The giveaway closed yesterday at noon, and using a Random Integer Generator, I drew the number of the winner, Sherrie Guthrie, of Kemptville, Ontario, Canada.

Thanks to everyone who entered (and those of you who doubled your number of entries by tweeting about the contest). Thanks so much to Jim Deitzel of Rubbermaid for offering the set to be given away. I so enjoyed doing this, I’m going to try to do more giveaways in the future!

I follow Erin on Twitter (where she’s erdoland). I’m always amazed when she casually mentions doing something amazing. (Including stand-up comedy(!), if I remember correctly.) In this great blog post, she outlines her system for living a remarkable life.

Erin has a book coming out in November called Unclutter Your Life in One Week. This post should really whet your appetite for it. I know I can’t wait to read it!

Finishing is the bane of existence for most knitters. And it seems to be real problem for folks who are tackling organizing projects as well. (I count myself in both groups.) I can think of a few reasons:

• Fear of screwing up the finishing and rendering all the prior work wasted
• Fear of discovering I made a mistake in the process and will have to start over
• The tedium of the final tasks (whether it be seaming a sweater or shlepping donations to charity)
• Not knowing how to finish
• The threat of being disappointed in the final result

But the flip side of the coin is the thrill when a project that has gone well is finished. And the time freed up to work on something else (another knitting project, another organizing project, or maybe just something fun).

I’m experiencing the combined tedium and joy of finishing a giant knitting project. As I’ve blogged about before, I started knitting Barbara Walker’s Learn-To-Knit Afghan back in early 2006. It’s comprised of 63 8×8-inch squares, each knit in a different stitch pattern. By the time you’ve finished it, you’ve tasted many different types of knitting.

I got about 48 of the squares done, hit a wall in the Lace section, then put the project down. I picked it up again about a year later when I participated in the Ravelympics, where my goal was to finish the Lace section during the days of the summer Olympics. I actually finished the rest of the squares in that time.

For more than 10 months, those finished squares sat in a stack waiting for me to do something with them. The next step was to lay them out, so that I could seam them into a blanket. I had absolutely no idea how to go about doing that well and lacked the confidence to do it myself. I didn’t want a poor layout to result in an ugly blanket. Plus, I was a little afraid that the seaming itself would be difficult or just plain unenjoyable.

Finally, last month, I sought the help I needed to get past that barrier. I took all 63 squares with me to Michigan on my R&R trip with my crafty girlfriends. And I got some of them to help me layout the afghan. They weren’t daunted at all.

Here’s a photo of the laying out process. It was like putting together a puzzle!

I decided to seam only 48 of the 63 squares, to make a smaller blanket to use on the couch. Once those squares were selected and laid out, I started seaming. I had six columns and eight rows. I started seaming columns, then I sewed columns together.

Here are two of the first squares seamed together:

Here’s a photo of the first column:

And the first pair of columns seamed together:

And the whole thing seamed together:

The next step is weaving in all those ends. Then I’m going to put an applied i-cord border around it. Then I’ll back it with soft fabric, so it’s cozy for using on the couch. And when I’m finished, you can count on my posting a photo!

A finishing job this big somehow seems more than finishing. I’m kind of glad I didn’t consider the enormity of what would have to be done after I’d completed the squares.

This is a great metaphor for all projects, isn’t it? Do it one square at a time. When you’re finished with all the squares, do the next task. Ask for help if you get stymied. Finish that task and then the next. Keep plugging away (even if you take months-long breaks!) and eventually you’ll finish. And, trust me, that’s a thrill and a half.

In the past, I’ve had a mish-mash of food-storage containers. Mostly round Rubbermaid containers, bought eons ago, that still work well for us. I supplemented with some of the “disposable” Gladware and Ziploc containers, and, like most people, had a mess of lids and containers on my hands. Here are a couple of photos. (Once again, I prove I have no shame.)

I kept the bottoms separated from the tops, and most used containers in the top tier of these two bins.

Somehow chips made their way into the container that was supposed to contain the tops for the food-storage containers.

But then, the good folks at Rubbermaid’s Adventures in Organizing blog offered me a set of their new Easy Find Lids food-storage containers. They asked me to try them out and blog about it. And they even offered me an extra set to give away on my blog (see the bottom of this post for instructions on winning). I agreed, because I knew I needed help. I was definitely drawn to lids that are easy to find!

I was sent a set that contained the standard containers, the Premier, the Lock-its spill-proof containers, and the Produce Saver containers.

These containers have a lot going for them. All four categories boast:

• Easy nesting – same-size containers nest easily and they’re easy to pull apart.
• Consistent sizing – all the containers in the set could nest into one stack.
• Lids that attach to the base and to each other
• A limited number of sizes, so that tops and bottoms are interchangeable. Sizes tend to vary in depth, so that one lid can work on both a big or a small container.

So I set out to organize my new containers. I threw away some of the old (especially ones that didn’t have lids!) and came up with a not entirely satisfactory solution. It was certainly an improvement, and I got to rededicate the bin that used to hold lids to chips, which was nice. Here’s a photo:

Getting better, if not fabulous.

