Progress?

I know, I know... its been a bit since I have given an update on the status of my house.  I'll be the first to admit that I have gotten pretty lazy and things have pretty much been at a stand-still.  I did finally finish my striped wall {sneak peak here} and our new couches were delivered yesterday, but I'm not quite ready to show you the living area.

The main splinter in my finger has been our office/craft room.  Do you have that one closet/space/whole room that tends to become the dumping ground for everything else that doesn't seem to have a space?

Say, for your childhood dollhouse, picture frames you have good intentions to use but never have, or 25 boxes that you didn't unpack when you moved in three months ago?  Well, that was the situation in which this room found itself...  Full. Of. Crap.

And this was after I put away the air mattress that sat in here blown up for the past several months and started throwing away obvious junk...

It took me several hours and two glasses of wine to finally go through everything and clear out most of the junk that I didn't really want and to put the things that I did want to keep in their rightful place.

Its still a work in progress and we need a few more pieces of furniture in here to make the room complete, but I think that it is coming along nicely.  

Any advice for staying organized in places that serve dual purposes like this one?  I could use all the help I can get!

Aaaaand... just because they are so darn cute....

Happy Thursday!!!

A Little Organization: Moving Advice.

So I think that it is safe to say that some of us are much more organized than others.  My junk drawer us usually way beyond junky, my clothes closet looks like an explosion, and the cabinet where I keep my pots and pans speaks for itself.

When I found out that i was going to be moving (again) I knew that I was in trouble and could use a little bit of advice in the moving department.  I was given several helpful tips from friends that I should share in case anyone should find themselves as disorganized as me and clueless as to where I should start.

Tip # 1 from Lauren: Label! Label! Label!

Tip # 2 from Aubrey: Don't label too many boxes Miscellaneous...it gets way too confusing/frustrating 

when you unpack. Def take your time & label everything. Sometimes my OCD comes out and I tape an 

inventory list of the contents of the box on the top :)

Tip # 3 from Bobbi: Atlas van lines

Tip # 4 from Noteka:  packing party.... Organize, list and label... I'll bring the sharpies... 

Tip # 5 from Elizabeth: My biggest word of advice, pack by room, label boxes on all sides with the 

major things in them (not just what room it is), and keep a few boxes reserved for the very important/use 

everyday stuff and put it on last. Start early because if you don't, you will just start throwing stuff in 

boxes. Get rid of lots of stuff! Its so great to shed stuff! Enjoy the process! Take pictures of how your 

place is now.

Tip # 6 from Stephanie: I also got a tape gun! And a pack of big fat sharpies for labeling the boxes. 

Nonessentials first, one room at a time, and lots of trips to drop junk off at Goodwill!

Stephanie also included this fabulous link from Mover's Edge with her advice and it has really been helpful! 

And P.S., its true... this tape gun thing is pretty amazing!

Thanks to everyone for their wonderful advice!

A Little Organization: Moving to Tennessee

As I mentioned in my last post, we are moving to Chattanooga!  Home of Ruby Falls, Lookout Mountain, and the Moon Pie.  Oh, and Teen Mom's Macy Bookout!  It all sounds so totally fabulous that I have been in denial of the fact that moving also entails packing and packing means going through all my crap and decided what is and isn't going to make the cut.  

Its the ultimate test of organization.  The grand daddy of all organizational projects.  While I admit that it does feel nice to move into a new home with freshly unpacked boxes and everything perfectly organized, its the steps before the bliss that are so dreaded.  Ugh!

I think I need a plan.  Should I take it one room at a time?  Should I pack the easiest items first?  The thinks I use the least?  How soon should I get started?  Aaaaahhhh!

I took the first step last night by dragging Caleb to Lowe's where we bought some moving boxes.  Apparently chivalry is not dead because he insisted on carrying all the boxes out to the car himself which created a fun little scenario (we had about 15 boxes...).  He would pick them up, drop them, pick them up, then decided to carry them all on his head.

Caleb also thought we needed this thing (for lack of a better word).  A tape gun ?  It loks more complicated than your regular role of tape.  It will either make my life easy when packing or a living nightmare...

I'm suddenly feeling so overhwhelmed!  Anyone have any moving advice?

A Little Organization: The Junk Drawer

Its been a stressful past couple of weeks.  A REALLY stressful past couple of weeks.  Work has been ridiculous, but you know what makes me feel better?  Order.  A clean house.  Organization.  Recently I have been realizing how much less stressful and chaotic my life seems when I have a nicely organized home.  Getting organized is definitely still a work in progress, but I think I have been making some real progress.  After organizing my cleaning supplies and DVDs the next obvious project was the junk drawer.

