The Dumping Ground!

Today’s post is the first of three that I will be writing about how I tackled the biggest messiest place in my house.

Everyone has that place that you dump your bags/shopping/bills/paperwork etc. It could be your dining room table, a desk or just any available space as soon as you walk in the door. Ours is the breakfast bar in the kitchen. I have always wanted a breakfast bar and when we moved into our current house we knocked down a wall between our Kitchen and Dining room and I got my wish. What happened though was that it turned into a place where the daily mess got dumped! Check out the picture below to see what I mean:

I needed to do something about it. The first thing was work out what was being dumped on there. This is what I found:

– paperwork – bills, useful info, school paperwork, homework etc.
– bags
– stationary stuff used to pay the bills, send the letters, complete the school paperwork
– more bags
– recycling that was waiting to go outside to the bins.
– somewhere to charge the technology

We don’t have an office or a desk in our house so everything and anything paper related was being put here, along with everything else that comes with a busy family kitchen. It really wasn’t helping my OCD, and I needed to sort it before I was going to explode – I know this sounds soooo drama queen but this is the kind of thing that pushes my wrong buttons!

So, after identifying what was being dumped here I decided to tackle the biggest items first – the recycling! Underneath our breakfast bar there was a cupboard that I used to store crisps and vegetables in. After re-organising the pantry cupboard (another post for another day) I had moved the crisps out so that left a shelf free. I then found this pink flexi tub (see picture) at Dunelm for under £4.

This tub was perfect. It moulded a bit and fitted perfectly into the cupboard and holds at least a couple of days worth of recycling. This instantly made my life so much easier as it removed the biggest items off the breakfast bar and also gave me something to carry the recycling out in.

Having this tub and the recycling hidden out of sight has made a huge difference. No longer does the junk mail and every plastic tub imaginable get left on the side because I sort it as soon as it arrives, or gets washed up, and it gets put straight into the recycling tub.

This is how I manage my recycling but I would love to hear what you do with yours.

Hope you enjoyed this post, please visit again next Friday when I will be posting about what I did next to continue clearing up my breakfast bar, and how I tackled the dreaded paperwork!!

Let’s get organised
Jo
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