And there you have it! I hope that you find a few tips that help as you clean or organize. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who took a moment to share. I hope I didn't mess up names and tips--this was kind of a tough post to put together, so if you notice an error like that, just let me know and I'll fix it ASAP.

For the next 'Reader Tips' post:

What is your best money-saving tip?

I'm excited to see the answers for this one! You can head over to Facebook and comment there or you can email your tip to me at: katie (at) runsforcookies (dot) com.

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A Saturday Transformation

I prepared a recipe for my vegan recipe review, but I am planning to make something much more interesting later today, so I think I'll hold off on that post until tomorrow. I'm hoping it works out!

Instead, I'll just share a few pictures of a small project I worked on this morning. For Mother's Day, I got a whole set of matching spice jars--yes, after I'd washed and reused a ton of jars I had!--and I loved them so much I got my mom a set, too. And I told her that I would go over to her house and transfer her spices over.

This is my own "before" and then after I transferred everything to the spice jar set:

I hope my mom doesn't mind my saying so, but hers looked even worse than mine, hahaha. She had some spices in old pill bottles and lots of assorted little containers. (Better than having pantry moths!)

Naturally, I forgot to take a picture before I started pulling things out, but this is the cupboard and drawer after I took the spices from the shelf insert (bottom left).

I spread all of the spices on the table. I found with my own spices that I had a lot more than I thought I did. I think the same thing happened with my mom's spices--it didn't look like that much until they were all grouped on the table.

I grabbed some jars and labels, turned on a podcast, and got to work. I find doing organizational stuff like this to be fun--maybe that's odd, but it's so satisfying to see the end result! I put all of the spices into jars, labeled them, and condensed down the ones I could (I think everyone winds up with doubles of certain spices because when grocery shopping, you can't remember if you already have it. One time, I somehow wound up with three Sam's Club-sized containers of cinnamon--yikes.)

A few hours later, my mom's spice drawer was completely transformed!

Doesn't it look awesome? Here is a before and after:

I managed to fit all of her spices in the drawer, so I put the envelopes of taco seasoning and things like that in the cupboard above. The jars came with TONS of labels--I didn't need to make a single label for my spices! But my mom had several seasoning blends, so I used the blank round labels to mark those ones.

If anyone is looking for spice jars, these are the ones I bought on Amazon. (Affiliate link disclosure--if you happen to buy through that link, I may get a small commission.) I bought the pack that has 66 jars for $40, and the labels come with them. They have smaller packs of jars, but I figured if I didn't need them for spices, I could use them in the garage for little screws and things like that. 

There are a lot of sets that have a plastic flip-top lids, but with the pantry moths, I didn't want to risk it. I actually found a pantry moth larva in the onion powder! I don't think the flip-top lid was closed tightly enough. So, I ended up choosing jars with the aluminum lids. I'm really happy with them!

My mom was thrilled with her spice drawer makeover, and I loved doing it!

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