So last time, we cleaned out the right side of the closet. Well, here's the left side. Clutter? Check! Shelves that are all wrong for the space? Check! Misc unknown objects stuffed everywhere? Check! If there were laws to an organized closet, we probably broke them all. Well, after hauling everything out of there we were left with this. Ah, much nicer. But I was pretty sure this ubiquitous ClosetMaid wire shelf/hanging rod wasn't what we needed for this space so out it went, too. After patching some holes and applying touch-up paint, we finally had a glorious blank slate! I have (hopefully) a great idea for the space and already got all the supplies! Here's to hoping things turn out as well as they are in my head! As for the rest of the room, see for yourselves. Here's Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C (yes, stuff flooded over to our bedroom as well). Since we can only live like this for so long I'm sure we'll try to get it done sooner rather than later! I'm so weirdly excited about the potential storage space that I'm currently grinning like a fool. :D
0 Comments
I'm starting to really think of how to organize the office closet because we'll be having guests over this summer. And I'm also just ready for it to be much neater. I started by pulling half of the things out. Which meant the rest of the room was littered with its contents. (The sofa bed was still pulled out from the last time we had someone over.) Just seeing the huge pile of things made me kind of nauseous. *sigh I do not deal well with physical chaos like this. But well, I've heard that the first step to organizing any space is to pull everything out. Edit the contents and then put things back in a meaningful way. So this is step one. We have like 8 pillows in there, of which only 3 are good enough for use. Same for pillowcases. These two bins that have sat in the office can actually go to the garage. The top bin has basically all my "childhood" momentos. Everything until age 26. The bottom bin are blankets for when there are more than 3 people staying over, which hasn't happened yet. So down to the garage they went. I also found things that we threw in the closet when we first moved in two years ago. It's pretty amazing how things basically stay where they are even though we had every intention to organize everything "later". So my note to self is: next time you move, take your time moving in.
Okay, before anyone gets too excited I'm just getting started on organizing with the Expedit. So it's not done. At all. So keep your expectations low. Here is how it looks. I guess it's not too bad considering it looked like this the other day? Actually I have no qualms with the way the old bookcase looked. It's nice. I love the white and the legs. It's just that we really need more storage space and I knew that I want to take advantage of the unused vertical space available. So back to the Expedit. We have 4 magazine holders but only one actually holds magazines (all my Martha ones). The other 3 have other cool jobs. One holds all our printing paper, Avery labels, resume paper, etc. The second one is holding our construction paper. And that folder at the end holds all the construction paper scraps. And the last one holds our gift bags and manila envelops. And all that fits in one shelf! Amazing right? I was pretty surprised how roomy these magazine holders are! I was pretty sure I couldn't squeeze all the construction paper in one, but they fit quite comfortably! I am so pleased with this arrangement. Definitely a space saver! Wish I did this earlier. I also organized my fabric in a nice wire basket that I got years ago from Crate & Barrel. It's perfect. I love it. I should get another one to put in another shelf so it'll look balanced. I do need a glue holder! I have like 4 bottles of fabric glue, tacky glue, etc. So the other wire basket can hold my glue. :) And... that's pretty much all I did. The rest of the white boxes already have stuff in it like mailing supplies (stamps, address labels, etc) and other important stuff. :) So all I did was stack them . They may change around as I go along. And before you feel too happy for me, here's what our office looks like now. Yea, it looks like the closet vomited its contents on the floor. But I'm really happy because there will be so much more room to store things! So I'm looking forward to clearing things out and finally organizing the closet!
We had a good weekend in general. And thank God, I actually had a rather pleasant workday today for a change. Really thank God for the turn of events. Anyhow, we ended up going to Ikea yesterday. Yes, on a Sunday again. It was because I had to return something at Nordstrom Rack and Ikea is across the street so of course we have to stop in. And since we have the Ikea Family card, we get a free cup of tea/coffee. :) I knew that I wanted to get this to store some random knick knacks we have in our kitchen drawers. Namely, these. Yup! Our rubber bands, bag clips and toothpicks finally have a home! It's so nice to finally house them somewhere so they're not strewn in the back of the drawer somewhere. And the whole thing sits nicely in a drawer. It instantly looks much more organized. :) Yay! Another small victory for me.
