Week 9: Picture Frames!

I am lazy to commit to which pictures/artwork I want in which frames.  I've had some frames hung with no pictures for more than a year or two.  It was time to decide what went in them, print them, and get it done!  It feels good :)  One has pictures from a genealogy trip my mom and I took about four years ago, one set has family pictures of our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, one set has some of our wedding pictures in it, one set was made with scrapbook paper to be a weekly calendar, and the big one has maps in it for artwork.  Done!

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.)

Week 5: TV Cabinet and DVD Storage

Prior to this, our DVDs were all somewhat organized in a closet in the guest room.  Two problems with that arrangement:  One, the room was filled with crap and hard to maneuver through and didn't even have a reachable light plugged in so I never wanted to go in there to look for a DVD...  And two, that room is supposed to become baby's room.  Lucky for us, we had one entire wall in our living room that was blank.  We found an DVD cabinet from Sauder that would hold the huge number of DVDs that we own.  Thankfully, my husband put it together... it did not look like fun.  Part two this week is our TV cabinet.  It has no holes in the back so all of the cords for whatever we store in there have to run out the front.  In addition, we recently got a new TV and some things previously stored on top of the cabinet no longer fit, so more rearrangement was needed.  I wanted to be able to run cords out the back of the unit, and also, not see cords everywhere.  I also wanted to be able to know where each cord plugged into the power strip belonged so we weren't unplugging four different devices to find the right one.

After putting together the DVD cabinet, we thought the rest of the project would be easy.  We had an attachment for our drill that is used to make holes for door locks and knobs.  We have a very weak drill and a very thick backed TV cabinet.  It took a LONG time (several days, actually) of drilling, recharging the drill, drilling, recharging the dill.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Finally tonight we finished!  Some of the excess of the cords were able to be coilled up inside the cabinet.  We were able to place the power strip next to the cabinet and each cord has a bread tag on it indicating to what device it belongs.  We still need to untangle a few cords after moving the power strip into place, but overall, it is much cleaner and much more accessible!  YAY!  Week five... complete!

Week 4: Baby Stuff

This week was supposed to be our DVD storage and our TV cabinet... and that is half done.  So to make sure I completed ONE organization project from my master list from start to finish this week, I substituted in the baby stuff.  DVD/TV stuff will be next week.  It is going to be a couple of months before we can actually start on baby's room, and in the meantime, stuff is building up in our guest room.  We have received a lot of gifts already, and we have also been picking up a lot of needed items on clearance as we see them.  This has made our guest room/office unusable.  We had planned on buying one of the Closetmaid Cube Organizers for baby's room eventually and decided to just go ahead and buy it now and use it temporarily in the guest room to organize all of the baby stuff.  Lucky for us the cube organizers were on sale this week at Target.  The 9 cube unit was marked down from $52 to $39 and the fabric bins from $7 to $6.  We purchased the white cube organizer and three light pink bins, 3 bright pink bins, and 3 green bins (we actually only purchased 1 green bin, we have two extra kakhi colored bins from another project and I have two green ones at work in my office, so I will swap out the two kakhi ones with the two green ones to equal three).

The bins are organized by item type.  Newborn clothes, 0-3 month clothes, 3-6 month clothes, 6-9 month clothes, 9-12 month+ clothes, feeding, nursing, bath, and blankets.  All of the other stuff is neatly stacked around the cube organizer.  This is a temporary storage solution for this room that will easily move to baby's room when the time comes.  It also allows us to see what we have so we don't duplicate purchase items, as well as see what we still need.  All in all, I'm pleased.

Week 3: The Kitchen (dining side)

This side of the kitchen is where we eat, but it also has to double as study/homework space for my husband, storage of cookbooks, mail, school supplies, etc.  To complete this project, we bought some items from IKEA.  We bought a desk $50), a shelving unit ($20), some storage bins ($14), and baskets(it pains me to see in print how much they were).  We realized after we got home that we got the wrong size top for the desk, so they are shipping us a new one (so that will look better soon :).  It is a good place for Chet's laptop to live and if he's in the middle of working on something he doesn't have to clear it off for us to eat dinner.  I'm not loving how the storage bins on the shelving unit look, but for now they work.  They house all of Chet's school notebooks, folders, papers, and books, as well as desk supplies and some computer supplies that he uses for school.  The baskets (as expensive as they were) are amazing and I'm glad we got them.  They house my cook books, grocery bags, napkins, etc.  Our mail/important information center area got a clean-up.  The two black bins on the bottom are for library books ready to be returned (so whoever happens to be going to the library can grab a bin and return it when they go).  The top bin is for one library, the bottom for the other.  The marker board unit holds our keys, important messages, and bills that need paid or other mail that needs action.  The black and white bin holds incoming mail.  I think that's it.  A set of curtains and some artwork and the decorative side of this kitchen will meet the new functional part of it :)  (but that's a project for another week).