Back in August, I showed you exactly how durable Brother P-Touch labels are. Since then, I’ve gotten to know my own Brother P-Touch P-1290 label maker and decided it would be extremely helpful in organizing our pantry in a way that worked for our family.

The Brother labeler is super-versatile in the different styles of labels it can produce. I can print out standard block-letter labels, but I can also make a wide variety of decorative labels to add personality and style to my organization. Here’s just a sample of the types of labels I can print: 

As you may have guessed from the title, Our home organization is challenged because of ADHD. My husband has had ADHD since his tween years, and home organization is a constant struggle for him.

Surprisingly, I also have ADHD. I was only diagnosed with ADHD after a 3-hour screening in June 2011, so I’m still learning how my mind works and the best ways to work with my mind. Suffice it to say that, while the ADHD diagnosis was shocking (5 months later, I’m still a little surprised!), the evaulation of my behaviors, my habits and my personality characteristics that the screening prompted made me practically see all the puzzle pieces of my life fall into place.

To avoid an ironic instance of getting sidetracked, I’ll save the story of my diagnosis and my own personal characteristics that embody the affliction for a different blog post. Right now, I want to share how this stay-at-home mom with ADHD organized her pantry.

First, let me show you the incredible disorder that my pantry was in: We remodeled our kitchen just over 3 years ago, and we were lucky to have four pull-out shelves installed in a big cabinet for food storage. Those pull-out shelves make getting to the food in the back of the pantry easy, but it also makes it easy to forget about stacking since the food can be spread out across each shelf.

The only other issue I have with the rolling shelves is they can’t be easily adjusted up or down. My baking shelf on the bottom was in total disarray because I couldn’t stack my old canisters up to save space. Combine that with a mishmash of packaging, zip-top bags and various brands of storage containers and I had a mess I just couldn’t live with any longer.

I knew that I wanted to start storing almost everything in square/rectangle containers so they’d fit together better. I also knew that people with ADHD need to have everything labeled to make sure items get returned to their proper place after use. Believe me, if I don’t know where to put an item, it just won’t get put away. Labels keep that from happening.

I decided to use a combination of containers I already had (Tupperware Modular Mates and Rubbermaid Premier containers similar to these) and I invested in several boxes of these Rubbermaid containers: 

With those containers and my labeler in hand, I pulled everything out of the pantry and sorted it into categories (one for each shelf):

• Baking
• Cooking and Condiments
• Snacks, munchies and treats
• Beverages and miscellaneous

The broad categories meant that there was a place for everything, and I wasn’t left with random items that didn’t have a home.

I proceeded to put every product into a storage container and label it. If the item hadn’t been opened, the entire package was dropped into a container. Every piece was then labeled. Since cooking and baking items were going to the bottom of the pantry, those labels were stuck to the tops of the containers. Everything had a label attached to the side.

After a few hours of strategizing and shopping, then several more hours of organizing, my pantry actually looked like this:

I have to admit, when I was almost done returning all the containerized and labeled items to the pantry, I actually looked around for more food, convinced that I had forgotten a pile of snacks or pasta in another corner of the kitchen! The amount of room remaining in the cabinet was pretty astounding!

Since that project was finished with room to spare and a few containers left over, I’m pretty sure the next thing I’m going to do is transfer the contents of my spice/miscellaneous cabinet into the pantry, too! There’s room in there, and this cabinet could also use some order:

So organizing the spice cabinet using my Brother P-Touch 1290 labeler is next on my list!

On top of making my pantry a happy place to store food, I’ve actually utilized the decorative label designs to create unique gift tags on kraft paper bags, preparing me for most birthdays in my family through the end of the year!

While I am truly in love with my Brother label maker, I can’t say it’s perfect. There are a definitely a few areas where this particular product could be improved:

• It takes 6 AA batteries. An AC adapter for the label maker is an optional purchase for a whopping $17.86, which is half the cost of the P-Touch itself!
• Using the label maker isn’t intuitive. The directions for the labeler are crazy-long, considering the compact size and the fact that it’s a label-maker, not an iMac! I admit that I messed up several labels and wasted a lot of label tape getting the formats and designs figured out. No wonder, with 2 function buttons, a Mode button, several style buttons and plenty of other options embedded into each one! However, once I figured it out, I made sure to stick with what I was doing to create a uniform label for the entire project I was working on.
• The standard settings waste a lot of label tape. If the margins aren’t set to Narrow or Chain, there are literally inches of tape fed out before and after each label. On the flip side, if the margins are set to the smaller settings, the slicer will take off the end of the label you just printed, so you need to manually feed a bit of tape out before slicing it off.

