April 20, 2010
My laundry room is just big enough for the washer and dryer. I installed some additional shelving over the appliances which works pretty well but it is open and never looks nice. Luckily, I can just close the two folding door that close in this laundry cubby, but sometimes I just want it to look nice for me. So, I think I may have finally made some progress on working to keep it clean and looking nicer. And, everything got cleaned up in the process.
Picture from shortly after I moved in…
With some modifications over the years. These are the before pictures…
All cleaned up. The after picture…
I used some of my smaller canvas bins to store cleaners and a larger one on the top shelf for paper products. My cleaning kit even has a home now (the blue container on the top shelf). All my often used cleaning and laundry supplies are in easy to reach places. Oh, this is so nice!
January 15, 2010
One of my January goals is to start making and selling necklaces on Etsy. With all new ventures, there is start-up involved. My start-up involved: beads, wire, and a way to organized everything. I purchased new materials and made 3 new necklaces to list and then wondered how many other materials I had but knew that most were in a bin upstairs that took me bringing everything out of the bin to see what I had. I was determined to get my beads and supplies organized.
While celebrating my birthday by going out to dinner with my husband’s dad and step-mom, we got to talking about my crafting hobbies. I mentioned wanting to organize my beads and my husband’s dad suggested using a tackle box. I said that I had looked into them briefly a little while ago and hadn’t found anything that would work. When we got home, I started looking at tackle boxes – they have come a long way. After searching that evening, I narrowed my choices to 3 possibilities. I mentioned to my husband my choices and my logic.
My logic being: When I am looking at two things where one is a cheaper version and the other is better quality version, to wait, do my research, and consider that later I will probably want the better quality one. Money is saved in the long run not buying the cheaper one just to turn around and buy the better quality one later. There is less waste and time is saved too since I won’t be trying to sell the old things. I’ve been trying to follow this logic for a little while now – some things are just not possible, but in most cases the logic works pretty well.
The tackle box I finally chose, ordered, and received has the potential for almost 200 compartments! I know it was a bit much in cost, but every last bead I own fits in this box plus lots of room to grow. I could even use it for lots of other craft stuff should I decide not to continue with beading after a while – even though I have been beading something since sometime before my teens. This afternoon and evening I worked on sorting the beads and filling up the tackle box. Now, I need to list the necklaces on Etsy by the end of the month. Hopefully, they will sell and I can make more and get some real use out of this tackle box!
December 15, 2009
After a few months, I finally got back to organizing my scrapbook station in the living room. I was able to remove the green canvas bins like I wanted. I found some pink plastic containers and little glass bottles in my container bin in the attic and used them for embellishment organization.
I am very happy with the layout now and can get to everything easily.
September 16, 2009
The attic has always been a problem area. There is so much I would like to store up there but the area is so narrow that I have to make sure everything stays close to the sides. If more than just the middle had plywood, I’d have SO much room. I still get a lot up there though and it has gone through lots of phases of organization. Each phase is better than the previous and it keeps getting better.
This time I made a lot of good improvements. I moved our seasonal clothes into clear bins so we can see them and know what we have. The blue bins the clothes used to be in became storage bins for household items. Instead of having these items in either crates or loose in piles, they are now organized by containers, office, kitchen, and bath. The Space Bags have done wonders for making more room where there used to be small bags stacked up always falling over. Our boxes are still stacked up at one end, but they always come in handy when we are selling things we don’t need anymore.
Attic before recent organization:
After rearranging bins and items, the attic looked better.
There is still more work to do, but that will be for the next time. Continuous improvement.
August 31, 2009
So I can be in the same room as my husband when I scrapbook (while I watch him play video games or while he does his own thing on his computer), I have my scrapbook stuff in the living room. Until it got organized on a shelving unit, it always got in the way. It still wasn’t visually appealing until recently when I used some boxes I was using and re-purposed them. The scrapbook area looks so much better. I still want to get rid of the big canvas bins on top but I need to either get more boxes or something. For now though, this works beautifully.
Before & After
July 18, 2009
My weekly projects have spread into the weekend for once. I have to share these “new to me” huge space bags. They are awesome! I can fit so much in them and plan on buying many more for other items.
The first thing I used the Jumbo Space Bag for is my stuffed animal collection. They were taking up a lot of room in the attic and this is my first step to getting the attic more organized and condensed. All of the stuffed animals (minus the two huge ones) fit into this jumbo bag – 6 or so bags into 1 – too cool!
My second Jumbo Space Bag was used for the many blankets we have in the house. I pared them down before determining the stack to try to fit in the bag. All of the blankets didn’t fit, but many more than I thought.
Of all of the blankets in the Space Bag before vacuuming, I had to remove the bright orange one… it just wouldn’t fit. All of the blankets left over are the ones used for guests the most, so they will go in another space bag with pillows and towels that will be stored in the guest room for easy access.
Looking forward to purchasing more Jumbo Space Bags early next week… Yay!!!
