More Martha–Organizing Away!

Remember last week, I told you about the new Martha Stewart stuff at Staples. While Will and I were running our errands this weekend, I managed to talk him into making a Staples pit-stop.

Oh baby.
All kinds of notebooks and note pads and labels, oh my!

Desk organizers, metal label holder thingys, to do lists (IT WAS SO HARD NOT TO BUY ONE OF THESE! I LOVE TO DO LISTS!) and coupon accordion folders.

I settled on getting:

2 - 8”x7.25” clear pockets that stick to the wall
1 set of chalkboard labels
some chalk
and paper clips that were on clearance for $0.50 each. Sweet.

It was time to conquer this mess:
I’ve told you about our super limited drawer space in the kitchen… This drawer is maybe 6” wide and is between the fridge and range. I get lazy and shove what ever I don’t know what to do with at the moment in this drawer. Sometimes it gets stuck because I literally shove stuff in there and close it. Coupons for car stuff like oil changes and tires are in here, along with dental coupons because we all desperately need to go but haven’t found one in our area yet. Plus the usual stuff of scissors, mail opener, pens, to-do pads galore, post-its, camera charger, measuring tape, tape, etc. Oh and receipts from this month’s grocery/Target runs. I like to keep those as a gentle reminder as to why we are out of money at the end of the month, and that it wasn’t that I bought junk…I actually bought food and necessities (and probably a teeny tiny bit of junk).

The table is covered in magazines, coupons that need to be clipped and filed, and of course you need your phone and coffee to get the motivation to do this. After I put it all away, I prepped for my grocery store trip and ended up saving $125! I got FREE beer!, $0.30 Colgate toothpaste, $1 shampoo, 3 super yummy Rib-eye steaks for $14, 3 General Mills cereals for just over $1 each, and a bunch of other stuff. I haven’t broken the $100 mark in a looooooooong time, and I think $125 is my new PB. So again, a quick jaunt to Staples was thoroughly earned.

The after isn’t very exciting. The table got cleared off because things either got put away or thrown away, and the drawer looks like this:
It doesn’t look like a huge improvement, but it is… pads stacked to one side, scissors and pens corralled to the other side, screwdrivers, phone charger, tape measure and tape are all easily accessible and in view. Receipts and coupons do not live here anymore…

Because they live here!
In the cabinet just above the junk drawer, I put the clear Martha pocket to hold all of our car and shopping-type coupons. Will already got his Toys R Us birthday coupon, so I stuck it in here. It’s handy and out of the way, but somewhere we go often to be reminded that we have these things.

I haven’t decided where to put the other pocket, but I’m sure I’ll find a place for it. There’s lots of junk junking up our house in piles everywhere. So over the next few weeks as I whittle down my stack of magazines and other random piles, I’m sure a genius use will pop into my head. It’s been sticking up there for a few days and so far, so good. I like that its plastic, too, because its easily wipe-able. We don’t have the best range hood exhaust system, so that’s a really good thing, since this is right next to the range.

Have you checked out the Martha stuff at Staples yet? Any favorites? I’m kind of drooling over the desk organizers. I have one very similar to it, so maybe when this one dies, it will get replaces with a lovely Martha teal one… And as soon as I’m done using my spiral notebook pad, it’s definitely getting replaced with one of the Martha’s circle design ones. I love the colors on those!

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