Organization - Linen Closet and Coat Closet

I finally found my battery charger. It was on my desk. Unfortunately, there was so much other stuff on my desk that I couldn't see it. My desk is now clean. I should take pictures of my desk while it's clean since it probably won't be that way for long.

Instead, here are pictures of the two closets in my hall. First is the coat closet. Since it's summer all of the winter things such as hats, gloves, scarves, etc. are in a container on the top shelf, along with Mike's winter boots. During the winter the boots are normally on the floor and everything else is distributed to the pockets that are hanging on the door. Mike and I each have two rows of pockets and the kids each have one row. You can't see it in this picture but there are labels with each person's name beside their row of pockets. During the summer the pockets hold things like hats, sunglasses and sunscreen. All of our winter coats are hung in the closet still, but we have nowhere else to put them during the summer and we really don't have anything to hang there now so the winter stuff stays. In the back corner on the floor is a small white container that has umbrellas in it, and then the shoes on the floor are some of Mike's, mine and Amaya's. We have shoes in the closet because our bedrooms are downstairs and we don't want to run downstairs every time we need some shoes. The boys' bedrooms are on either side of the hall so they keep their coats and shoes in their own closets. Mike has a tendency to accumulate every pair of shoes he owns and pile them at the bottom of this closet on top of my shoes, which drives me nuts. Every once in a while I take all of his shoes out and throw them in his closet and the bottom of this closet stays neat for a while until there is a build up of his shoes again.


Now for the linen closet. The top shelf has sheets, which are folded to the left, and pillowcases, which are in the basket. I used to try to keep my sheets folded neatly, but it takes too much time so now I just fold them a couple times and pile them up. I keep the pillow cases separate from the sheet sets because we have a lot of extra pillow cases. Mike and I each sleep with two pillows, so normally we have some mismatched cases, which doesn't bother me. If you look close you can see that every shelf is labeled with what should go where.


The next shelf (horrible picture, I know) holds extra blankets, and the one under that holds our towel sets. Each of us has our own set of towels, so the ones that we aren't using at the moment are on this shelf.

The next shelf holds beach towels and bath towels that aren't part of our sets. As you can see, I have some laundry to do because normally, when I'm caught up on folding laundry, every shelf in this closet is full. The next shelf holds two containers which hold extra hand towels, washcloths and dusting rags.

The floor of the closet holds first-aid and medical-type things. The red container is our first-aid kit. Under that, in the blue container, are things like a heating pad, arm splints, and large ace bandages. The box on the left holds Mike's nasal irrigation system (it's for his severe allergies), and there's a big ugly extension cord to use with it since our bathroom doesn't have an outlet. We plan on putting an outlet in the bathroom, but for now there's just a hole in the wall waiting for one. The hole's only been there for about 13 years. It's one of the many things we need to do to our house that we have just put off.

That is pretty much it for my lovely closets. They way they are organized really work for us. They've been this way for about six months and I don't have any plans to change anything in them yet.

Next up will be bathroom organization.

Organization - Carson's Bedroom

So I didn't quite make it by the afternoon like I said I would, but here are some pictures of Carson's room. I am going to show some general pictures of his room along with the organizing pictures because I love his room. Mike and I did a "while you were out" redo of his bedroom one weekend when he went on a short trip with my mom to visit my brother.

I have a theory about decorating my kids' rooms. I've decided that there are three phases of kids' lives when they live at home: baby or young child (newborn to age 6), kid (age 7 to 12), and teenager (13 and beyond). I am going to decorate their rooms differently for each phase of their life while they're living at home. So far Carson is the only one who has made it to the second phase, but Hayden is getting close.

When Carson was born his room was decorated with sports teddy bears. It was so cute. Before I even found out I was having a boy I wanted to decorate the room that way if it was a boy. When it was time to redo his room, he wanted his room to be decorated with dinosaurs. He's loved dinosaurs since he was one year old and is still obsessed with them. He's even said he wants to be a paleontologist. When my mom took him away for the weekend I decided, the night before they left, to redo his room while he was gone and surprise him when he came back. It was a lot of hard work, but it was so worth it. He was so excited when he came home and saw it.

