Two minute tidy tip: use chalkboard stickers to label household items

Chalkboard stickers are great! They're reusable, and you can clean off whatever you 've written and start again - so they're really cost effective.

You'll need:

A set of chalkboard labels - I got mine for around £3 on Ebay:

 A chalkboard pen - this cost about £4 from a stationers, but normal chalk would be fine too.

 

Write out what you want the label to say - you can wipe it off with water and a cloth if you make a mistake:

 

Then attach your labels to wherever you want to stick them! I chose them to identify these boxes at the top of my wardrobe:

 

And you're done! Cost: around £7 - I already had the boxes, and they cost £2 each.

How to: organise and store bed linen

Keeping linen organised can be a bit frustrating! I keep mine in a drawer under the bed. Quickly finding what I need can sometimes take time:

I thought I'd share a great tip that I saw somewhere online. Take a pillowcase from any duvet set (and no, I never iron mine, I cover my bed with a nice bedspread!)

Next,  put your folded duvet cover, sheet and other matching pillowcases inside the pillowcase. Then, fold it  in half for neat and tidy storage:

Now your bed sets will have their own storage 'compartments' and will be easier to grab!

Quick fix for tidying: repurposing a kitchen item for organising jewellery

Sometimes, items can be used for a completely different purpose to the one they were designed for. I needed a tray with sections to organise my bracelets and brooches. So I bought this ceramic platter for 99p:

 It looks like this out of the packaging:

 

It looks great with jewellery in it, and it was a real bargain!

Quick fix for tidying: hanging up washing up gloves

Earlier I posted a tip on how to organise necklaces. I used adhesive hooks as part of the tip, and have some left over. I've used one of them to hang up my washing up gloves, with a bulldog clip:

 

I can now store them away under the sink instead of leaving them on the dish rack where they never seem to dry properly, and have occasionally been known to fall into a basin full of water!

Quick fix for tidying: organising necklaces

There are a few necklaces that I often wear  that are a bit too bulky for a necklace stand. I've got an easy and cheap way of storing them away where I can access them quickly when I want to.



I used 2 adhesive hooks - these were part of a set of 20 which cost £1:

 

I positioned them inside a cupboard door, making sure to check that they were at a height where I could see each one, and easily grab the one I need. The result:

I'll be posting again later with another great use for the left over sticky hooks!

My cleaning routine: the kitchen sink

I thought I'd share my great tip for keeping my kitchen sink limescale free and sparkling clean!

I use a great white vinegar spray that I bought in a 99p Store:

I live in a heavy water area, so my taps and sink get a lot of limescale, even though I clean it thoroughly every week. I've used all the well known products with limited success, so I thought I'd try vinegar, as I read somewhere that it was great on limescale. It's the best product I've used so far, it gets rid of limescale really quickly. I cleaned my sink this morning and took some photos to show the results. I sprayed the sink and left it for 5 minutes -  here are the before and after photos I took for my weekly clean of the kitchen:

Before:

After:

 

And another after because I'm so pleased with it!

It also works really well on the bath, toilet and mirrors and is good at removing stains on clothes. Cost: 99p

Sort it Saturday: organising paperwork

Paperwork can be a struggle - we get a steady flow of bills, letters and receipts into our homes every day! it can easily become overwhelming. I find keeping it all in one place and sorted by theme helps me to keep on top of it. I've previously written about how I store receipts, and here's how I organise the other documents that I need to keep.

You'll need:

A box file (around £5 from any stationers)

 

And some plastic zip folders:

I got these folders for £1 - I really liked how I could use them to colour code them to distinguish what was what, and that each pile of paperwork would be in its own container. I then grouped them into themes  and wrote labels that could slide into the plastic pocket at the front. My labels are bank, health, key documents (passport, birth certificate) manuals.

And that's it! Cost: around £6, you don't need to use a box file though, a cardboard box would do the trick too, and would make this really low cost.