It’s the weekend, so I decided to take a break from my Konmari journey to just relax a bit. The Cowboys were playing in the playoffs and if you didn’t know, well……..
I have been a Dallas Cowboy fan since I was very, very young. When I was 3 all I wanted for Christmas was a Dallas Cowboy football uniform. My mom kept trying to talk me into the cheerleader uniform, but I would have none of it. So here I am, as an almost 4 year old, wearing my prize uniform.
Even though my team lost and I was very sad we had some yummy baked goods that my daughter and I whipped up because they are both quick and super easy. Not to mention really good.
Cream Cheese Pecan Cookies
Ingredients:
2 sticks of butter (at room temp)
4 oz cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cup flour
1/2 salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
Cream butter and cream cheese together. Add sugar, egg yolk and vanilla. Gradually add flour, salt and baking powder. Scoop about a tablespoon onto an ungreased cookie sheet. (I line mine with parchment paper). Top with a pecan half. (I only had to pecan pieces and they worked just fine)
Bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes
They are SO good. Not too sweet and very buttery.
We also made cheesecake swirl brownies. It’s just regular box brownies, but when you add the cheesecake swirl it becomes something totally different. I’m not a big fan of plain brownies, but these are wonderful. The cheesecake cuts the overly sweetness of the chocolate.
Cheesecake Swirl
6 oz cream cheese
5 T softened butter
1/3 cup sugar
2 Large Eggs
2 T flour
1/2 tsp vanilla
You just mix all of this up together until smooth and drop it my spoonfuls over 1/2 your batter. Next just pour the rest of the brownie batter on top and swirl it with a knife. This was for a 9×13 pan. If you do the smaller 9×9, just cut the recipe in half.
I think it would be great with any cake batter also.
Even my son who is not a chocolate lover liked these. They are seriously good.
Hope you are having a nice relaxing weekend also. I’m off to lick my wounds and watch the Saints (my second favorite team) hopefully beat the Eagles. Who dat!
Stacy
Okay, not exactly kitchen decluttering, I was gearing up for it by drinking my coffee and watching Charmed. C’mon, just the outfits they wear are worth the watch. Did we really wear this in the early 2000’s???
I don’t have a lot of counter space, so instead of taking everything out all at once, I was going to have to do it in “shifts”. I decided to start with cabinets in the far right foreground. Glasses and pots and pans. I figured I’d start with the easiest ones to give myself confidence that I could actually get the whole thing done in the few hours I had.
This is the before. Not too terribly bad, but I had some things I needed to get rid of.
Step one is to take everything out. I don’t think I realized just how much stuff was in that one cabinet. Can we say overwhelming? 
See how much better just removing the things you don’t use and only keeping what you love changes the whole look? Whew, first one down.
My pots and pans stay pretty organized. The potatoes and the protein powder just always bugged me. I never really had a place to put them so they always just got shoved down there. The worst was when I forgot there was a bag way in the back. Know how I found it? I literally thought something had died in my kitchen. Nope, just mushy rotting potatoes. Yeah, not a good place to store them.
When you take everything out, it’s the perfect time to crawl on in there and wipe out your cabinets. Mine didn’t look dirty, but my rag said otherwise. I’m super jealous of anyone that has those pull out racks. Lucky ducks.
No more potatoes!!!! I also put my electric skillet behind my strainers. I don’t know why I never thought to do that before. Now it makes much more sense. The Konmari process is to hold the object and see if it “sparks joy”. I think that’s a little weird, especially with something like a pan. I just knew that if I didn’t ever use it, it needed to leave. A good example were my 2 stainless skillets. Everything stuck to the bottom and when my husband used them I’d always say, why are you using that horrible skillet? Yet, I still kept them. They’re out of here.
I only have 1.5 sets of dishes. The ones on the middle shelf my husband gave me many years ago. I love them, but they are discontinued and I looked into replacing them. One salad plate alone was something like 30 bucks. I just can’t get rid of them so it’s kind of a puny set. I also love white dishes. They don’t all match, but they are all the same color, so they work for me. I’m not really picky about it. 