Anyway, finally, here are some pictures of his bedroom, all clean and organized. I'll start with the closet since the pictures aren't that great. It was hard to take pictures inside the closet because it is small. It is over the stairs so it is an odd-shaped closet. On one side there is a slant which is totally useless. A few years ago I built a big shelf over the slant so at least we could have some extra storage space.

At the top of the closet there are basically things that don't fit anywhere else. On the edge of the shelf I put labels of what item goes where so everything should be put in its place when it's done being used.



Next is the floor of the closet looking straight in. In the corner on the right-hand side is a drawer unit with Rescue Heroes in it and on top of that unit is the big Rescue Hero stuff. The other drawer unit has various things in the drawers, all labeled of course, such as bouncy balls, remote control vehicles, View Master and other things. His shoes are in their boxes in front of the Rescue Hero spot. There are a few Lego boxes that need to be dealt with (I'll talk about that when I show where Legos are usually kept) that we just haven't dealt with yet. The clothes rod is right above there and there are not clothes in his closet. Usually his school clothes are hanging up in the closet, but since school is out I took them out and put them in the drawer with his winter clothes. My kids have to wear uniforms to school, and even though they are perfectly nice clothes, once school is over I don't want to even see them until school starts again so they are banished to the off-season drawer. Now before you start thinking we can afford to send our kids to private school, we can't. They go to public school but they still have to wear uniforms.



This is to the left of the closet on a small shelf with the slant of the area above the stairs to the left of it. The bag has blocks, then there's his Hot Wheels, Tinker Toys, and the container in the back contains various electronic toys such as a Nerf dartboard and a robotic arm. Notice that I've labeled where each item should go.

This section is the large shelf that I built. The top two drawers broke but we use the space where they would go anyway. Artwork is in the top space and current school papers are in the second space. The other drawers contain things like Transformers, a spy kit, play animals and other things. The blue container in the front contains Legos. He is getting so many Legos that we are trying to come up with a better way to store them. I've been thinking of maybe a large tackle box with a lot of different compartments so the Legos can be sorted by color and shape. The shelving unit on the right used to have two drawers in it but they didn't work very well. I was going to get rid of it but then I decided to save the drawers and I used them as containers in Hayden's closet (which I'll post pictures of as soon as he gets his room cleaned!) and now I used the drawerless unit for Carson's puzzles to go on. Small puzzles are in baggies in the two white baskets. I'm not quite sure what that paper towel roll and green duct tape thing is. It's one of his projects and that was the best place to put it. Later you'll see his stash of supplies for things like that.


Robosapien wouldn't fit with the other remote control toys so he gets a special spot at the top.

I put a hook on the inside of the closet door for him to hang his coat on.
There's another hook just inside the door for him to hang his bath towel on. I didn't get in the pictures the fact that both of the hooks have labels above them.

This is the outside of his closet door.
Next is under-the-bed storage. These three containers take up the full width of the bed and fit perfectly between the legs. Two of the containers have Hot Wheel tracks in them (his and Hayden's) and the other one has coloring books, art books, paper and workbooks. Since his bed is near his desk it is easy for him to pull that container out when he wants something to work on at his desk. One thing I like about these containers under the bed is that they are using up normally wasted space, and having them there helps prevent toys from getting shoved under the bed.

When you look at his bed you can't even see the containers under it.
This is the shelf above his bed. I painted it and then bought little wooden dinosaurs and painted them and glued them on. I think it turned out cute. The shelf contains his beanie baby collection that he won't get rid of. Mike's mom used to collect them and now that she doesn't she just gives them away to my kids. I hate to think of the money that was wasted on them. Oh, well, it wasn't my money.


I got these dinosaur pictures off a clearance shelf and painted their baby blue frames red to match his room.

Next is the toy box. Dinosaurs adorn the top.

