Week 8: The Guest Room Closet

This closet started off organized, but the more crap we moved into this house, the messier it got.  We threw a lot of bins in there when we  moved in that were just bins of miscellaneous crap.  The mess was starting to expand to just outside the closet and was doomed to soon take over the room.  I started by creating piles:  garbage, garage sale, goes in another room, basement storage, goes to work.  Once I got things sorted I was able to free up room to move in a shelving unit from another room that was no longer going to be used in that room.  This organization needed to provide easily accessible homes for so many different things:  genealogy stuff, old photos, craft/scrapbooking stuff, photo equipment, office supplies, and of course, more of my husbands books.  :)  It's a little tighter in there than I would like, but we fit everything and it's very organized.  I didn't have to buy anything to complete the project, as we re-used/re-purposed shelves and containers we already had.  Week 8:  COMPLETE.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Week 7: The Bathroom

OK, there will be two posts this week.  Last week's project and this week's project were worked on simultaneously and they took more than a week!  So one more post to follow later this weekend.  Here is our bathroom organization.  This comes along with a total bathroom re-do.  Our bathroom before was gross.  Our tub was leaking, our floors were cracked, our vanity was disgusting, our mirror was cracked, our toilet ran all of the time....  it was bad.  So we had all of our bathroom "stuff" either in toiletry bags on the counter or shoved in unorganized fashion in bins in the closet.  With a new vanity, we were able to use some drawer organizers and move most of our toiletry bag stuff to those.  We added a medicine cabinet which freed up more stuff from the toiletry bags, as well as some of the mess from the bins in the closet.  We can see what medicines and first aid items we have now, rather than having some lost in the deep dark bins.  We were able to move a few organized bins to under the bathroom sinks, and free up more room in the closet.  Now the closet holds just a few bins that are easily accessible and are easy to see what they hold.  We are finally able to store our bathroom towels in that closet and even made room for a bin of baby bath items and our baby bathtub.  We also now have room to slide our scale in rather than keeping it in the middle of the bathroom floor to trip on.  Here are the before and after pics:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Week 6: Books!

OK, these bookshelves probably look pretty neat and organized... and they are... some what.  But this is one of those cases where something looks neat and clean because it's not really being used because it's not actually functional.  Therefore other areas of our house are unorganized because of lack of space...space that could be better utilized here.  We have an entire room filled with my husband's books, and that room needs to soon serve another purpose (baby's room) so we need to find places to put his books.  Goodwill is apparently not an option.  :p  Probably half of the books don't need to be here because either 1, I'm never going to look at them again, or 2, I haven't even read them yet.  So step one is to weed!  Just like your pulling weeds from your garden so your plants can flourish, I shall weed my bookshelves of unnecessary books so our others can be better enjoyed :) I weeded about half of of my books, some of which I will sell because I no longer use or need them, and the others which I have not read have been placed in easy to access bins underneath my bed so that next time I need something to read I can easily pull them out and pick.  Next I was able to have Chet select a few subject areas from his collection of books and organize them on the newly vacated shelves.  Success!  Week 6:  complete!  (Disclaimer:  you will probably see "Books" as another organization project this year as we still have more of Chet's book for which we need to find permanent, easily accessible homes.)