spring cleaning and snowballs

An appropriate title, given that I did some MAJOR spring cleaning over the weekend, and today, after being teased with summer-like temperatures for the past week or so, we're being plunged back into SNOW. Ugh. Enough already!!

But back to the subject at hand.  You know how it is.  You start a spring cleaning project thinking it will take you an hour or two max - a little power dusting here, fluffing the sofa pillows there - and before you know it, you've rearranged/organized ALL your kitchen cabinets, and you find yourself at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night building Ikea furniture you just made an emergency trip to pick up because the way you've just rearranged the furniture needs a sofa table to tie it all together.

Oh...you don't know how it is?  Really, is it just me?  Okay, well, maybe the scenario isn't exactly the same, but what I'm getting at, is, we've all started projects that have snowballed out of control.  And I'm lucky that this particular one didn't break the bank (gotta love Ikea!).  Anyway - what started out as this:

Ended up as this:

Check out my story on Apartment Therapy  to read how I hacked my Ikea Lack coffee table :) 

Maybe not the most dramatic difference, but the most important thing is, the floors are clean, the dustbunnies are gone (for the moment anyway), and the place does feel lighter, and fresher. (And let's face it, every room looks better with a cat sitting in a sunbeam). :)  I even ended up with a few things that might find their way to Kijiji, to cover the cost of the new sofa table, so, bonus!  (Simplify, simplify, simplify!)

So that was the den - but what was that about the kitchen cupboards?  Well, about a year ago, when I decided the time had come to buckle down and get serious about eating healthier, I did a complete pantry overhaul - I tossed anything that was processed (goodbye KD!, farewell, Chips Ahoy!) - and restocked with whole ingredients - a variety of nuts and seeds, gluten-free flours and pastas, raw honey - basically all the GOOD stuff.  I also invested in one of these:

...and I L.O.V.E. it.  I wanted to label anything and everything in sight.  (Seriously, I would label my cat if she would let me). :)  But it does come in especially handy when you're doing a pantry overhaul - because a lot of the ingredients I named above are bought in bulk - and there is nothing worse than a cupboard full of plastic bags with missing labels that have you sniffing out the contents to try to guess what it is exactly that's inside.  Over the past year or so, some of those plastic bags with mystery contents were starting to creep back into the cupboard, so I had a bit of a mess on my hands:

Enter the ever versatile mason jar, and the aforementioned label maker - and before you know it, your pantry is pinterest-worthy organized!

These wide mouth funnels are great - get them at the dollar store! 

But then THAT led to cleaning out my appliance cupboard:

It's embarrassing, and neither is all that beautiful - but hey, at least now it's clean and organized! 

And the bottom line is....I'm STILL not finished my spring cleaning.  But I'm getting close.  And since today we'll be having a temporary "winter", I'm not going to panic.  I'll just finish it up in a few days - when it's spring again. :)