Dinosaurs are inside. Even though you can't see it very well, all the stuff on the left is in a container without a lid. It is all the big stuff. The small container on the right houses smaller dinosaurs and cavemen.
Next to the toy box, hidden in the corner behind a large dresser, is his hamper, a door from his dresser that Mike needs to put back on, a large piece of cardboard for one of his projects, and his Magnetix suitcase. This corner is hidden unless you walk right over to it, luckily.Here is his bookcase dresser. He has way too many stuffed animals but he won't get rid of them, so they sit on top. There are some miscellaneous things, trophies, books and more dinosaurs. The trophies used to be on a shelf above his bed, but since we live in a prime earthquake area, and since natural disasters seem to be occurring at a rapid pace, we moved them onto the bookshelf, just in case.

This is the cupboard with the missing door. On the top are various toys like his Leap Pad, Dino Dig, Creatrix and a dinosaur model. You can't tell but there are labels on the shelf. The bottom shelf holds the Light Brite and accessories.


The top drawer holds puppets and Pixter.

The middle drawer holds Marble Speedway and Gameboy items.

The bottom drawer holds action figures and various items taken out of recycle cans around the house for Carson to build whatever comes to mind. It bothers me that all of that stuff doesn't fit inside the container and they are spilled out into the drawer, but as long as he keeps them in the drawer I can live with it.Here's the wall next to the bookcase. There's his dinosaur bank.

He did this picture when he was in Kindergarten. Even though it's not a dinosaur (I'm not sure what it is) it was close enough for me so I framed it and hung it up.



Now for his clothes dresser. On top he has some very cool Robert Sabuda pop-up books. One, of course, is about dinosaurs.

The top drawer has containers , which are labeled, to keep blankets, swimming suits, and various accessories like hats, sunglasses, etc. separate. These containers came with lids, but since they won't fit in the drawer with the lids I am keeping them elsewhere so in the future if I decide to use these containers for something else I will still have the lids.The second drawer has containers for underwear, socks and pajamas. As you can tell, I have a bit of laundry to do since he only has one clean pair of socks. I bet you'll never guess what those socks have on them. If you guessed dinosaurs you were right!

I'm not putting pictures of the bottom two drawers because they are very boring. The bottom drawer has winter clothes and school clothes and the second from the bottom has current summer clothes. All of his clothes easily fit in those two drawers because he hardly has any. I need to go shopping. The poor kid is clothing deprived.

Last, but not least, is his desk area. He keeps it pretty neat. On the shelf is a container that holds art supplies such as crayons, markers and colored pencils.
Inside the drawer an organizer keeps things somewhat neat.


These garbage cans are in between his clothes dresser and his desk. One is for recyclables and one is for garbage. I don't know if you can tell, but they are labeled. They don't look great but they get the job done.

I love his bulletin board. I made it. It was a pain in the butt but I think it turned out pretty good. We redid his room two years ago and I still haven't put the molding around it that I painted and is just sitting in our garage. I'm sure you can tell, but there is a bulletin board on the top half, a magnet board to the left and a chalkboard to the right. It was one of the projects I was the most proud of. The only bad thing about it is it is so heavy that it is screwed directly into the wall so it can't be easily moved.

Here is the view of the whole desk/bulletin board area. His dinosaur calendar is hanging by the window and his own abstract art painted back pack is hanging on his chair.

Wow, that was a lot of pictures and it took me a long time to post. When I finally hit publish it will be before midnight so I did get it up today, like I said I would, just a little bit later than I planned.

Overall I really like Carson's room. He has been very good about keeping it clean and organized. He loves having the labels on everything. I don't know that he really needs everything labeled, but he likes it so we did it. We organized his room several months ago and he has been great about keeping it nice. I think it helped that he had input into everything I did. I didn't get rid of anything he really didn't want to get rid of. He helped decide where things should be and what containers we should use. He really likes it, and he even makes his own bed sometimes just to make it look nice!

