Christmas is near and I’ve been continuing my cleaning and organization effort mainly in the kitchen and bathrooms. While searching for good products to organize the kitchen, I discovered a Youtube channel called “Koan杏子妈妈“. This channel is hosted by a Chinese housemaker who lives in Japan, and she mainly publishes about recipes, cleaning tips, and home organization products. The videos I love the most on Koan’s channel is about organization. Specifically, the video introducing DIASO products really caught my eye. I was impressed how versatile the DIASO magnetic tools are. Although I cannot find their product locally, I was able to find similar products online.
Using magnetic hooks for fridge organization
These hooks from IKEA are similar to the ones showed in Koan’s videos. I got a pack of two and put them on the side of the fridge for rubber bands and bottle brush we use often.
The small pottery holding tiny bottle brushes is a hand-made souvenir from my past travel. It came with a magnet glued in the back and was perfect for these tiny bottle brushes.
I got these magnetic clips from work which are useful on the side of the fridge for gloves and kitchen towels.
This is what the side of the fridge look like now. I only keep things we use often here.
Slav loves watching birds from the kitchen window, so the “common feeder birds” poster is displayed on the side of the fridge. I also keep the measurement conversion table close. You know, metric vs imperial system difference…
Hanging organization for sponges and cleaning supplies
After tidying up the side of the fridge, I organized the cabinet beneath the sink. We mainly store cleaning supplies here. I glued some 3M hooks on the back of the cabinet doors, so gloves and sponges can dry better:
Magnetic soap holder for bathroom
I also got is a magnetic soap holder for our master bathroom. Slav uses soap bar often and we did not like any of the soap drainer we tried in the past. They all left residue on the tile. It just felt messy no matter how often we clean this area.
This magnetic soap holder looked identical to the one introduced on the Koan channel. It has a simple design that one end should be secured onto the wall surface with 3M adhesive, and the other end is magnetic.
A bottle cap-like metal cap can be pressed into any soap bar.
Now each time we use the soap bar, we could easily put it on the holder to dry:
Here is what this corner looked like with the magnetic soap holder. We have already used it for a couple weeks. Thus far, the soap bar dries pretty quickly and there is no residue on the floor tile.
I am impressed how strong the adhesive on hooks is nowadays. When we finished the master bath, I put these black towel hooks on the bathroom wall. Two years later they still attached very well despite us pulling down the towels multiple times per day. So when we finished the main floor bath, I bought the same kind of hooks (in chrome color) again.
I used some small transparent hooks for pothos in the bathroom. It has grown a lot in the last two years.
On one end it has stretched across the top of the medicine cabinet:
And on the other end, it grew out of the shower area and started wrapping around the wallI think in another year or so it will go around the whole bathroom.
Bamboo organizer for kitchen and offices
Maybe Slav was inspired by my organization effort too. When he was grocery shopping at Costco, he got me a set of bamboo organizating boxes:
There are total 10 of them in different sizes:
I used one in the tea/coffee drawer to hold coffee supplies including the milk frother we just got:
The second one went into the baking drawer for keeping small measuring spoons in one place:
I also put one in the tool drawer. We keep sharp tools including cheese shredder and peelers in this drawer. The bamboo container separates sharp tools, making it safer for us to reach in.
The smaller bamboo box is perfect for holding earphones at the charging station in the living room.
I used another one to hold various attachments for our small hand-held vacuum.
The rest of the bamboo boxes are kept in my office for now. I am sure that I will find good use for them in the coming days. 🙂
Now we are done with the organization and cleaning, we will be putting up the Christmas tree and decorations! Merry Christmas, everyone!