I am participating in I’m an Organizing Junkie’s Surface/Shelf Organizing Roundup.

I chose to tackle my entry way and the area of the kitchen around the corner where everything that doesn’t have a home hangs out. We enter in the door as a family, shoes are tossed every which way and the diaper bag with dirty clothing, sippies, and diapers is tossed on the bench. Junk mail accumulates on the side-board table. Other items like the iron you don’t want toddlers using ends up on top of the cookbooks. Last night, everyone found a more permanent, appropriate home. Here are my before and after pics!!

Before

After

Before

After

Some lessons I learned:

:: Make the time to de-clutter. I awoke this morning with a fresh feeling like I was starting out new. It was wonderfully relaxing to enter a space that is neat, put away, clean, and organized.

:: Be ruthless when you de-clutter. I removed a lot of the cooking magazines I never read from the side-board table to free up flat space. I know I can find any and all of those recipes on epicurious.com.

:: Don’t get side-tracked and stay focused. It is easy to get distracted when you are replacing items in different parts of your home. Focus on one area at a time, place items in a pile in the room in which they belong, and then leave. Organize those items in that other room later.

So that is it for me this month. Visit I’m an Organizing Junkie to see more clean spaces and learn some great organizing tips!!