I woke up to this.
I was ready to start my day because I had a plan, an agenda. Today was going to be Garage Day. Our garage had become a catch all ever since Christmas. Ya know all the stuff I had gotten rid of to donate? It is sitting in my garage. Bags of used wrapping paper from Christmas. Yep, in the garage. Halloween and Christmas decor? In the garage waiting to go up into the attic. I don’t even want to post a picture because it is beyond embarrassing. But I always said I’d be honest, so here it is.
It is HORRIBLE!!! After I took this I grabbed two of the big black garbage bags and filled them up. I even found a bag of stocking stuffers that I had forgotten to put out in the stockings. Want to hear the worst part? I cleaned it out right after Halloween. Between decluttering the inside and holiday throwing up all over it, I look like an episode of Hoarders. It gives my anxiety just to step foot in it. My laundry closet is out there. I do not want to even go out there to do laundry.
Which explains this.
This is the laundry that I haven’t wanted to do because of the anxiety I get in the garage, but the laundry gives me anxiety too, so all it is, is one big vicious circle.
I decided that I could kill two birds with one stone. I’d do the laundry while I sorted through the garage. All I needed to do was get all the empty boxes together to break down and recycle. Put all the holiday decor tubs in one place so Donny could help me get them back up in the attic. Put all the donations in one place so I could load them in the car and get them to the thrift store. Easy, right? Wrong. It was freezing and I got overwhelmed. I needed Donny’s input on some of the things out there. He’s off tomorrow. Perfect.
I decided to do something that I like to do.
It was a cold day and what’s one of the best thing for cold days? Soup. French Onion soup. Which is just about my favorite soup in the whole world. I had found a recipe for my Instant Pot on pinterest. I would post the link, but I changed some of the ingredients and added others to make it the way I liked it.
I have never made French Onion soup in my Instant Pot before. Melt butter and oil on the saute setting. It’s 3 T butter and 1 T olive oil.
Add 4 thinly sliced onions and saute until they are brown. This part takes the longest because you want to get the brown “crust” on the bottom. Don’t rush it. This can make or break your soup. I would pat them all down, let them cook for a few minutes then move them around and pat them down again.
These still needed to cook a while longer, but you can see they are starting to brown.
After the onions are browned, scrape the brown crust off the bottom and mix it with the onions then add 5 cups beef broth, 1 tsp salt, 2 bay leaves and pepper to taste. Put the lid on and use the manual setting for 10 minutes. Do a natural release.
After it’s released, slice french bread and toast on both sides in the oven. Spoon your soup in an oven safe dish, put the toasted bread on and place the cheese on top.
I get this cheese at Aldi. I love that it’s round and fits perfectly on my bowl. You can use whatever cheese you like best. I normally use provolone or swiss.
Place your bowl on a baking tray and put it under the broiler until it’s nice and bubbly. That’s it! Super easy and just as good as any fine dining restaurant.
I normally let my cheese brown more, but I was starving and couldn’t wait. This will definitely be my go to French Onion soup recipe from now on. I ate this whole bowl and probably could have eaten two more. It’s that good.
Nothing is better than hot soup on a cold day. Especially when your plans don’t go exactly as planned. Comfort food at it’s finest!
Tomorrow we storm the garage!
Wish us luck. You saw it, we need it.
P.S. I did get all of the laundry washed, dried and put away, so there’s that.
Hoosiers might be an old movie, but it’s still such a good movie. I am a sucker for feel good sports movies.
Nothing beats fresh sheets and a shiny house.
Father son bonding at its finest. Hannah and I are not “gamers” in the least so we did our thing in the breakfast nook.
Farkle is one of our favorite games. You don’t actually need the game in the box, just 6 dice and a piece of paper to keep score. You can Google the instructions. I lucked out and got this complete, never used game at Goodwill for 59 cents. Our cat Monkey is always right there in the middle of everything. Have you ever played this weirdly named game? It really is fun.
If I fits I sits.
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 my son who is not a chocolate lover liked these. They are seriously good.
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 