I just got rid of the black bowls, some plastic bowls and moved the popsicle pop things to the cabinet over the fridge because, well, it’s winter.
I really like mixing bowls.
The kids lunch stuff and serving dishes are now housed in here.
After:
Mixing bowls, baking stuff and plastic food containers.
The thing on the top right is my stand mixer that I absolutely love but am sad because it’s too big to sit on my counter and doesn’t fit under here. It just feels wrong to have it laying on it’s side like that.
I moved my chip and bread baskets down here with my small appliances and water bottles.
The box holds our grilling utensils. I had extra room, so it seemed as good a place as any.
I swear by the Dollar Tree plastic baskets. 
I use the plastic glasses for when I chop onions. Keeps the tears away.
They just seem happier up there rather than jammed into a cabinet.
Well, except for my cat who was freaked out because he hates change and probably thought we were moving again.
I only had to toss a few things because I go through them regularly. This was after I’d gone through them and separated them.
Using the pill box just makes it quicker and easier and you don’t have to remember if you’ve already taken them or not. Seriously, I have that problem.
My towels are not folded in the Konmari style. I use 2 washclothes a day. We go through the towels pretty quickly too. I find that if I can see everything, I’m good. Use what works for you.
I haven’t seen these in FOREVER. We used to come back from the pool and cook some up. I remember them being so good. I also thought Taco Bell burritos and McD’s chicken nuggets were delicious, so there is no telling what these are really going to taste like. It’s okay, they are still a happy memory.
Prepping to power wash!
Our house is weird because we are on a corner with the garage in the back and the actual backyard cut in half by this fence. We’re coming up with a few ideas. Hopefully I’ll have pics sometime in the near future.
Here’s the haul. That is nuts. Especially because when we couldn’t find one, we would just go buy another one. Also, to charge his phone, my son would take off the wall plug part and just plug the rest into his laptop. That meant there were cords with no wall plug because he couldn’t remember where he put them. I found a lot of them when we decluttered his room.
I put all the chargers together in a random bin I already had. I labeled the ones that needed it, like my chromebook and the Handycam. I just put hair elastics around them. The headphones I just put in a basket I already owned.
Now all of our chargers are stored in the top drawer of our entertainment center.
He is actually under the blanket on his bed.
On the whole it’s not too bad. The goal of today is to go through every single item, by category and keep the things he loves and discard the rest.
There are WAY too many stuffed animals. There is no need for 2 big buckets. He doesn’t even know what’s at the bottom.
This just looks dangerous.
Now they are all in his bookshelf. (He added a new giant baby head to his collection)
He wasn’t too thrilled when I dumped the bin of Lego out. Everything was so jumbled up and we found a lot of non lego things that didn’t belong. We also realized that the bin we had them in was too deep which made it super hard to find pieces he was looking for. After going through them, we decided to store them in a wider shallower container. Although he grumped through this part, he found some figures he’d forgotten he had and he realized it wasn’t as bad as he had anticipated. We keep his Lego stored under his bed. They’re out of the way but easy to slide out when he wants to play with them.
We put the empty Funko boxes in the green basket at the top because I was informed, you NEVER throw them away. A tote bag and extra sheets take up the rest of the shelf. I found the plastic boxes at the bottom at Big Lots for less than a dollar a piece. We’ve used this system for a while and he really likes it and it works well for us.
His desk drawers hold his trumpet music and music stand, sketch pads and notebooks and his markers, pens and pencils. I wanted him to get rid of the tray table, but he uses it when he’s sitting on his bed or in the big chair. It holds his cat head lap desk and an extra laptop. The banker’s box underneath holds special notes and cards that he kept.
We got his stuffed animals down to one bucket. We moved his puppets up to the shelf. He collects puppets and he and his sister actually use them when they make up puppet shows. 
Her desk drawer holds the items she uses every day.
This is our donation pile.
Trash pile minus one bag that wasn’t full yet.
She was happy with the results. It’s going to be SO much easier for her to function in her space. It took us about 6 hours total, but oh so worth it.
The Funky Frugalista 