All in all, I have to say that the negatives are pretty manageable. I’ve used the starter roll of tape and I’m still on the first set of 6 batteries, so it doesn’t drain battery power super-fast. And now that I know how the margins work, I’ve become extra careful to conserve the tape and use the best settings. The detailed instructions leave me feeling like I have a lot left to learn, but it’s fun to own a label maker that’s capable of so many different functions!

Considering everything the Brother P-Touch Labeler has to offer, I truly think it’s a great tool to own, especially for less than $30! I’m working on creating labels for the more-obvious areas in my home that I’m struggling to maintain, and this label-maker is going to be in use for a long, long time!

I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Brother P-Touch and received product and a gift card to facilitate my review and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Do you know what that is? It’s a picture of what’s inside a diaper after it gets wet (don’t worry, this one is wet from water). It’s a slightly sticky, clumpy gel that clings to almost everything.

Have you ever washed a disposable diaper in a washing machine? Have you seen the mess that disposable training pants create when accidentally washed with a load of clothes? If you haven’t, trust me, you’re lucky.

A few weeks ago, I bundled up a bunch of Haiden and Piper’s clothes, then put them in my Whirlpool Duet Premium front-loading washing machine. I didn’t realize that a Pull-Up must have been stuck in a pair of pajama pants.

After washing them in cold water, I opened the door to the machine to transfer them to the dryer. You know how black clothes look when you accidentally wash a load with some Kleenex in a pocket? It looked like that, but 50 times worse:

While my Whirlpool Duet Premium washing machine has all sorts of cool features to tell me how to treat different type of stains and how to wash different types of fabric, there’s no button on there for getting the inside of a Pull-Up out of clothes!

I panicked when I saw that mess in my “clean” clothes! I tried to pick up a few garments, but that small motion made the little gel bits start flying and sticking to my clothes and everything else in the laundry room.

I’ve seen a wet-then-dried diaper, and I knew that I shouldn’t put the clothes in the dryer without getting the diaper gel out of them. Google searches suggested using salt or vinegar/baking soda solutions in the washing machine, but I was worried that excessive amounts of any of those might cause more trouble for the washer down the road. Thankfully, the my first attempt at washing the Pull-Up off the clothes with standard laundry products was successful.

Here’s my recommendation on how to clean the mess when you wash a disposable diaper (or a pair of training pants) in a load of laundry: 

1. Bring the entire load of wet clothes outside or to a big open space inside your house.
2. Lay down a tarp and shake off as much of the diaper as you can. This makes a huge mess, so don’t just do it in front of your washing machine! Dump the tarp into the garbage.
3. Wipe down the inside of the washing machine with damp cloths to pick up as many diaper particles as you can.
4. Put the clothes back in the washer. Add detergent and a full scoop of OxiClean Versatile Stain Remover powder to the load. Run the clothes through a full cycle with an extra rinse.
5. Your clothes should be clean, and they can be dried as usual.

I was super-relieved that the washing machine and OxiClean did the job and cleaned up all those diaper particles from the clothes, but I couldn’t help but worry that those diaper pieces would clog up some part of the washer down the road.

Luckily, my fabulous Whirlpool Duet Premium washer actually has a Clean Washer cycle to keep the machine running in tip-top condition! I popped an Affresh tablet into the drum of the washer and ran an empty load on hot water. When the cycle was complete, I used an Affresh Grit Grabber pre-moistened cloth to wipe down the entire rubber door seal.

The Affresh tablet and Grit Grabber work together to dissolve residue and wash it away, leaving the washer clean and smelling fresh. Under normal circumstances, the Clean Washer cycle should be run once per month to keep the washer in excellent working condition. This was a special circumstance, so my washer got a bonus cleaning in between regularly scheduled cycles.

While my Whirlpool Duet Premium washer can’t tell me what to do in this particular diaper-burst-open laundry emergency, it does offer up a crazy amount of helpful features to make sure my laundry will get clean! One of the best features of this washing machine is the Stain Assist function:

The Stain Assist screens allow you to identify common stains from baby poop to cough syrup to glue, and the machine will tell you what to do before, during and after washing the stained garments to make sure you’re doing everything you can to get the stain out and keep your clothes as clean as possible!

If you haven’t seen my previous posts about my Whirlpool Duet Washer and Dryer reviews, here are the models I have:

I’ve now had my Whirlpool Duet Premium washer and dryer for about three months. Overall, I’ve been supremely happy with both machines. Like, I’d hug and kiss them and whisper “I love you” in their little appliance ears if I thought they’d understand me. I’ve actually caught myself thanking the dryer when it dried a two special blankies in just minutes right before bedtime!

I’m still exploring all the features and benefits both the washer and dryer have to offer, and I find myself being more and more impressed with the pair almost every day!