Organized Drawers Archives - Blue i Style

Quick Tips for an Organized Nightstand

blueistyle — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 22:31:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I shared a Five Minute Friday organizing tip, but I’ve got a great one to take you into the weekend. Research has shown that a cluttered bedroom can interfere with your ability to relax and get restful sleep. Nightstands are a common culprit, but just a few simple tips and some quick organization can help you keep the necessities in reach without allowing your bedside table to became a catchall for clutter.

CLEAR THE CLUTTER ON TOP

Choosing a nightstand with interior storage is the best way to keep the clutter at bay. If you don’t like the heavy look of a fully enclosed nightstand, opt for a style with a combination of open and closed storage, like a drawer with an open shelf below. Storage within the bedside table allows you to keep the top clear and free for some simple decor.

If you still need extra storage, a decorative storage box is perfect for keeping small items organized but out of sight. The small box on top of my nightstand holds a few mementos that have sentimental value. Stacking a pretty vase on top of the box helped me add some needed height and scale to my nightstand styling.

Keeping the top of the nightstand clear of clutter leaves room for the day to day items you need, like a coaster for a glass of water and a good book or two.

DIVIDE & CONQUER: ORGANIZED NIGHTSTAND DRAWER

Think About What You Really Need in Your Nightstand Drawer

What do you keep in your nightstand drawer? Is it full of the necessities you want within easy reach at night, or has it become a junk drawer hiding all the things?

I do a lot of work in my bedroom in the early mornings and late at night, so my nightstand drawer serves as a kind of mini-office. The drawer used to be a tangled mess of notebooks, highlighters, pens, and charging cords. I felt stressed every time I opened the drawer, until I finally spent about five minutes getting it organized.

Clear It Out and Add Dividers

As with any organizing project, I recommend starting by emptying the drawer completely. You’ll likely find all sorts of things that don’t really belong there. Get rid of things you don’t need (donate, recycle, or trash) and then relocate the things you need but that don’t belong in the nightstand.

This post contains some affiliate links, if you purchase something I recommend, you’ll pay the same price, but I may receive a small commission.

Once you’ve cleared out the space and determined what should stay (for me, it was a few basic office supplies, chargers, my iPad, glasses, chapstick and lotion) you’re ready to shop for some nightstand drawer organizers to compartmentalize the space and keep it organized moving forward. My favorite (probably no surprise, since I’m a Brand Ambassador for The Container Store) are these clear divider trays from TCS.

When organizing with divider trays, keep like things together and make sure everything has a dedicated spot. It only took me a few minutes to fill these trays with my nightstand necessities, and now I can find what I need, and I’ll be able to keep it organized.

CONTAIN IN STYLE: USE BASKETS ON SHELVES

If your nightstand has a shelf, decide whether you need it for storage. My husband didn’t need any extra storage on his side of the bed, so the bottom shelf of his nightstand is styled with some books and decor. But on my side, I really needed a place to keep magazines as well as my laptop.

A large basket contains all my magazines, but also gives me plenty of room to tuck away my laptop when I’m finally ready to call it a night.

If you can spare five minutes this weekend, give your nightstand a quick organizing refresh. You’ll feel good, and you might even sleep better!

The post Quick Tips for an Organized Nightstand appeared first on Blue i Style.

Dresser Drawer Organization

blueistyle — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 17:36:00 +0000

If I asked for a raise of hands from all of you with messy dresser drawers, I can just imagine hands shooting up from all corners of the internet! And mine would be raised right there with you… or at least it would have been until last week.

Isn’t funny how sometimes those messy spots that drive us crazy are so simple to fix?

If only I had taken the five minutes to organize my dresser drawers years ago, I would have save so much time searching for what we need {not to mention the hassle of trying shove the drawer closed when it’s overflowing}. So that’s what I finally did!

Well, actually, first I put away the laundry like I normally do… by dumping all of my underwear from the basket into the drawer.

Then I had second thoughts and decided it was finally time to find a way to organize this drawer. But I didn’t want to stop and run to the store to buy anything new, so I looked around the house for what I already had that I could use as a dresser organizer.

I remembered that I had some extra fabric storage bins left over from another project. I love SKUBB storage bins, because they store flat when not in use, and then you simply pop them open and zip the bottom to hold their shape. They come in several different colors, including black, white, and pink.

I used three long, thin SKUBB bins to divide my drawer into three sections. I separated my underwear by style, which makes it much easier for me to find what I want.

