How to remove the odor from your kitchen drain with a natural remedy.

Today's post is a little different. Have you ever had a stinky pong from your sink well stay tuned to discover a remedy for this.

This post will also appear on Pinterest. Be sure to pin it to one of your boards. (http://www.pinterest.com/pin/479633429038199372/)

On Wednesday I noticed that my kitchen sink was rather smelly, so like any sane individual would do I jumped on google and looked up a remedy. What I found was to use a mix of baking soda and white vinegar. 

So if you have a smell coming from your sink follow these steps below.

• Measure one cup of baking soda per sink hole and pour into sink. Leave to sit for 20 minutes.

• Measure 1/4 cup of white vinegar per sink hole and pour into sink. This will cause a foaming reaction. Cover immediately with a cloth for approx 1 minute.

• Run hot water into your sink for 1-2 minutes, this will dislodge the organic food particles and clear the pipe for you.

On a whim I decided to check the overflow pipe under my sink. I discovered that there was food particles blocked in the pipe, so make sure you remove these also as this could be adding to the odor.

Having tried the above myself I can confirm that it worked in my home. My sink now smells fresh.

I really hope someone finds this helpful/beneficial. I will see you all on my next blog update.

Creating a cleaning schedule

So todays post is how to create a cleaning schedule which hopefully I can stick to. 

On researching this subject I came across a lot of layouts on Pinterest and although most were very good they weren't specific enough to what I needed. I also watched YouTube videos on cleaning schedules to get an idea of how other people handle the cleaning routine.

Currently I do a blitz clean, this is to get the whole house cleaned on one day usually a saturday morning. That my friends is the extent of the cleaning schedule in my house. If I was cooking and something spilled or water over boiled chances are we would leave this there until cleaning day. So as you can see we are a little bit slobby, I can't even imagine what it would be like if we had kids, I think the house would be a tip.

I have outlined the steps I have taken to make a cleaning routine that satisfied my schedule while spreading the chores out over the week. 

Check out this video from the Tidy Things Ireland YouTube channel which I made earlier, it runs through the below outlined steps as well. (www.youtube.com/tidythingsireland)

• Making a list of all cleaning to be done.

Do exactly as it says above, make a list of all the cleaning you can think of around your house. I thought of the following items and put them on a spreadsheet as pictured below. Once you have listed all the cleaning that needs to be done, have a look at the layout sheets from my Pinterest board to see if you have missed any for your own home. (http://www.pinterest.com/tidythingsirl/cleaning-schedules/)

• Split the list into categories

Next you need to define whether the chore is a daily, weekly, monthly etc task. Once this is complete sort the list so you have it grouped by how ofter it needs to be completed (column b).

• Create the schedule into a word document

To add more structure and as a better visual aid it is best to move the schedule to a word or pdf document. Please see the above video for the completed schedule and instruction on this.

To download this schedule please click on the Cleaning Schedule Download tab above (at the top of the page) or by clicking the following link. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6yuPUxjriLVSnR5eDZuYlM5VXM/edit?usp=sharing)

Where do I start???

I have to start somewhere but where will that be. 

One of the first things I've done is made a list of goals I want to achieve over the course of this project:

• Create a cleaning schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly).
• Track my household finances.
• Plan out my meals.
• Lower my spend on groceries.
• Create an area for all important files.
• Create a binder or Filofax that contains all information above.
• De-clutter my home.
• Sort, sell and donate unwanted belongings.

I'm sure as time goes on I will add things to this list but for now the above seems a little daunting, as I've mentioned in previous posts I'm very lazy and all that seems like hard work :)

To start today I think my best bet is to do what I hope will become my daily cleaning schedule. 

1. Make the bed.
2. Hoover/Vacuum high traffic areas.
3. Put away or de-clutter items on coffee & dining room tables.
4. Collect dirty laundry.
5. Wipe clean kitchen sink, counters and stove top.
6. Wipe clean bathroom sink.
7. Bleach and clean toilet.
8. Wash & dry any dishes immediately after use.
9. Take out the rubbish/trash.

This above list might look like day to day chores for you but for me the lazy lady I usually make the bed and wash the dishes but don't dry them. I know its terrible but that's all changing.

My next blog post will be on Wednesday where I hope to share with you my full cleaning schedule and the method used to make said schedule.

Be sure to sign up to email updates so you can be the first to hear when a new post is live. Also you can follow me on twitter https://twitter.com/TidyThingsIre 

So wish me luck my follow bloggers and readers this is the start of a long rewarding process.