I really like the new containers. They’re easy to use, the sizes are convenient, and the quality is excellent. But I found I wasn’t making the effort to attach the lids to the bases. And, to be honest, I found clicking them in a little difficult.

Then Aby came in. She took a look at my containers and suggested we might we able to do with fewer. Barry and I balked at that (though I’m sure she’s right). She mentioned that in her home, she stores these containers with the lids attached to the tops, stacked. My eyebrows shot up. That seemed an inefficient use of space to me.

The food-storage containers were the last thing we organized in the pantry. We ended up storing them exactly where I’d stored them before. But we ditched the unwieldy bins. Aby suggested we just try her idea of putting the lids on the containers and stacking them. I was sure they wouldn’t fit.

But, oh, they fit. And they’re wonderful. There’s absolutely no searching for containers. When I empty the dishwasher, I just attach the containers and stack. It’s the easiest way I’ve ever stored containers, in my 25 years of having a kitchen. Here’s a photo. I’m in love with this.

This makes me happy.

Aby did nest a few, but I ended up stacking them with the lids on and rearranging just a little. It’s really heaven.

Instructions for the giveaway

If you’ve read this far, you deserve a prize. I’m giving away a set of ten Easy Find Lid containers (and ten lids), just like the one I received, courtesy of Rubbermaid. To enter, just leave a comment below. The winner will be selected at random. If you post on Twitter about the giveaway in addition to commenting (be sure to put @janinea in the tweet, so I’ll see it), I’ll put in an extra entry for you. The drawing will be held at noon, U.S. central time, on Sunday, July 12, my brother’s 50th birthday. (Actually his birthday is the 13th, but he lives in Australia, so we’ll do it on the 12th.) I’ll notify the winner via email.

Well, I’m at it again. My friend, Aby Garvey, of simplify101, and I have been talking about swapping services for awhile. We thought it would be more fun (and a lot faster) to work together on some of our projects at home.

I got to go first. Last week, Aby came to my home to help me organize my pantry. I was really excited; I didn’t feel a speck of dread. I couldn’t wait to see what Aby’s ideas for my very crowded pantry would be.

My husband, Barry, was always complaining that he couldn’t find stuff in the pantry. I knew where stuff was, but it was so clogged with expired food that I couldn’t tell at a glance what was there. So I would buy more food, exacerbating the problem.

Here’s the layout of the pantry. It’s essentially the size of a small coat closet, with fixed shelves on the right side. We’d added a custom-made extra-tall metro shelving unit on the left wall, opposite the fixed shelves. There’s a rack of shelves on the inside of the door as well.

Once Aby took a look at it, she made a simple, brilliant suggestion. She suggested we turn the metro shelving unit 90 degrees and put it in the back of the closet. That would allow us to see what was on it without stepping into the pantry. That had literally never occurred to me.

We started by emptying the contents of the pantry, tossing expired things and sorting what was left. Then we turned the shelf as Aby suggested, replaced the shelf liner on the fixed shelves and set to work putting stuff back. We put things away in the order they’re used (the categories with the most frequently used items were put away first, so they’d get the prime real estate).

What was so great is that Aby thinks of space differently than I do. Working with her I realized that I was thinking more about how things fit, rather than their function. For example, I had only small things stored on the small shelves on the door. Aby (rightly) proclaimed those shelves prime real estate (I hadn’t thought of them that way) and put the stuff we use most often there. Of course!

I’d also made an artificial separation between what was stored on the fixed shelves (primarily bowls and implements) and what was stored on the metro shelving (primarily food). Aby suggested eliminating that division and created a space where the two flowed together. The mixing bowls ended up on the deeper metro shelving, where they’re much easier to access. We got the pet food up off the floor onto the bottom shelf of the metro shelving.

The whole process was really fun, and once again, I enjoyed being in my clients’ shoes. For example, I was really interested in hearing Aby’s ideas, rather than expressing my own. I was more than willing to defer to Aby and I really sort of expected she’d come in and magically transform the space. She didn’t disappoint!

It was great to gaze at the new pantry when we were finished. Even better, it’s been great to use the new space. When I cooked dinner that night, the supplies I needed were right on the door. When I went to the grocery store a couple of days later, I actually enjoyed putting away food, because I had room to do it! When we were having some friends over this weekend, I could tell at a glance what food we had to nibble on and I was able to quickly put together a shopping list.

And don’t even get me started on the food-storage containers! That’s a post for another day (this week, I promise). That looked like an impossible challenge and the solution, which I initially doubted, has proven to be fantastic.

Here are a couple of before-and-after pictures, courtesy of Aby, whose photography skills clearly exceed mine.

The pantry was clogged. The pet food, paper bags, and garbage bags on the floor were clearly a problem.

Ahhh. Isn't that better?

Thank you, Aby, for a fun afternoon and for improving my quality of life!

If you’ve considered hiring an organizer but weren’t sure it was worth the investment, trust me, it is. Between the expertise, the company, and the focus the organizer provides, working with an organizer can feel miraculous. I can’t wait to do it again!