Friday, January 28, 2011

The Month of Organization

This month has been the month for organization. I LOVE organizing things and making "homes" for items. It's been a while since a few areas in our home has been gone through and organized. So, I've spent a lot of time this month doing just that and I love how it feels at the end when something is organized in such a way that helps our household function more smoothly. I'm really trying to simply things and get rid of anything we really don't need. It's been great. Now I wish I would have taken before and after pictures of some of the closets areas I've cleaned out.

I started with the garage at the first of the month. Went through all the shoes and unused items that had piled up. Sent things to DI like jackets, shoes, coats and things the kids have grown out of. A good power wash of the floor in the garage always makes me excited. Yes, I can get excited over some different things. :) I then cleaned out our 1/2 bathroom and made places or "homes" for my daughters shoes. We were having a problem with backpacks being put wherever in the house and cluttering things up so I moved a few things and made a cubby for each kid in the closet by the garage. It has worked wonders. I haven't been nagging the kids to put away their backpacks and jackets since they got the cubbies. They do it right when they get home. It's been great. What I had for them before to hang backpacks up was just not working so we tried this and so far it's been good.

I cleaned out our game closet/blanket closet and love how it looks now. Moved the blankets so it's now just a game closet where things are so much more organized. I wish I had a before picture for this closet because it was a disaster before. Here is the after..


Last weekend I worked on the closet in Wyatt's room. Wyatt's room functions for many things. After he died I wasn't sure what to do with his room but eventually decided to make it into a reading/music room. It's also partly Hayley's bedroom. So the closet in this room needed to have many functions and I just didn't have enough shelves to have it accomplish all I needed it to. So, for our date night last Friday we went and bought some shelving for this closet and my sweet husband cut them up to fit. I love how it turned out. This closet functions as a library to house all our magazines and books, along with our music room where the girls have their violins and violin notebooks along with it being Hayley's clothes closet. I added some of the craft items the kids use and now it's functioning how I dreamed. It just feels so good to me to have a organized and clean closet. Now the challenge is to keep it that way. I did think to take before and after pictures of Wyatt's closet. I love how now the girls have their own shelf just for their violins. Easy access hopefully will make for more practicing. The books are all in order and I even made a shelf just for library books so that they now have a home which I hope will make things more simple and easy when it comes to returning books. Does organizing make you happy? It does me.

Wyatt's closet before.....
Wyatt's closet after...

3 comments:

Lisa said...

Wow, Andrea! Yes, my dream is to someday be able to afford to have a professional organizer come to my house, and get everything organized for me!

Anonymous said...

You may have already been directed to this blog, but if not I hope you are able to go take a look! This sweet couple lost their baby girl during the summer of 2010. They live in Rigby, Id. Ashley is an absolute inspiration,I check it as often as I am on my computer! Your blog was actually left in a comment on her latest post... 4th comment down... I've read quite a few of your posts & am so sorry that you have lost your baby boy. Your family will be in my prayers from now on!

http://patrickandashley.blogspot.com/

Suzanne said...

I love to organize too. This month, February, I am getting a head start. I am pulling ALL the junk (papers etc) into clean pretty white binders (the ones with the clear plastic on the outside)and using a cute font for the spine. I'm also taking ALL the clothes my kids have grown out of in the garage and putting them in bins according to size. There is something that happens to the inner vessel when we organize what we have. :)