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House Tour - Before the journey begins

Today's post is a tour of our 2 bed apartment, although it is small I still procrastinate and only clean once a week. As you will see from the pictures below, it is quite messy and some rooms are unorganised and cluttered. Over the course of this project of life organization my long term goal is to have a clean, decluttered and organised home. (amongst other things)

Within our family and friends people just call to each others homes unannounced or sometimes you are given a 5 minute warning of their arrival. When this happens you make the excuses "sorry about the mess, I've been so busy today and never got to clean" or "we just made dinner hence the messy kitchen" in reality I just didn't bother cleaning today (or yesterday) and I'm making up an embarrassing excuse which no one really believes. If your like me you may even start clearing up when they are there visiting to make you look less a slob but everyone knows the truth :)

Anyways on with the tour.

Entrance

You will see our entrance its quite clean and clutter free, we hang our coats, there is a little book shelf for candles and a pink organisation box which was in the bathroom but now lives in the entrance (there is nothing in any of these drawers but for some reason I still keep it there).

Guest Bedroom

Well this room is the guest bedroom but as you can see not many people can sleep in here unless you want to move all the crap off the bed and yes I do have 2 mattresses on that bed. The reason behind that is, we rented a fully furnished apartment but we had our own bed to bring with us, the letting agency refused to take the unwanted bed so as a result we had to break it down and store it on/under the guest bed. This is the room that needs the biggest declutter, we still have belongings in my in-laws so this room will be used as storage also, but hopefully I can manage to keep the bed clean.

Bathroom

This room is well organised and basically clutter free. We bought the shelving unit in IKEA when we moved in, it stores our towels on the top two tiers. In the boxes are our toiletries and toilet rolls hidden away from view. 

Main Bedroom

We keep our bedroom as clutter free as possible. You have to excuse the ugly curtains, our room is extremely bright at night (there is a spot light right outside the bedroom window) so we had to get dark curtains, the only length that fit were these ugly things from IKEA.

Laundry Room

This is a good size as we can store our clothes horse in here away from view. As we are in rented accommodation we have a washer/dryer, unfortunately the dryer doesn't work great also the drum is fairly small so only small loads of washing can be done. The top shelf above the washing machine is storage for appliance boxes, we keep these for when we move again. The bottom shelf is storage for household products. This area is a little cluttered but manageable.

Kitchen, Dining and Living Room

On to the main traffic areas these cause me the most stress as they are where the visitors see. The dining area is basically a storage area. We recently bought a new TV and Rob has decided to store the box and old TV in this area. The dining room table has been used by us 3 times at the most and now I store everything on the table

The balcony is kept clear except for the 4 plants we have. As you can see the view is totally amazing :)

The living room is small, again the coffee table holds a lot of unnecessary clutter, the gift bag you see is Rob's present he got me on my birthday this past Monday. We are also in the habit of leaving footwear in this area ugh!

The kitchen gets so dirty so quickly, every time I turn around there are dishes to wash. Rob is in the habit of not drying the dishes and he leaves them to "air dry". 

So that's it folks, you have now completed the house tour. Do you feel as panicky as me about the task ahead? I really hope you don't judge me too harshly, I'm going to change honestly :)  Also if you couldn't tell writing/grammar is not my strongest point so I apologize for errors made.

I hope you enjoyed tour and feel free to leave and comments/suggestions below. I have also setup an email service, so if you would like to be informed when a new post is available be sure to sign up all you need is to enter your email address.

My next blog post will be "Where to begin", until then have a great weekend.

The first day of the rest of my life!

I just wanted to start this blog off by introducing myself and to let you know what this blog will be about.

My name is Karen, I'm 27 and I'm from Ireland.

The purpose to this blog is to share with those reading, my journey from a lazy slob to an organised lady (hopefully).

We have just moved into a rented 2 bed apartment, we don't have much space but we have an awful  lot of belongings. We also have boxes and boxes of belongings stored at my in-laws that also need to find a place in our home if possible.

So above I called myself a lazy slob, to be perfectly honest that's a little harsh but lately I am totally unmotivated, I get up late, watch a lot of TV & YouTube and barely do enough to keep the house reasonably clean.

The reason for my lack of motivation is I have been unemployed for 18 months. In February 2013 thru June 2013 Rob & I travelled throughout Asia and it was the best experience of my life to date. After arriving back in Ireland I searched for a job but unfortunately I have yet to find one so as a results we are living off of Robs salary which is stretched thin every month (rent in Ireland is extremely high). In the past 3 months I find myself emotional, moody and slightly depressed. I hope having more organisation in my daily life will help immensely and I think creating a routine will help improve my mood each day.

This blog will be filled with a lot of to-do lists, pictures/posts of my unorganised life and hopefully pictures/posts of how I organised my life :) If that interests you please keep reading (your comments are also welcome) and following my journey.

My next post will my home tour, this will show you how my home looks before the changes happen.