Up next on the organizing agenda is the hallway, which includes the coat closet and the linen closet. I should be posting those fairly soon since they are organized. I just need to fold some laundry so my linen closet looks like a linen closet instead of an empty closet!

Organizational Challenge - Update 5

All I can say is that with only one week left I still have a ton of work to do. As of tonight I am done sorting things into boxes and piles. That's not saying that everything is all perfectly sorted out, it's just saying that I am tired of sorting. I need to start finding places to put stuff. I think that as I start putting stuff away, or getting rid of stuff, and seeing how things look, I will get more motivated than I feel right now.

The boys are happy because they are actually playing video games in the room right now.

I realize they are probably sitting a little too close, but they can't back up any further. This area looks messier than in the last update, but that's only because I have a pile of stuff to get rid of sitting in front of the newly-organized game shelf.

Here's the rest of the room. It still looks like a major mess, and it is, but most stuff is sorted into the various boxes and piles and I just need to start putting it away. The second picture looks worse than it is. I know it looks like a pile of garbage, but it is really just boxes that are stacked two or three deep full of stuff.



My plan for tomorrow is to organize the inside of the filing cabinet, the white cabinet that can barely be seen, and the video games inside the cabinet the TV is on. Then I'm also going to clean off and organize the top of the filing cabinet, the white cabinet, the black desk and the kids table. That way when as I start to go through boxes and piles, I can immediately find a good spot to put things. As I'm doing that I'm going to start writing a list of containers I may need. I don't think I need many more, but I might need a few. I have a stack of empty containers that I came across in this room, so I'm sure I can find good uses for them.

It's kind of funny to think about the things I have found in this room that I haven't seen for a while. One thing that I found today is a notebook that you keep track of Christmas cards that were sent and received each year. Unfortunately it is blank inside. I have another one that actually has the list in it, but I haven't found that one yet. ***Update: I just found the other one and it is blank also. Apparently, in the last four or five years since I've had them, I've never been able to find one to actually use. I brought one upstairs and put it on my desk so it is ready to be used. I also found an old Nintendo system that my husband has been trying to find for the last three weeks. My brother came over a couple of days ago to look at some of my old laptop computers, and I was actually able to find them. If it had been a few days earlier I wouldn't have been able to get to them.

I know I still have a lot to do, but I am getting very excited to get it done. I can't believe that in a week we are going to have a room that we can exercise in (I really, really need that), wrap presents in, do scrapbooking in, do arts and crafts in, and play games in. It is going to be great. The kids are going to be really excited to see it when it's done.

All right, after talking about it and getting excited about it, I think I'll go start working on the filing cabinet. I'm energized now.

Organizational Challenge - Update 4

I am finally starting to make a dent in the pile that fills up The Messy Room. I can see some progress. So far I am still in the sorting mode. I have numerous boxes set up that are slowly being filled up with things that need to find a home. I also have a garbage bag that is slowly being filled up.


I have to say that so far I have not resisted the urge to go shopping. This weekend I bought a bookshelf and set it up next to the TV that the video games are hooked up to. The bookshelf now contains all of our games. It has cleared out one shelf in my linen closet, one shelf in Carson's closet and one cupboard in Hayden's dresser. I now have more room in my linen closet and the boys have more room to put things in their rooms. Amaya only had one game in her room so it didn't help her out much. I love the game shelf idea so much that I really want to go buy another bookshelf to put puzzles on. If I do that it will clear out two dresser drawers in each child's room, and they could really use some extra room to put stuff.


Here is the video game area and the game shelf:


I still can't get back far enough in the room to take a decent picture, but at least I can get farther back than I could in the "before" picture.

I still need to find a good way to organize the video games, which are just hidden behind the doors in the TV stand.

