TRAVELLING FIRST AID KIT

I carry a travelling first aid kit with me everywhere I go with the kids, it may seem excessive to some but eventually I will use every one of these items. I live in Australia but thankfully have family that live in the US, a few months back I received a package full of Orla Kiely goodies, I knew instantly that I would be using this make-up organiser as a first aid kit. 

Front on, isn't she pretty!

Side on, not too wide considering how much is packed inside

Inside

and the other side

Where I hang my safety pins

Left side contents of the kit

Middle zippered contents. I own an In A Pikle, the plastic pouch is from that. 

and right side

So that is my travelling first aid kit that comes everywhere with us, the last time I used it was at my daughter's school carnival after she stepped on some glass from a broken bottle in the grass. Surprisingly, this was a better setup that what the mobile Saint John's Ambulance station had! 

FIRST AID ORGANISATION

I store my first aid in a cupboard up high in the kitchen. Both my children have a rare connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-danlos Syndrome and I need to be prepared for anything, my daughter who is 6 has unfortunately had her fair share of skin glue or stitches due to her fragile skin. This is just one of three medical kits in my house but this is my primary one, my husband is a Registered Nurse.

I've got four containers, three of which have dividers to separate the items. I've also got the "I've got an ow" printable up on the inside door where I track the medication for my children.

The dividers in the below containers were purchased from Howard Storage world, they are called the Fifi Drawer Separators. I measured the containers and then snapped off the excess.

I like to separate my medications, here I have the Children's Medications and the adults medications are located in the fever and pain container.

Inside the fever and pain container, you can fit a lot into these containers.

Inside the Splints and Wraps container to show you how the dividers work, you can customize them to any size you want.

Finally, this is the printable that I use to track the medication, I purchased a see through envelope from Officeworks and stuck it on the door.

Unfortunately it seems this printable is no longer available but you can purchase a similar product from the original creator (here)

When I'm out and about, I carry with me what I call my walking pharmacy, I will do a blog post on that shortly.

KITCHEN SINK ORGANISATION

I've found the kitchen sink to be one of those places like the junk drawer that accumulates items before you know it! Be it stray items that my husband puts in or something that I have misplaced, we both did it and now it's a mess. We went to Howard's Storage World and purchased a below the sink organiser, it fits our sink perfectly but you can see from the photo below, it still got out of hand.

Everything came out, I gave it a clean, measured up and then off to the shops for containers. I love organising with containers because it separates items and if you then add a label, well then it just looks pretty!

Firstly you need to group like with like, once you have your categories you can place your items in their baskets, label, step back and admire.

We've had this setup for a few months and its working well. So it just goes to show that you can bring home an organising item and it might not work for you but with a few little tweaks, you can get it working effectively.

TIP THURSDAY: DVD RENTAL STORAGE

Our local DVD rental shop charges $1 per movie every Tuesday, I've got a 6 year old with very specific requests and a two year old that is happy to go along with anything, most times we visit we leave with at least 10 movies. We go through phases of hiring, it could either be summer with the air conditioning pumping or I've got sick kids. Summer here is horrendous or I think so, It may only be 32 degrees but the humidity gets up in the mid to high 90's! It's also the wet season, it can rain for weeks therefore DVDs on the couch are perfect for summer!

We've had a few DVDs go missing, they've never had a "home" as such and would either sit on the TV cabinet or dining table. This time around I gave them a home, a basket. I store this in my TV cabinet but my daughter likes to lay it on the top of the cabinet for easy access, she has not misplaced one since. That means a happy mummy for not having to look for the lost DVD or pay the late fee because it took us days to find it.

Yes, I have a huge Batman fan in the house.

Here are the baskets in the cabinet.

My tip for Thursday, if you regularly hire DVDs then organise a storage space for them.

LUNCH BOX ORGANISATION

My girl has just about finished her first year of school, I've loved making her lunches every day and I like to mix things up but unfortunately she's not very adventurous, some days I can fool her but not very often. Bento style lunches are so much fun and it always manages to put a smile on my girl's face. She has homemade sushi at least twice a week, she'd eat it every day if she could!

I like to have everything in its place and decided when my daughter started school that I would set up a lunch box area. I've had it a few different ways but how I have it now is working really well. I'd love to try Easylunchboxes or PlanetBox. Currently I'm loving Laptop Lunches and will be getting more soon as I like to pack a few days in advance to make the mornings easy. I live in the tropics and the lunch box must be able to fit into a small esky with a couple of ice packs, the classrooms don't have fridges for school lunches.

I have the Bento accessories on the top shelf in a drawer set and on the bottom shelf is lunch boxes, carry cases and containers.

 I purchased this drawer set from Howard Storage World and first used it for my make-up in the bathroom, I don't own much make up and decided to repurpose it for the Bento accessories and I couldn't be happier with how it's working out.

In the top shelf I have bento pickers, dividers and small containers. The clear container is a small tackle box and the blue plastic organisers are from inside a stackable container which I use elsewhere. I use the silicone cupcake cases to separate fruit in the Laptop Lunches.

The middle drawer holds everything that I use to mold or cut, I need to get a few more items for my boy.

The last drawers stores napkins and utensils. In the white container is a knife, fork and spoon set. I send in the white plastic spoons because my silverware was not making it's way home. I have a pretty basic Bento accessories setup, I'd love to add to my collection.

