Re-Purposing Linda: Mary Engelbreit meets Martha Stewart

Okay Everyone, I'm back on track! Watching what I eat, and tracking it online at WW. Thank you for being my accountability partners. Next week Monday should be a good weigh in day.

I wish I could go to the gym, I miss it, but not while on this nasty medication. Must stay close to home and plumbing (nuff said). I'm also waiting for the sprained arm to heal up, which is going more slowly than I'd like.

In the meantime...

My 40 Projects in 40 Days (Lent activity, see previous post) is moving along nicely. I set a course to organize our home. Not an easy task. One of the BIG things I wanted to accomplish was to organize my junk drawer. Drawers, actually.

We have a large, 4-drawer chest of drawers in our kitchen, made from leftover cabinetry after a remodel. I designed it, Phil built it. We're good that way.

The original plan was to house all of our table linens, place mats, cloth napkins and the like into one lovely place. But this being My House and not Martha Stewart's House, anything and everything got shoved into those drawers. We also developed not one, not two, but three junk drawers. Who needs that much junk? Not I! Thus the project.

I saw a nice looking junk drawer on Pinterest, with cheerful little plastic bins to keep things tidy. Instead of buying all those bins for the very large drawer I was using, I bought a half-price pack of scrapbook paper and some Mod Podge and went at it, making my own drawer organizer. I used a cardboard box and an old, thick plastic drawer liner which exactly fit the drawer I was using once I taped two sections together.

Finished and filled awesome drawer!!

I sorted, pitched and grouped the three drawers full of junk, and split the remaining stuff into five boxes: keep, put away, give away, yard sale, and give to Phil to figure out what to do with. I put away the stuff that already had a home, like pictures and thank-you notes. I put the give away box and the yard sale box aside to deal with later. The largest box BY FAR was the Phil Box, confirming my suspicion that the real culprit in the mystery of How We Ever Got Three Junk Drawers was NOT ME. That left the "keep" stuff, which would now reside in the new and improved junk drawer.

I laid the plastic drawer liner on the kitchen table, and using the actual stuff from the "keep" box I mapped out with a marker where I wanted the walls of the drawer to be. then I measured and planned, cut up the cardboard box, made 2 1/2" high walls and covered them with the scrapbook paper and Mod Podge. This morning I glued all the dried wall pieces onto the also-Mod-Podged plastic liner, and VOILA! Lovely lovely junk drawer. So lovely it probably needs a new name, like "Efficient Kitchen Management Drawer," or "Mary Engelbreit Meets Martha Stewart Drawer."