Ask Anna

How to Organize Bathroom Drawers

Today I’m going to show you another sneak peek of our guest bathroom makeover, but this time I’m exposing my drawers. Since this is my daughter’s bathroom I don’t spend a lot of time getting in and out of the drawers in here but when I was taking things out to stain the cabinets, and put on the new hardware, I realized how unbelievably unorganized the drawers were! I guess it makes sense since she’s only 5, I haven’t taken the time to organize them since we moved in, and they obviously couldn’t organize themselves… so… they remained unorganized. But… Read More

5 tips to Organize While You Spring Clean

It’s always important to organize when you clean, but organizing while you Spring Clean is even more important because it’s a more detailed cleaning of your entire house! Today I’m going to share 5 tips for how to organize while you Spring Clean, which will help you maintain a cleaner, more organized home all year long. #1 Start from Scratch When you’re cleaning an area in your home it’s always best if you remove everything from the area first, instead of trying to clean around it. For example when I spring cleaned in our master bedroom closet, I took everything… Read More

How to Declutter and Organize a Makeup Drawer

Wendy here, from Pretty Well Organized, with a quick and easy project for you today. Spring cleaning is the perfect time to declutter and organize a space that is easily overlooked: your makeup drawer! It’s an easy location to ignore but today I’m going to give you some tips for how to organize a makeup drawer. One of the biggest misconceptions about the makeup drawer is that we usually use up the makeup before it expires. You might be good about it but I know I am not! I started with a quick Google search of “when does makeup expire”… Read More

DIY Hardwood Floor Cleaner

Today I’m going to share with you my super complicated, super secret hardwood floor cleaner. Actually it’s not complicated or secret, it’s really cheap and easy! All you need, to make this all-natural DIY hardwood floor cleaner, are these 4 items. Here’s what you need: Empty spray bottle Water White cleaning vinegar Lemon essential oil Start by filling the spray bottle 1/4 full with white vinegar, then add 3-6 drops of lemon essential oil (or more if you want it to smell more lemony). Fill the rest of the spray bottle up with water then lightly shake it to mix the… Read More

Master Bedroom Closet Organization

Ever since we moved into our house our master closet has been an organized mess. I say “organized mess” because when we moved in I put everything from our old closet into our new one, but never took the time to think about, and organize the new closet to function at it’s best. You can see in the before pictures that the baskets didn’t fit the shelves well and there was lots of wasted space. I also had my shoes placed in the cubbies that were too small for them so I ended up using more shelf space than I… Read More

How to Remove Grease from a Stove Top

Hi Ask Anna Readers! It’s Kim from A Real-Life Housewife. I have joined the team here as a contributor and will be answering one of your questions each month! Let’s start things off with this question about how to remove grease from a stove top: “How can I get built-up grease off the top of my stove where the control knobs are? It is black in color and grease shows on it sooo much. I’ve tried sooo many cleaners to no avail. Thanks.” If you’ve ever owned a black appliance, you can surely sympathize with this stumped reader. I know… Read More

How to Remove Wax from a Mirror

Did you entertain at your house this fall and winter? Did you light candles? If you did, you likely ran into the same problem I did: candle wax on a mirror (or glass). We have this beautiful framed mirror that leans on our mantel and I love the look of candles burning in front of it. But sometimes I am less than careful when extinguishing my candles and I get a little candle wax on my mirror. And then, like a good homemaker, I leave it there until…spring! I know, I am bad. I put off tackling this chore… Read More

How to Clean a Self Cleaning Oven

After publishing my post about how to clean between oven glass I have received lots of questions about how to clean a self cleaning oven. The good news is that self cleaning ovens aren’t any harder, or different, to clean than non-self-cleaning ovens. We’ve always had self-cleaning ovens but honestly I really don’t like to use that feature too often because basically a self cleaning cycle gets the oven so hot that it burns off all the drips and turns them to ash. As a result the house gets really hot and it usually smells pretty bad. The only time… Read More