At the back on the bottom shelf are the lunch boxes, I use the black Laptop Lunches box for my daughter at school as it fits perfectly in her esky. The others I use for my son who is not at school.

And lastly, the basket is where I store all the containers. I love how I can slide this out and get what I want.

Having this setup makes assembling lunch so quick, I just reach in and grab what I want. I'm looking forward to getting more organised lunch boxes like Laptop Lunches and I will then rehome majority of  the plastic containers in the basket. We don't use any plastic bags at school.

What is your favourite lunch box or Bento accessory?

I'd also love to hear how you store your lunch boxes.

KITCHEN DRAWER ORGANISATION

My drawers were the last to be organised in my kitchen, I don't quite know why I never got around to it. I always loved the look of the drawer dividers but every time I went out looking for them, no one had them in stock.

One day at The Reject Shop, I was super excited to stumble across some expandable drawer organisers for $5 for a set of two. I grabbed two packets and off home we went.

I have two kitchen drawers that needed organising, the first one stores mainly cutlery and the other has utensils.

These are the drawer dividers that I purchased. 

"Before" of the first drawer. There is still a Christmas butter knife in there! 

"After" a good scrub and sorting 

One more drawer to organise, this one holds all my utensils. This was was a bit messy! Organising this also gave me a good excuse to sort through, throw away and clean the drawer. There is even a broken spoon holder which my husband insisted I held onto.

"Before" what a mess!! 

"After" 

I'm really happy with how the drawers have turned out, especially for the bargain price of $10 and the space even looks bigger. I've had these drawer organisers in place for over 3 weeks and they have stayed firmly in place. It's now a lot easier to put away the utensils, although my 6 year old daughter has just started unpacking the dishwasher and I've found a few oddly placed items, lol. 

How do you organise your kitchen drawers?

BATH TOY ORGANISATION

For a while now I've been frustrated with the lack of organisation with the bath toys, I like the kids to participate with the clean up but it was hard for them when the toys couldn't fit into the toy bucket. We ended up having toys all over the place, it was a huge mess!

This is what is used to look like.

A quick trip to Masters with the kids resulted in a few items purchased: tension shower rod, curtain rings, cable ties, cutlery holder and four peg baskets which I drilled holes in for the water to drain. I could have chosen blue peg baskets but as this bathroom runs closely off our hallway, I didn't want anything distracting in case the bathroom door wasn't closed.

End result

The kids now have four baskets for their toys, the soap is located in the cutlery holder and both shower hooks hang up body scrubbers. I wish I had taken a photo of my 6 year old daughter's face when I showed her, she had the biggest smile. She can't wait to test it out tonight.

How do you organise your kids bath toys?

I WAS NEVER AN ORGANISED PERSON

I was never organised to begin with, in fact, I was the complete opposite! I was the messy child who hid lunch under her bed, my mother thought I ate them. I often left little surprises for my mother to find. When I was old enough I moved out of home and my definition of a tidy room meant hiding everything in my wardrobe, lucky for me my wardrobe in that first house was huge. It was easy to live the double life.

A few more years went by and I moved away from family to start a business, I still wasn’t organised and the bills were left unpaid. I then met my husband who believed in a place for everything and everything in it’s place. He had a system, I did not. At times his system made perfect sense, like in the morning when I was rushing out and couldn’t find anything to wear because it was still sitting in the laundry basket, or I couldn’t find my keys, my phone or my bag! I hate to think of how much time I’ve lost in just looking, searching for every day items that should be easy to locate.

Our systems clashed on more than one occasion and I knew I had to change. At this stage, we had a little girl and I wanted our mornings when leaving the house to be less stressful. I also didn’t want to lose anymore of my husbands mail. So I watched countless Youtube videos, searched blogs for organisational systems and slowly over time, I developed a system. I have organised nearly every room in my house and I will use this blog to go through the systems that work for me and hopefully can work for you too. I love how when you’re organised, you’re more productive and with kids around, that’s a definite bonus!

I’m still coming up against systems that don’t work for me and because of that I update my style of organising here and there. I would love for you to join me on this journey, if someone like me can become organised, then anyone can do it!

Abstract baby boys room

Mobile for over the cot, would be hung from the ceiling
Wall decal

Another mobile

Fitted cot sheet

Another fitted cot sheet

Love this set of prints, would look great behind the cot in co-ordinating colours

cute ABC print

This is another idea for behind the cot, it comes in a set of 3

I still haven't done anything to my boys room and he's due in 8 weeks!

While I love the Giraffe theme I also love the abstract look, it's fresh and bright and so easy to change the look of the room if need be.

Baby boys room

First of all the inspiration comes from a world map, the colours of blue, orange and grey
This inspiration poster is what started me on this colour scheme

This Giraffe would look cute peering into the cot

I love this idea of using old picture frames

Might be too much for the bedroom but it's cute

changing pad cover

another changing pad cover

I'm 27 weeks pregnant with our 2nd child and it's a boy! I've been searching for months to get some inspiration on what to do with his bedroom and I keep coming back to this colour scheme. I love it! We already have furniture from our daughters nursery room so basically I just need the soft furnishings but I will be painting a few bits of furniture as everything is white