The overwhelmed feeling is starting to dissipate a bit. I think it is because I am starting to see some progress, and also I am starting to get caught up with work, and I know there is a four-day weekend coming up so I know that will really help. Having Mike at home for four days in a row will really help. I am pretty sure that by the time next Monday rolls around I will have everything sorted out, some of it put away and then I will have five days left to organize things. That really only puts me two days behind my goal. I wanted to get everything sorted out in three weeks and have one week to organize, but, since I couldn't resist the shopping, I do have to areas (the game area and the kids' craft area) already set up. The craft area still needs stuff put in it, but the game area is mostly done.

I cannot wait until it's done. I already can feel a burden being lifted off of me just knowing the worst room in my house is only weeks away from being a great and useful room.

To check out the before pictures and some of my updates go here:

30 Day Organizational Challenge - Before Pictures

Organizational Challenge - Update 1

Organizational Challenge - Update 2

Organizational Challenge - Update 3

At Least Some People Are Having Fun...

but it sure isn't me. I hate to say it this way, but work is totally kicking my ass, and I'm not very happy about it. I have way too much work to do and not enough hours in the day to get it done. Of course, since I can't keep up with work, everything else is suffering, too. I am really stressed out right now. The only thing that keeps me going is thinking about the money I'm making, especially since Christmas is coming up.

Carson's birthday is on Saturday and I haven't really even planned much for it. We are going to take the kids (he invited three friends, but since nobody knows what RSVP means I have no idea if they are coming or not) to do something fun and then have ice cream and cake, but I haven't even invited any family over because I don't have time to get ready. I'm thinking we'll have to have a family party maybe next week. That should be okay since nobody in our families is going out of town.

I am getting my hair cut and colored tomorrow morning (8:00 a.m., yuck) because my birthday is on Saturday, too, and I would like to try to not look my age. I'm depressed enough. I'm not depressed about my birthday. I love having birthdays. I'm not depressed about my age. I could care less about that. I am depressed about my hair, though, because there is way too much gray in it. I got my first gray hair when I was about 20 years old. I have to blame it on my dad because he got gray hair at a very young age. He always said he didn't care how gray it was, as long as he had it. The funny thing is that even when he had cancer and went through radiation and chemo he never lost a hair. I hope my hair hangs on like that when I'm older.

My house is a mess. I know my goal was going to be to have everything organized by my birthday, and I was on a good track, but work derailed me and now it's worse than ever. Since I'm doing to Organizational Challenge, though, I've got to get my butt in gear. I have been working on that room slowly, very slowly, so I've got to step it up a bit. I still have half a month left, but I have more than half the room left to do.

All right, I'm done complaining. Here are pictures of the people that are having fun.

Organizational Challenge - Update 3

Here is another update, but this time I've included pictures. First, though, I'm going to answer the questions that Laura has asked.

1. How many of you have taken large boxes or baskets and labeled them keep, donate, toss, relocate and possibly sell in order to do your sort? This is important to doing an effective quick sort. Without giving it too much thought start tossing things into the applicable boxes. The purpose of this is to do some initial weeding out and getting all the “toss” stuff out the door as soon as possible. This will give you some more breathing room and allow you to focus on your keep pile which you’ll now want to go through again to reconsider why you may have chosen to keep the things you have. I’ll post more about this step next week. I do have some boxes, but I haven't labeled them. I can just tell by looking what goes into them. I have a few piles that aren't in boxes, but as soon as I get some other boxes emptied and the stuff in them sorted then I will use the newly-emptied boxes as sorting boxes.
2. How many of you have designated a certain length of time each day to tackling your project? I did designate an hour a day, but I haven't stuck to it. I realize that I need to stick to that or I won't be done in time, so I'm going to start doing that again today, I hope.
3. How many of you want to run right out and buy containers and baskets before doing the remove, sort and purge? [fight that urge!] I admit that I've already done this. I went to the dollar store and bought $15 worth of small containers that I am going to use to put the kids' arts and crafts stuff in, like crayons, colored pencils, markers, paint, paintbrushes, etc. I am going to try to resist the urge on any further purchases, but I feel good about the ones I did buy and it helped me to feel a small sense of accomplishment because I have one area looking pretty a lot better.
4. How many of you are feeling overwhelmed? I am feeling totally overwhelmed, but it's not all because of this challenge. I am self-employed and all of the sudden I have been swamped with work (most of which I do at home), which I can't turn down because when it's there I have to take it because next week it may not be there. Basically for the past week my waking hours have been spent working or cleaning, and, yes, my kids have spent a lot of time watching TV and playing video games. Bad, I know, but it's a temporary situation. They have been reading a lot, too, so does that make up for the TV and video games?
5. How many of you are feeling excited to keep going? I am very excited to keep going. A good portion of the room is going to be for the kids, and I am very excited to have it done so we can have a nice space to do arts and crafts, play video games, play board games and just have a nice, big area to play.