I had a few more SKUBB bins left, so I decided to organize my bras and shapewear as well. I recently saw a plastic bra organizer at a store, and I was tempted to buy it just because I liked the name – the BobbyTrap – but honestly the square SKUBB bin is just the right width to keep everything neatly organized for a fraction of the price.

Is it weird to be sharing these photos on my blog? It feels weird… But all in the name of organizing, right?!

The post Dresser Drawer Organization appeared first on Blue i Style.

How to Get Drawer Organizing Right the First Time

blueistyle — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 21:00:00 +0000

You may have noticed that Five Minute Friday has been on a bit of a hiatus. Things have been really hectic behind the scenes, and I was having a hard time coming up with new five minute projects that I felt were really valuable and helpful to you guys. But recently, in the midst of working on another project, I had a light bulb moment and literally dropped what I was doing to create a quick five minute solution to one of my biggest organizing challenges… drawers!

Let me back up just a bit… My husband had been traveling for work quite a bit, and despite my “single parent” duties totally wearing me out, I decided that while he was out of town it would be the perfect time to organize the disaster of a closet on our main floor.

I’d been putting this project off for a long time, mostly because I knew that to get it finally organize, I was going to need to completely empty the closet and start from scratch… and that meant that the contents of the closet would wind up all over the living room until I could get everything reorganized and put away. But once I finally decided to do it I was super motivated to GET. IT. DONE.

I assembled two sets of IKEA Alex drawers that I tucked below the bottom shelf in the closet, but I needed to come up with a plan to make the best use of all that drawer space. {This is just a little sneak peek at my new “household closet”… I’ll show you more in a later post.}

I don’t know about you guys, but I find drawers so challenging. I have tons of small items to organize in this closet, so I knew that shallow drawers were my best option, but coming up with the right organizing plan to keep every drawer from becoming a junk drawer. One key is definitely to use lots of dividers and drawer bins, but finding ones that fit and make the best use of the space is a challenge in and of itself.

I was on my second trip of the day to The Container Store looking for the right-sized containers to organize all of my new drawers when I discovered a totally genius tool they have to help… a pull-out gridded shelf!

The organizing nerd in me was so excited to play around with this grid to come up with a perfect configuration of drawer bins… but I didn’t find quite what I was looking for {or at least not at the price I wanted to pay since I had a lot of drawers to fill}.

I gave up for that afternoon, with plans to look for more affordable drawer bins at a few other stores. But I couldn’t help but thinking how much easier it would be if every store had a pull-out gridded shelf for drawer planning.

And that’s where my stroke of genius comes in… a simple five minute solution to create my own portable drawer planning grid to ensure I would come home with drawer bins that would make the best use of my space, and save all the extra trips for returns and trying again.

My first thought was to use a piece of poster board and draw a grid on a it to duplicate The Container Store’s gridded shelf… but what I really wanted was something portable that I could easily take with me to any store, and a big piece of poster board didn’t fit the bill.

But then it dawned on me that a lot of the wrapping paper up in my gift wrap closet is gridded on the back. I grabbed out a large roll, confirmed that the grid on the back was one inch, and knew I was in business!

I cut a 24″ x 36″ piece of wrapping paper {large enough for even the biggest drawers in my house}…

…and then simply used a Sharpie to write in numbers to correspond to the inches along each side of the grid.

In less than five minutes, I had my very own drawer planning grid that I could easily fold up or roll up and stick in my purse to use at any store while shopping for drawer divider bins.

I simply measured each of my drawers and jotted down the length, width, and depth in the notes on my phone {the mini-measuring tape on my keys comes in handy so often}. Then I headed out to shop with my rolled up drawer planning grid and my measurement.

At the store, I unrolled my DIY drawer planning grid and used it to figure out which bins would fit best, and come up with an ideal configuration for each drawer.

This extra few minutes of planning paid off big time when I brought all the bins home and they fit in my drawers exactly as I had laid it out on my grid!

I filled up the first drawer with all of my Command hooks, Command picture hanging strips, felt chair pads, and other small items.

In another drawer I organized all of our batteries, flashlights, and outlet taps.

I feel like I’ve finally cracked the code to successful drawer organization… it all comes down to planning, and my new portable drawer planning grid allows me to get it right the first time! No more buying a bunch of random drawer dividers, crossing my fingers that they fit right, and then making returns when they don’t!

This simple DIY grid is a five minute solution that is going to save me hours of headaches and help me better organize every drawer in the house!