So one of my ongoing goals is organizing the office/guest room/craft & sewing room. It's not a big room so organizing it so that it can be as multi-functional as possible is a must. A while ago I pinned this image on Pinterest (via IHeart Organizing). There are many things to love about this image, but I immediately knew that I can easily copy one thing. Remember these Asker containers that lined the pews for our wedding? Yea, we have like 20 of these things laying around! We've used some as pots last year but have plenty to spare. So yesterday, I went to get the BYGEL rail and hooks. Call me determined or call me crazy for going to Ikea on a Sunday. :) I was really happy about this project in general because we used to store our collection of sharpies and colored pencils in the office closet (which feels like the magician's hat because things disappear and reappear there regularly). It's always a pain finding where they are because there just isn't a good place for them. Well, not anymore! Here's the before... and here's the after! (I've since moved the speaker behind the computer because that was bugging me.) The best part about this is that I only spent $3 since the most expensive item is the Asker containers. Makes me very happy when we can turn seemingly useless objects into something super functional and pretty. :)
Last week I probably had the busiest work week in years. I actually worked 8+ hours each day, nonstop. Which I don't recall ever doing since I've been in the workforce. I miss being able to browse the internet, reading my blog roll and going to Target/Home Goods during lunch. :( And I had sermon duty on Friday, which made the evenings pretty much filled as well. That added with the bathroom mini-remodel that also happened last week meant that I probably had the most productive week in my existence. Is that good or is that sad? So what did I want to do today to relax? I wanted to clean. Yup. I'm probably the weirdest person you know. We did 4 loads of laundry today. That's right, 4 loads. That began at 11 am and just ended (it's almost 10 pm now). It's clearly been a while since we've done laundry. Here's a blurry image (unintentional) of one of our laundry piles. I also vacuumed the first floor , the staircase (which is a pain, by the way), our bedroom and the hall. We just vacuumed our bathroom last week so I didn't do it again. And I was going to vacuum the office except it was so messy that I only had the energy to stuff everything back into the closet. I'm sure if we were to slide the doors open, something will land on our heads. But it's okay, out of sight out of mind. Good job, Dyson. It was nice working with you today. And after all the clothes were washed, I decided it was time to purge the closet of old hangers. Last year we bought 3 boxes of the slimline hangers from BBB. We got 1 felted and 2 non-felted versions. I really like it because it takes up less room and you can hang more stuff. And so all our old, thick hangers were just hanging out in the closet, taking up almost one-fourth of our precious hanging space! I can't believe we just left them there. Anyway, they're all gone now. And I realized I should get 1 more box of hangers just so all the hangers would match and I can purge the rest of the old hangers. Saying that last sentence aloud just made me feel uber OCD. So that was basically my Sunday. :D Ugh. Totally not looking forward to another week of work. It's going to be another busy one.
Messy cords drive me crazy. All those computer, tv, printer, cell phone cords drive me crazy when they're in some lump of tangled mess. Ugh. The sight underneath our office desks is not pretty. But today I inched a step closer to cord organization. Enter Specimen A (also the only specimen in this post): There are 6 of these in one pack but as you can see 4 of them already found a job somewhere in our house. Three of them are stuck to the back of our office desks and are responsible for holding onto printer & laptop cords like so. I always hated finding the laptop cords when it's charging time. They're either on the floor (so I would have to snake it up behind the desk) or they're laying across the desk and it just looks messy. So this is the perfect solution for me. The chargers can hang out happily and inconspicuously in their spots until charging time. And all I would have to do is pull. Brilliant invention this thing. The 4th one found its way to our bedroom. Can you guess where? Yep! It's under the new stool/side table. The cord to the pendant lamp used to hang out on the floor and when we want to turn the lamp on we would pick it up from the floor and push the switch. No more. It's now accessible right under the table! Small victories. :) Stuff like this makes me happy. It just makes the every day a bit easier. :)
So I was haphazardly shopping on Ikea.com when I ran into this sale. I did a double take. Are you serious? Garage shelving for 10 bucks?! David and I then ran downstairs, hopped in the car and trucked it over to Ikea. As we were entering, we see people after people carting these things out and I was afraid that they would be sold out by then time we get in. We power-walked downstairs straight to the warehouse (good thing we're masters of the Ikea floorplan by now).
And then we saw the line. Oh my. I ran to join the line while David went to grab a cart. Thankfully there were Ikea workers there making sure each person can only buy two so we got our hands on four. There were literally less than ten of them left when we left. *Sigh of relieve. Ahh. Getting a good deal feels so good! Seeing that it's already December, I gave my 2011 Pinterest Challenges a quick review. I haven't started Challenge #1 yet because I'm stuck on what fabric to choose for the benches. Challenge #2 is deferred until 2012 because I have bigger plans for the master bedroom. I completed Challenge #3 (yay!). And I want to close Challenge #4 here. So Challenge #4 was to add some organization to the house. It was a pretty broad challenge and not one that I'll ever say "i'm done!" on, but I just share what I've done and call this challenge done for now. :) 1. Organized Kitchen Pantry So nothing dramatic happened after this Pinterest Challenge, but I did realize that sometimes more really is more. It's ironic to think that you need to get organizers so that you can actually store more things, but it's true! And of course even though I'm calling this challenge done, I'm always looking to see what other spaces/nooks can be organized. These are a few things I have in mind to organize:
In general, I think that having a place for everything and being organized probably increases my happiness and probably lowers my blood pressure. Haha. I also save time by knowing where everything is. And I think we save some money by not buying repeats of things we forgot we have. Somehow for me it's very much like wearing tailored clothes (not that I have any). But I can imagine that when all the seams are perfectly measured for your body, you feel really good. Likewise when everything has a place in the home, the home works with/for you. At the very least - it just feels good to step into a clean house or open the doors to an organized pantry. So that's what makes it worth it for me. |
Archives
March 2015
Categories
All
Current ProjectReupholstering & Tufting 2 Benches |