So here is a before picture of the section I've been working on.

And here is an after photo. You can see some of my piles on the table and boxes underneath it.

For the next week or so I'm going to start sorting the huge pile to the left (which can't be seen in the above picture) and sorting the contents into the boxes under the table. I am going to have a lot more boxes when I'm done, but at least now I have room to put them. Before I didn't have anywhere to put the things I was sorting, so having more room to work is going to help tremendously.

I've had fun looking at what everyone else is doing, even though I haven't had time to look at them all yet, and I can't wait to see everyone's spaces when they are done. I think this is a great challenge and it is going to help a lot of people tackle the clutter in their homes.

Organizational Challenge - Update 2

Why is that that whenever you get into a project you always run into problems? As I was starting to clear out stuff yesterday I realized that the carpet on the side closest to our laundry room was damp. Of course I didn't know it until I started moving stuff out. Luckily nothing is ruined because the stuff that was on top of the carpet there was mostly in plastic containers. There was one cardboard box that got some damage to it but nothing inside of it was ruined. I started realizing how gross that carpet really is. I've always hated it, even when it wasn't wet and gross smelling. I decided to rip the carpet in that room out. We can't afford to replace it yet, but it is in the basement and that room is going to be an exercise and kids' craft and play room so I don't think not having carpet there for a while will be a big deal. Maybe I'll even let them paint the cement for fun.

Right now I'm just waiting for Mike to come home so we can rip some of the carpet out and clean the floor. Then we are going to set up the craft table and the TV stand with the TV and video games and the kids can play down there today.

I know that it sounds like I've gotten a lot done to have enough room cleared out to set up a table and the video center, but it's not as good as it sounds. Basically, I just moved most of the stuff that was in that area and stacked it on top of the rest of the junk in the middle of the room. So now I have about a four-foot wide strip totally cleared out, but instead of the rest of the room being stack three to four feet deep it is now stacked four to six feet deep. But, at least now I'll have room to set boxes as I sort through stuff. Before I really had nowhere to work. There was no room for sorting, and that is going to be a major task in this room.

I don't mean to only be posting about this stupid room, but not much else is going on around our house lately.

Organizational Challenge - Update 1

This may be harder than I originally imagined it would be. Yesterday I spent an hour in The Messy Room and I barely made a dent. I can see that I'm going to have to spend at least two hours a day in there, at least at first, to make a significant amount of progress or else I will not be done by the 30-day deadline. The main thing I sorted out yesterday was baby and children's clothes and other child-related things. I have a ton of bottles and other feeding accessories. I need to give those away, either to a friend that just had a baby (although I don't know if she wants used stuff; I need to check with her) or to one of the many charities that call every month asking for stuff. Even if my friend wants a few things, there is still plenty to give away to charity. The other thing is the clothes. I have boys clothes ranging in sizes from 0-3 months all the way up to 4T and girls clothes ranging in sizes 6-9 months to 2T. I need to sort through those and see what can be given away and what needs to be tossed. I am going to have a busy month.

30 Day Organizational Challenge

I am very excited because Laura at I'm An Organizing Junkie is hosting the 30 Day Organizational Challenge. What you do is you pick an area in your house that needs to be organized, whether it be a drawer, a closet or a whole room. Then you have the month of November to get it organized. You take before and after pictures so everyone can see the amazing transformation, and when it is over you will feel so much better for having a newly-organized space. And, you might even win a prize. The best thing about this challenge is that if you post your embarrassing before pictures you are really going to be motivated to get the job done.

