I recently got a Costco membership which led to: buying in bulk
which led to: pantry needing to be reorganized
which led to: wondering why my floor cleaners were on the floor of my pantry
which led to: organizing all of my cleaning supplies.
VOILA:
Basically, all of the sinks now have a tub (ideally it would be a caddy) with all of the cleaning supplies needed for cleaning that room, and an inventory on the door so I know what I run out of.
This should help with my overbuying of cleaning supplies.
There was a time (just before medication) when going to the store and strolling through the cleaning supply aisle was very calming to me.
Because of this, I have bought many supplies over the years and have found a few that really do what they say they do.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Lemi-shine: you add it to your dishwasher detergent and it gets rid of hard-water spots (even better than vinegar will!)
Quickie glass and mirror microfiber cloth: I’m still a fan of Windex, but with this cloth, you just wet one corner and use it to clean the mirror and use the dry part of the cloth to dry it off and it looks fabulous!
409: My very favorite counter cleaner. It has a strong smell, but it gets off ink (like when someone puts a printed item on a wet counter and it sticks there) and juice stains, and pretty much any stain I’ve ever tried to get off of a counter.
Scrubbing Bubbles shower cleaner: those little bubbles work hard!!
CLR: In the same category as scrubbing bubbles, but I have white tile and white grout in my shower and have tried pretty much everything to get the hard water and rust stains off, and CLR actually works! It also took out a stain in my kids’ bathtub where the water had been dripping from the faucet for 8 years (yes, it took me that long to get the shower fixed)
Woolite Carpet Cleaner: I was a big fan of a brand called “Folex” for a number of years, but it got too hard to find. Then I became enamored with “Spot Shot”. It definitely gets the stain out, but Spot Shot also has big time fumes and once bleached a spot on my carpet. My new fave is Woolite Carpet Cleaner…been using it for a couple of years now and it is fabulous!!
And for efficiency and convenience, I’m a fan of: Swiffer wet jet, Clorox disinfecting wipes, and the Clorox toilet wand.
Just my opinions, but thought I’d share in case you’re looking for a new cleaner and don’t want to try all the different ones available.
If you love to go to garage/yard sales (junking) like I do, you might call a sale with only clothing a “drive-by”. Usually the clothing is thrown on a blanket in the yard and they are charging too much, and with nothing else to look at it’s not worth stopping the car.
But this summer, I held 2 yard sales that were clothing-only and both were successful so I thought I’d blog how it’s done. All of the clothes were donated for a good cause. The initial bags that were brought to my house took up a large chunk of my living room and spilled over into the front room…
Bags of clothing before sorting….
I knew that the clothing would sell better if it was sorted by size. Even someone like me would stop if I could only go through the sizes that I wanted. With this in mind, I borrowed several tubs from a neighbor and went to work. I love showing “during” photos of my organizing, because I want people to have a realistic idea of what happens while you are working ( everything expands). There was no way for me to do it all myself, but lucky for me, I have a friend who sorts clothes as part of her job. She came over and helped. Then later that night, another friend came over. (yay!!)
Bags of clothing during the sort
All told, we estimated that we sorted 90 bags of clothing (some of those were big yard-size bags). We sorted the kids clothing into sizes 6-8, 8-10, 10-12, 12-14. And put the tubs in long lines. IMPORTANT: leave room in between your totes b/c if you put them too close together, your customers will just mix the sizes up. With room in between, they’ll put the ones they’ve looked at out of the tote, and then put back in the ones they don’t want.
Bags of clothes after sorting.
We also made sure all of the shoes had pairs and semi-sorted the adult clothing into types/styles of clothing instead of sizes. The last few tips are:
1. Price all the kids clothing at a quarter a piece, the adult clothing at 50 cents a piece, and shoes at a dollar a pair….and you will sell tons! The point of a yard sale is to make some money off of things that you are willing to give away, so don’t price so high that you have to make several trips to the second-hand store afterwards.
2. A new tip I picked up from a friend is to make your yard sale signs using black paint and a foam brush. It’s less stinky (fumes) than a big permanent marker, and will show up really well from far away.
I got so busy as soon as I had the clothing out on the driveway, that I never got time to take pictures of the actual yard sale, so I made a diagram of where we put stuff on my driveway. We had a few drive-bys, but mostly people stopped. I had quite a few people tell me how organized it was, and that it was the first time they even considered buying clothing at a yard sale.
Email Me
- Jaz
- I'm a stay-at-home mom of 3 who likes to organize, craft, & read (among other things)
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