Do any of you have a drawer like this?  You know... the one where you stuff all the crap that has no other place?  The one that you haven't seen the bottom off for a year and a half?  The one that never closes all the way and you are embarrassed to open when you have company over?

I knew something had to give so the first step was to pull out the entire drawer.  The next step was to dump everything out, but I'll spare you the horror.

I decided that it would be a good idea to use some type of organizer since I seem to be incapable of keeping things neat on my own.  I picked this one up at Target.

Ta-daaaa!  Look how nice!  AND it feels to good!  To tell you the truth, most of the crap in that drawer was junk or just plain 'ol trash anyway.

It's amazing how accomplished completing a simple project can make you feel.  Now I smile every time I open the drawer!  

Sometimes the simple things are the best things.  What do you do when you've had a stressful workweek?  

A Little Organization: DVD Collection

Does anyone else ever feel like they have a lot of crap?  I recently realized that I own 80+ DVDs.  DVDs that I haven't seen in years, that I've never watched, that I didn't even know I had.  As I've mentioned before we have very limited space in our apartment and I was taking up three valuable drawers with movies!

They weren't organized and I wasn't even able to tell what all I had... definitely not ideal on the occasion that I wanted to pick out a DVD to watch.  I decided that they needed to at least be organized by alphabet and that the best way to consolidate would be to take the DVDs out of their case and put them in a binder of sorts.

There were some movies that I definitely knew I wanted to keep in the case.  I kept all the series', my favorites, Harry Potter, Twilight, etc.

But look how many cases I was able to eliminate!  Don't worry, all of these were recycled.

All the movies fit into this one little black binder-ish thing except for these few.  I plan on picking up one more.  I found this one at Target for about 10 bucks, but you could probably find one elsewhere for cheaper.

Look!  So much neater.  And now I have so much more drawer space!  It's amazing!  When you compare it with the three drawers that my movies previously took up its incredible!

Splinter thought it was a good idea too!

A Little Organization... Or A Lot.

Time for a confession.  I'm disorganized.  Lets face it... my closet is a breeding ground for calamity and chaos.  My silverware drawer looks like an explosion of forks and dish towels.  My junk drawer... well, we won't go there right now.  I've had enough!  When you live in a loft apartment that only has two closets, one of which is taken up by the water heater you. have. got. to. be. ORGANIZED!  

See, this is what I'm working with in the closet arena.  This is the only one aside from our clothes closet.  No coat closet.  No linen closet.  Nothing.  And it isn't pretty...

I forgot to take a before picture, but trust me, you wouldn't want to see the before. 

Anyway, I've decided to turn over a new leaf.  De-clutter.  Simplify.  Put everything in its place.  The first thing I decided to organize was the cleaning supplies (naturally) and the water heater closet.  I saw this idea on Pinterest.  It was a quick and easy solution to a complete mess.

I bought a cheap hanging shoe rack, but it on the inside of the door and ta-da!  Extra storage space.  I put all our cleaning products, rags, dusters, vacuum bags, and anything else associated with keeping the home clean in there.  The picture below is before I added everything into the pockets, but it seriously freed up so much space in the closet.  It also made much needed room under the kitchen and bathroom sinks.  

Baby steps people, baby steps.  But, see?  Quick AND Easy!

Holiday Magic and Pre Spring Cleaning.

The holidays were magical.  Christmas with family.

New Years with friends in a beautiful cabin in the woods.

And then I returned home.  To a mess.  Caleb and I left home in a whirlwind.  Excited to begin the holiday festivities, see family, and spend time with friends.  So naturally, when we came back home I decided that the mess was intolerable so I proceeded to make an even bigger mess by organizing and rearranging every last piece of furniture in our small loft apartment.

Is it too early for Spring cleaning?  

Proceed with caution.  What you are about to see is utterly disturbing and entirely disgusting.  Please forgive the blurry photos... I think my camera was in shock... 

And this, my friends, is what you find when you move our couch.  A cat toy, a pony tail holder, my long lost favorite chap stick, and a pistacchio shell.  Oh wait, don't forget the bottle cap and cotton pad that I used to remove some turquoise nail polish from my toes back in July.  Gross! 

Oh don't worry... Spinter was in heaven.  My Grandma says that all cats love a good mess.  I think she's right.