Daily Tip - Binders are your friend!

Husband and I have a lot of kitchen appliances.  If I'm looking for somebody to blame, it's either my brother (who has admitted to poking around in the kitchen to find out what we don't have in preparation for holiday gifts), or my step-mother-in-law (who loves to pass along new kitchen gadgets that she has found).  We have a drawer that was dedicated to all the various manuals and warranty information for said appliances.  Then, once the baby arrived, it started to fill with all the various manuals for his toys.  Upon opening the drawer the other day to add a few more bits of paper, I realized that it was at capacity.  Thus, time to find a solution. I think there is currently a little section of my brain that is dedicated to "things I've seen on Pinterest."  I haven't necessarily pinned all of those things, but I've spotted them while poking about.  This falls into that category.

I took one 3-ring binder, and one pack of heavy weight sheet protectors.  I gathered all of the manuals for the kitchen, baby items, and other household things.  Each one went into a sheet protector pocket with the corresponding warranty info, receipts, or any other related documents.  I didn't go so far as to alphabetize, but I did try to organize by type.  The binder filled really quickly, so I'm pretty sure I'll already have to start a new one shortly and will probably separate by type into different binders.  It's nice that I'll know where to find everything...for once.  Next up, the closet of doom (which is where boxes of random stuff go to die)?  Perhaps.

What you're favorite household organization tip?  I'm all ears!

Daily Decor - Housing my literature

Since buying our townhouse nearly 2 years ago, husband and I have come to the conclusion that the work we want to do on it is truly never-ending.  The unfortunate part right now is that while husband is unemployed, he has all the time in the world to work on home improvements, but we don't have the money to fund them - the ultimate catch 22.  In the meantime, we're settling for the little things that are affordable without the financial burden of, say, granite counter tops for the kitchen.

The most recent upgrade was our living room bookshelf.  We previously had an old, totally dilapidated bookshelf gifted to us by husband's step-dad.  I'm thinking this thing might have be older than I am.  Our sizable book collection was wedged onto it, double stacked, with the risk that removal of a book would result in a literary avalanche.  IKEA was nice enough to reduce their pricing on this bookshelf, so last weekend we made the purchase and got handy with the hex-wrench.  We found a nice spot for it, in front of the large wall mirror, and even sorted our book collection into each cube by theme and author (yes, mildly obsessive I know).  It happily swallowed the books, even leaving lots of space for us to put pictures of family and other knick-knacks that haven't yet found a proper home.  We're really happy with how it looks including the cool effect of having the mirror behind it.

It may not be much, but it's amazing how the smallest things can completely change the look of a room.  Now, what to do next on our home improvement journey?