I have really been working on getting my house organized, and I've done a pretty good job. Keeping it that was has been a challenge with three kids and a husband following behind me messing things up as they go, but they are slowly learning to pick up after themselves and help keep our house organized. Either that or they're just tired of me nagging them and yelling at them. Whatever works.

I have a couple of rooms left to organize, and for the most part they will only take a day each. But I have one room in my house that we used to call The Exercise Room, and now we just refer to it as The Messy Room. If anybody asks me where something is I just say, "It's in The Messy Room. I have no idea where in The Messy Room, but I know it's in there." The Messy Room has so much crap in it that it is unusable, except for storage. Luckily The Messy Room is in our basement so no one but us has to see it. But there have been a few times when we've wanted to take someone downstairs to show them something and just haven't because we were too embarrassed.

The sad thing is that this room was totally clean and organized just two short years ago. Somehow over that time it has become the place where we stash stuff that we don't know what to do with. I know everyone has somewhere in their house like this (at least I hope) but it might just be a closet or a junk drawer. It's usually not an entire room. The other thing about this room is it is the biggest room in our house, so it could be put to some good use if it was organized.

My goal for the room is to have it be an exercise/craft/video game room. There is enough space for all of those things. In fact, it's got a great piece of exercise equipment in it; it's just unusable because it is impossible to get to and covered with stuff. There is a computer desk in it that I want to use for a craft table for myself, and I want to add a table for the kids to use for crafts. There is a filing cabinet in the corner and a really cool storage piece that has pull-out drawers with dividers in them and a shelving unit on top. I love it. I just can't use it. I can't wait until it's done.

I've been typing away trying to avoid the inevitable. I am a major procrastinator but I can't procrastinate any more. Here are the before pictures of The Messy Room (I'll hide my head in shame while you look):

Here is the entrance, which I do have to walk through to get to the laundry room. I can't tell you how many times I've fallen while carrying a hamper or laundry basket. The only good thing about that is I don't fall all the way to the floor because there is enough stuff on either side of me to keep me up.

Here's another view from the entrance showing most of the room. Notice the baby exersaucer hanging upside down on the exercise equipment.

Another view from a slightly different angle. I don't know if you can tell, but our exercise equipment is too tall for this room (even though I took measurements before we bought it to make sure it would fit) so we had to cut a hole in the ceiling so it would fit.

This is looking at it from my laundry room.

Here's the corner where my wrapping paper supplies are. I usually just buy new wrapping paper every time I have to wrap a gift because it is easier.

Here's the only view looking towards the north, because that's as far back as I can get.

So there it is: the bad, the worse and the worst. Mike doesn't think I can do it in 30 days. He thinks the only thing that can be done is to haul everything in this room to the dump. I know there is a lot of important and useful stuff in there that just needs to find a home. It is a bit overwhelming, but I know I can do it. I just need to spend a certain amount of time every day doing stuff. My trusty timer is going to come in handy. My goal is to get the whole thing cleaned out and sorted in three weeks and then have the last week to organize it into fun containers.

I can't wait until it's done. Then I'll be able to exercise in it and the kids will be able to be creative in it. They are going to be so excited and so am I.

I Need to Get Out More

Today was the second day in a row that I went shopping. That is unheard of for me. It's not because I don't love to go shopping, because I do, it's just that we haven't had a lot of money lately so I haven't been able to. Luckily that should change soon because at the end of the month my job is changing a bit.

I went to Office Max because I needed to copy some stuff for work, and I ended up getting a few fun things there. Then I wanted to look for something to put our Summer Reading Program stuff in so I went to Michael's because they had their baskets on sale. I found a great one with a lid. I like the fact that it has a lid because it hides all the paper inside. While at Michael's I decided to look around a bit. I really wanted to see the new Martha Stewart stuff they have there. There is a lot of neat stuff. Since it is over by the rest of the scrapbooking stuff I decided to check some stuff out. I really haven't been into scrapbooking, although I have done a few pages in a scrapbook years ago.

