whistle while you work.

As we were moving into our apartment last year, I was desperate to just put stuff away. I didn't really care where it went, as long as it was away. The result of this was a whole lot of storage that was neat and orderly, but dysfunctional. For example, I didn't want to put ALL of my cleaning supplies under my kitchen sink, so I settled with putting all of my bathroom supplies and refills in our guest bathroom...

(This picture makes me look like an Extremem Couponer, but fear not, I just buy all my cleaning stuff at Sam's.)

...and putting all of my general cleaning products (Windex, bleach, etc) under my kitchen sink (which, unfortunately, had fallen into a bit of disrepair).

Disregarding the unsightliness of the cabinet, this set-up was also inefficient. In order to clean our master bathroom (cue "My Heart Bleeds for You"), I would have to head over to the guest bathroom, gather some required supplies, head into the kitchen for more supplies, then stop by the laundry room for a roll of paper towels. Typically, I could only do this in one trip on days where my arms were super elasticky, but on the whole, I was making 2 to 3 trips to gather all of my supplies for Cleaning Day. Tragic, I know.

As I started planning this little fixer-upper, I decided that I would place a bucket of all of my "Cleaning Day" supplies underneath the kitchen sink, and then store all of my excess supplies and refills in the guest bathroom / Sam's hoarding area.

As I perused the aisles of lovely Le Target, I first went to the caddies created specifically for cleaning supplies and found items like:

But with the cut-out in the middle, when I tried to place several bottles of cleaning solution in the caddy, I could only get 2-3 bottles to fit neatly. I also wanted something that was big enough to hold a roll of paper towels. Strike one.

It was becoming more evident that I needed to get a general storage tub to hold all of my goodies, and just around the corner from the cleaning supplies, I found just the tubs I needed! I found a fabulous, turquoise, chevron-print tub (no longer available online) that just screamed "cleaning tub" and a smaller, green-handled tub that I knew would be the perfect size for storing my sponges and gloves.

I went ahead and placed all of the items I use for Cleaning Day in the chevron tub to insure everything fit, and I was not disappointed!

Knowing that the tubs were a good size, I printed out some letters in "Smiley Monster" (www.kevinandamanda.com) and got to cutting! No, Santa still has not brought me my Sillhouette. After cutting the letters, I applied two pieces of tape from the edge of the bucket to insure that I applied my letters in a straight line.

I then got out every DIY Girl's dream tool, Mod Podge, and got to gluing! After my first coat of Mod Podge, we were looking pretty phenom:

And after a night of drying and removing the tape, I was in Cleaning Day heaven!

Now, my cabinet under my kitchen sink no longer feels embarrassed to be so messy, and I can just grab my cleaning supplies and get to cleaning! Everyone wins.

• With just 2 tubs, I was able to streamline my cleaning routine saving both time and sanity.
• Rather than having my cleaning supplies split between two rooms, I now have all of my supplies under my kitchen sink with refills living happily ever after in the guest bath.

Do you have all of your cleaning supplies in one place? How do you contain them?