This time the clean clothes:

I’m happy to say everything has been put away! It was a tight squeeze, but all of my clothes are currently contained in my closet or dressers.

Well, except for the ironing pile. That’s a whole other issue!

In the beginning of the month, my pantry looked like this:

I started working on the problem last week, clearing out the bottom and sorting out the bag situation.

After a trip to the grocery store today, it was time to tackle the rest. I took out everything, shelf by shelf.

Apparently, our pantry is a black hole. We had far too many expired products in there. Crackers from 2006, salsa from 2008, etc. I think the worst may have been the marinade that expired in 2003 … though I did find a coupon in a box of hot chocolate packets (expired in 2008)  that was only good through 2001. So those probably moved here with us, over eight years ago. Ick!

I claimed to have thrown away expired food the last time I did this. I must not have looked too closely!

It’s hard to organize those deep shelves, but I tried to group items together. This is what it looks like now:

The second shelf from the top looks a bit cramped, but it’s actually quite organized. Pasta and sauces on the right, assorted other ethnic (Thai, Mexican, Indian) on the left. The third shelf is the snack shelf. It would have been nearly empty if I did this yesterday … there was a good sale!

I usually don’t have that much salad dressing. My neighbor works for a company that sometimes sends her samples of products to share. I have a feeling she has a lot more where that came from.

We have to start working on that before we wind up with more expired dressing. Would you like some?

My guest room often doubles as a laundry room. Generally it works out well — we rarely have guests and it’s right by the washer and dryer.

Actually, it was much worse than this. I took this photo a few loads of laundry ago!

It’s mostly my running clothes and other clothes that I line-dry. I hang them on the rack, on a rack behind the door, doorknobs, treadmill, etc …

And then I don’t put my clothes away before the next load of laundry, and the dry clothes start piling up.

But it’s hard to promptly put away your clothes when your drawers look like this:

This is my second dresser, dedicated to running clothes, t-shirts and pajamas. It was definitely time to clean out my drawers and pack away my summer clothes!

First I got rid of about a third of the t-shirts, clearing a little more space for my running clothes. (Winter clothes take up a lot more room!)

Then I dumped everything out of my main running-clothes drawer, packed away the out-of-season stuff, and shoved the in-season clothes in there somewhat neatly. It seems I still have too much stuff!

After all that was put away, my guest room is almost ready for guests!

What? You didn’t think my clutter problem was limited to my house, did you?

Well I was inspired to straighten up the mess today. This picture doesn’t do it justice. It was worse than it looks here!

First I tossed a pile of Post-its that mostly just nonsense at this point. Then I sorted through the paperwork. I often print out project requirements when I’m working on them so I can take notes. But I have electronic copies — there’s no need to save them once the project is finished!

I do have a couple of piles that I need to sort through, but at least they’re neat now. Once the surface was clean, I gave it a good wipe-down. Wow, it needed that. All those papers were hiding lots of crumbs!

Now just my notebook and printouts for current projects are by my side. Much better!

I just found out an acquaintance will be coming over tomorrow night … so I figured I should focus on some general cleaning tonight!

I’ve already gone through the mail pile (again) (it wasn’t that bad this time), put away items that didn’t belong on the kitchen table, wiped down the bathroom counter, and brought some books upstairs that were cluttering the living room.

I’ve still got more work to do. It won’t be perfect, but I’ll do what I can until bedtime!