The post How to Get Drawer Organizing Right the First Time appeared first on Blue i Style.

Charger Cord Organizer with Custom Icon Labels

blueistyle — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 01:30:00 +0000

Technology has become such an essential part of our every day lives that I feel like I’m totally drowning in cords, cables, and chargers lately! The kitchen is the heart of our home, and I typically wind up working at the kitchen table rather than my home office in order to be closer to the kids, so I was desperately in need of a charger cord organizer to contain and organize all of technology in this space.

I finally came up with a phone charger organizer that is not only functional, but also stylish enough that I don’t mind having it on display on my kitchen counter! It even has enough extra space to organize headphones, portable speakers, camera batteries, USB drives, and more!

Thank you to Cricut for sponsoring this post, and thank you for supporting the brands that make this blog possible. As always all opinions are my own. This post also contains affiliate links.

A couple of years ago I showed you my quick and easy solution for labeling all of my cords and cables so I could keep track of what goes with which electronics, but I was still struggling with where to store all of the cables that we use on a daily basis.

Let’s go back in time one week so I can show you how I was dealing with this problem previously. You know that I’m a fan of using baskets to organize, but I’m also the first to admit when a basket just isn’t getting the job done. This was one of two baskets full of charging cords and small electronics that were junking up my kitchen counter, and digging through the baskets to find what I needed was driving me crazy!

While shopping at IKEA last week, I spotted a set of mini chest of drawers, that I realized could be the perfect solution! This product, called Moppe, has been popular on Pinterest for quite a while because it is raw wood – lending itself to being easily customized to fit the style of any space. But until recently it wasn’t available in the US.

I brought the Moppe home, sat it on the counter and started filling up the drawers to test it out. It was the perfect size for everything I needed to organize, so it was time to get creative and decide how to make these drawers look nicer in my kitchen. I started by giving the outer frame a coat of stain, and then spray painted the drawers using left over paint from my garage pegboard.

The stain and paint immediately made my mini chest of drawers look pretty, but it’s the labels that really give it a polished look. This is one of my best organizing tips – LABEL EVERYTHING! Not only do labels allow you to add a little extra style, they also make it easy for everyone in the house to find what they need {and it takes away any excuse for people to not put things away}.

There are so many ways to create DIY labels, but one of my favorite ways has always been to use my Cricut electronic cutter. Until recently, I was still using the original, decade old version of the machine. But a few months ago, my friends at Cricut sent me the updated Explore Air machine to try out, and wow!

With my old machine, I was limited to cutting with the fonts and graphics available on Cricut cartridges. But with my new machine I can cut anything that I can dream up! Not only can I use all of the fonts on my computer {as I showed you on the custom wood sign I created for my garage} – I can also upload my own designs and use Cricut Design Space to covert my JPEGs into cutable files.

Rather than labeling the drawers of my Moppe with words, I decided to create some simple icon labels that I cut out of white adhesive vinyl with my Cricut Explore Air.

If you want to learn how to upload and convert your images into files that Cricut can cut, I’ve got the full tutorial for you at the end of this post. But first, I want to show you how I put the custom icons stickers on the drawers, and what I organized inside those drawers.

After cutting the icons using my Cricut, I began peeled away the excess vinyl from around the round icons, and then began “weeding” the vinyl from the center of each icon to create negative space.

Each of my icon labels is just 1.5 inches in diameter, and some of the icons have very fine details – so I was a bit nervous about how well they would cut. But the precision of the cuts was spot on!

After I finished weeding they vinyl from the center of each icon, I strip of vinyl transfer tape over the icons, smoothing it down to burnish the vinyl onto the surface of the transfer tape.

I then slowly peeled the transfer tape away from the Cricut mat, ensuring that the vinyl lifted up with the transfer tape.

I used scissors to cut the icons apart in preparation for applying each to one of the newly painted drawers.

I positioned the first icon in the bottom right corner of one of the drawers and used a craft stick to burnish the vinyl to the drawer.

I then slowly peeled back the transfer tape, ensuring that the vinyl was firmly adhered to the drawer.

With all of my vinyl icon labels on the drawers, I was ready to fill up my mini chest of drawers.

From the top left, the drawers contain:

Camera batteries and chargers
Power banks and portable chargers
USB storage devices / Flash drives
Charging cords and cables
Portable speakers and my favorite bluetooth headset
Camera lenses and lens hoods

I am so excited about how this project turned out! It has allowed me to organize all of our chargers, cords, and even camera lenses in the place where I spend most of my working hours – then kitchen. And best of all, it actually looks nice sitting on the kitchen counter right next to our “mudroom” bench.

