Plumbing Issues?

We have some kitchen drain issues in the apartment ladies and gents so let me give you the back story.

We moved into this apartment on 3 April 2014. After two weeks here we noticed a draining issue in our kitchen sink. Basically the water would take forever to go down the drain. If we used the tiniest drop of water it would take 2 minutes to drain. 

After days of this we headed to Woodies DIY store and got ourselves some drain unblock. I was so excited that our drain would now cooperate with us and do what all kitchen sinks do. How disappointed was I when I noticed that after using the 14euro product the drain did not unblock :(

We went back to Woodies another day and picked up a high quality product but still would not budge the blockage, in fact I think it made it worse. The draining was impossibly slow we had to resort to washing our dishes in the bathroom.

As this is a rented property we contacted the letting agents and demanded someone (a plumber) be sent out to us. On Tuesday 3 June a plumber arrived with industry strength drain unblock. As he was pouring it in the smell would literally burn your eyes and nostrils. Both the plumber and I had to stand on the balcony the smell was that bad. 
He left the product in there for 15 minutes and tested, there was still clogging issues. He proceeded to pour boiling hot water from the kettle into the sink. Eventually the block was dislodged and now we have a fully functioning sick. I could have kissed the man I was that happy, until I looked into the sink after he left and saw this.

He left a stain that will not budge, I've tried everything I could think of (bleach being the main ingredient in all products tried). Does anyone have any ideas on how to remove this?

If you know of anything I can try to remove this stain please let me know in the comments below. 

I hope you have a great day. I will see you all in the next blog.

A review of the first week with my new cleaning schedule.

As the title suggests this short post is to review my first week with the cleaning schedule.

I can confirm that everyday except Tuesday I followed the daily cleaning. As for the weekly schedule that was a complete fail. I deep cleaned the bathroom but that''s about it. 

Today is June 1 and I plan to ensure that I follow the full schedule from here on out. I have planned out the weeks of June below.


June 2 - June 8

Everyday - Daily cleaning
Monday -  Laundry
Tuesday - Kitchen & Office
Wednesday - Bedrooms
Thursday - Balcony Screen & Rubbish Bins
Friday - Living & Dining 
Saturday - Bathroom

June 9 - June 15

Everyday - Daily cleaning
Monday -  Laundry
Tuesday - Kitchen & Office
Wednesday - Bedrooms
Thursday - Refrigerator & Oven
Friday - Living & Dining 
Saturday - Bathroom

June 16 - June 22

Everyday - Daily cleaning
Monday -  Laundry
Tuesday - Kitchen & Office
Wednesday - Bedrooms
Thursday - Windows & Blinds
Friday - Living & Dining 
Saturday - Bathroom

June 23 - June 29

Everyday - Daily cleaning
Monday -  Laundry
Tuesday - Kitchen & Office
Wednesday - Bedrooms
Thursday - Kitchen cupboards & schrod paperwork
Friday - Living & Dining 
Saturday - Bathroom

Thanks for reading, I'll see you with the next post.

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.