The stain is a nice match to our cabinets and the light teal spray paint that I used on the drawers looks great with our glass tile backsplash – both of which help the chest of drawers to blend in a bit. And the custom vinyl icon labels on each drawer are subtle but stylish, and ensure that everyone in the family can find what they need! That’s an organizing win/win/win!

I love this organizing solution so much that I’ve already bought a few more of these Moppe mini-drawer sets to organize some other challenging spaces! And you can be sure that I’ll be using my Cricut Explore Air to customize those as well.

HOW TO CUT CUSTOM LABELS USING CRICUT DESIGN SPACE

Ok, so now let’s get into the nitty gritty details! The following is a quick tutorial for how to upload and cut your own images using the Cricut Explore Air.

In order to create the icon labels on the drawers, I began by downloading some simple icon images from the internet and using Photoshop to overlay the icons onto black circles, saving each images as a JPEG.

Then, to turn the round icons into cut-files, I signed in to Cricut Design Space and began by uploading the image files.

Click UPLOAD IMAGES > UPLOAD IMAGE > BROWSE. Then choose the first file you want to upload from the files on your computer.

Once the file is uploaded, select whether it is a “Simple Image,” “Moderately Complex Image,” or “Complex Image,” based on the provided descriptions. Each of my icons were “Simple Images.”

I wanted the cut the black portion of each icon image from adhesive vinyl to be applied to my drawers, and I wanted the white portion of each image to become negative space through which the color of the drawer would show through. I used the “Select & Erase” tool to click on and remove each white area of the design. The checkerboard pattern indicates transparency, and shows the areas of of the design that I removed.

After selecting and erasing each white portion of the icon designs, I clicked on the “Preview” button. The dark gray area that remains shows my design as it will be cut by the Cricut machine.

In the next step, the program prompted me to select whether I wanted to save the icon as a “Print Then Cut” image, or as a “Cut Image.” Since I wanted to cut the icon out of white vinyl, I chose the “Cut Image” option.

After uploading all six of my icon images, I added all of them to the canvas, where I resized each to 1.5″ – the final size that I wanted to cut.

After resizing each of the images, I clicked on the GO button and proceeded to connect my Cricut Explore Air to my computer, loaded the mat, and cut the icons from my white adhesive vinyl {as shown above}.

This was my first time cutting one of my own files using my Cricut, and it couldn’t have been easier. I expected there to be a steep learning curve like there is with most design software, but Cricut Design Space walked me through each step, making it simple and easy, and completely removing the intimidation factor! Now that I know how easy it is to cut anything I want using my new Cricut, my mind and my Explore Air are both going to be working overtime!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine. Comments submitted may be displayed or featured on other websites owned by Cricut.

var ts=document.getElementById(‘ti-pixel-tracker’); var axel = Math.random() + “”; var num = axel * 1000000000000000000; var ti=document.createElement(“img”); ti.style.display=”none”; ti.src=”https://tracking.tapinfluence.com/trk/P5Af4/SLO4P/p.png?p=vHQPZ” + String.fromCharCode(38) + “i=tThdX” + String.fromCharCode(38) + “ord=”+ num + String.fromCharCode(38) + “s=” + encodeURIComponent(document.referrer); ts.parentNode.replaceChild(ti,ts); new TAP.CogFrame(‘/v1/cogs/60486ef0-75ea-11e6-8eea-22000a7d00a4/comments’).drop({“program_id”:”60475ab0-75ea-11e6-8eea-22000a7d00a4″,”post_id”:”fba9f208-b788-11e6-8fb0-22000a7d00a4″,”host”:”api.tapinfluence.com”,”apiHost”:”api.tapinfluence.com”,”sort_order”:”desc”,”limit”:”20″,”offset”:”0″,”sort_by”:”created_at”,”protocol”:”https://”});

The post Charger Cord Organizer with Custom Icon Labels appeared first on Blue i Style.

Creating an Organized Baking Drawer

blueistyle — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 18:23:00 +0000

Happy Friday, friends! I am so excited to bring you the first official installment of Five Minute Friday!!

If you missed last week’s introduction to Five Minute Friday, you can read all about it here {and see a collection of 16 awesome five minute projects}.

I’ve told you before about my case of Organizing A.D.D. – where I start one organizing project and then suddenly find myself clearing out a drawer that I didn’t even know need reorganizing. We’ll it happened again! I started organizing under the kitchen sink and suddenly found myself cleaning out a drawer by the oven. But my Organizing A.D.D. always leads to something good, and this time, in about five minutes flat, I had myself a brand spanking new baking drawer. Just looking at it makes me smile!

Before I jump in to the details, let me give you the back story… In the late 1970’s my mom and grandma took a couple of cake decorating classes. Like most things artistic, they both had a knack for it! They really got into it for a while {my mom even ended up teaching cake decorating classes and both spent time working for a bakery}, and they made some amazing cakes for us kids when we were growing up. After my boys were born, I became interested in learning some basic techniques so I could make fun cakes for my kids as well. {To see my first two attempts, check out my easy Elmo cake and my ombre frosted cupcakes.}

I mentioned this interest to my grandma, and before I knew it she had given me her entire collection of supplies, including two full cases of cake decorating tips, a big collection of icing bags, cake toppers, flower nails, decorating books… the works!

I was so thrilled to have her pass all of these goodies along to me, but I needed to find a place to store all of it! For a long while, it just sat stacked on the kitchen counter. Then one day, in the middle of another project, I found myself wondering if the two cases of cake decorating tips would fit in one of my shallow kitchen drawers. I had to stop what I was doing to find out. Sure enough, they did! And there I went…off on a new organizing quest.

There are three drawers near my stove and oven that have always held a random combination of cooking utensils, scoops, birthday candles, whisks, potato peelers, apple slicers, pizza cutters, spatulas… you know the drill. I’ve always intended to get them better organized, and the need to fit in the cases of cake decorating tips finally gave me the motivation I needed.

I quickly picked through the drawers, pulled out all of the baking related items, and combined the remaining items into two drawers, leaving one drawer empty and ready for all of my baking and cake decorating supplies.

I started by stacking the two cases of cake decorating tips in the back corner of the drawer. I had a few of my favorite Viola Drawer Organizers left over from my bathroom drawer organization project, so I put them to work here. I filled one plastic bin with all the icing bags and placed it in front of the decorating tips.

I’m a sucker for the dollar bins at Michael’s – so over time I’ve built up quite a collection of pretty cupcake liners. Fortunately, these fit perfectly in another of a plastic bins, with room to the side for a plastic bag of cake pop sticks.

At the front of the drawer, I used three ceramic ramekins {also from the Michael’s dollar section} to contain all of our extra birthday candles.

I originally tried recycling a few small plastic baby food containers to hold the candles, but I quickly discovered that the plastic containers were just too light weight, and the candles kept tipping them over. The heavier ceramic ramekins are perfect for the job!

On the other side of the drawer, I used a third Viola Drawer Organizer to hold all of my measuring cups and spoons.

The drawer is just long enough for my rolling pin, and I tucked my spatulas and icing knife in between the rolling pin and the bin of measuring spoons.

The open space in the front corner of the drawer now holds my cookie scoop, my set of mini funnels, and the flower nails from my grandma {which can be used for creating icing flowers for cake decorating, or for helping the center of your cakes bake more evenly}.

Boom! Just like that I have a baking and cake decorating drawer! Commence happy dance!

It only took me a few minutes to fill up the drawer, and now everything has a place!

Of course, I do have other baking supplies that don’t easily fit in a shallow kitchen drawer – like cookie cutters and food items. When I reorganized our pantry a while back, I placed all of our cookie cutters in a bin that I keep on the top shelf {since they don’t get used as often}.

Our baking staples, like flour and sugar, are stored in plastic jars in the pantry, alongside two stacking bins that hold items like chocolate chips and chopped nuts, jars of sprinkles, and food coloring.

And those awesome cake decorating books from the 70’s that my grandma passed down to me… they also have a new home on the cookbook shelves in our kitchen “mudroom.”

Grouping like items together is one of the basics of organizing. By simply taking a few minutes to dedicate one drawer to all of my baking supplies, it makes it so much easier for me to find what I need! Does anyone else have a baking drawer? I’d love to see it!

P.S. Thanks to those of you who have submitted ideas for Five Minute Friday! I am looking forward to featuring some awesome reader projects in the near future. If you have a quick project that you’d like to share, please shoot me an email {using the button in the top right corner of the sidebar}. I’d love to see your five minute decorating, organizing, DIY, and entertaining ideas!

The post Creating an Organized Baking Drawer appeared first on Blue i Style.