Most of my problem is that I am a huge slacker on getting prints of my pictures. As I was organizing the family room the other day I went through a box that I throw in 35mm film that needs to be taken to get developed. There are 70, yes 70, rolls of film that need to be developed. Here's a little background story on my lack of getting prints made. Back in 2002, two weeks after I gave birth to Hayden, my dad died of cancer. He didn't want a funeral so we just had a Celebration of Life at my mom's house. He died on a Saturday and we were having the Celebration the next Saturday, so we had a week to prepare. We made up some posters that had pictures of my dad from the time he was a child up until the most recent times. I hadn't gotten any pictures developed since shortly after Carson was born two and a half years earlier, so I had to take all my undeveloped film in that week, 35 rolls in all, so I would have some pictures of my dad and Carson to put on the posters. Well, that is the last time I had film developed. The only exception to that is our trip to China. As soon as we got back I took all of our film from that trip in before it could get mixed up with the rest. So, in the 70 rolls of film there are pictures from almost five years ago. The only fun thing about this is that when I do start taking the film in I will have no idea what to expect, so it is kind of fun seeing what pictures are in there. Also, I haven't printed out any pictures, except for a few here and there, of my digital pictures. I got my digital camera right before we went to China in 2005, so there are a lot of pictures. I haven't even printed out our China pictures because I can just look at them on the computer.

Anyway, back to my story. I am totally amazed at how much cool scrapbooking stuff there is. It has got me really excited to get all my pictures developed and get all my digital pictures printed out so I can start putting them in albums. I'm not a huge scrapbooker so I won't spend a ton of time on each page, but I do like to put a few backgrounds or stickers here and there. There are so many cool albums, too. I'm trying to think of how to organize my pictures. I've always thought I would do them chronologically, but now I'm thinking maybe by subject. I read that tip somewhere and I can't credit who I got it from because I can't remember, but I really like it. I want to do one for sports, one for the pets we've had, one for vacations, one for family reunions, one for each kid for all their birthdays, etc. Then I would have one or more just general albums with pictures of the kids around the house or at the park, etc.

I can't start doing this until I have our whole house organized because I may have some pictures hiding somewhere that I don't know about. I think I have all my pictures in a bunch of boxes that I know where they are, but over the years they have been in so many different places in the house that if I were to start some albums and then come across pictures that should be in an album that is already filled I would be really ticked off. I think that will be a project I will start in the fall. I got my first camera when I was about 10 and I'm 40 now, so I have 30 years worth of pictures just shoved in boxes. It's sad. I want to be able to enjoy them and let my kids see them, too.

One thing I did start doing is scanning in all my old printed pictures so I can have copies of everything on the computer. That way I can back all my pictures up onto CDs and store them somewhere else so in case our house ever burned down or got ruined somehow I would have copies of all my pictures somewhere else. Mike's grandma's house burned to the ground years ago and she lost everything. To this day the only thing she still talks about all the time is her photographs that were lost. Her family has hardly any pictures of when the kids were little.

Another thing I want to do is scan in all of my mom's pictures from when I was a kid and all of Mike's mom's pictures from when he was a kid. I would love to do an album for each of us of our childhoods.

It's so funny because yesterday and today I told Mike I was just going to be gone for a short time and I ended up being gone for hours because I was having such a good time looking at stuff. The funny thing is I don't even go to the grocery store. Mike does all the grocery shopping. We started that because years ago I was going to school at night and it made more sense for him to go do it while I was at school than waste our time on the weekend doing it. The other day Carson's class went on a field trip to a grocery store to see how things work behind the scenes, and I was just as excited as the kids. The other moms looked bored out of their minds, but I was having a great time seeing things I don't normally see.

I told you I need to get out more.

Daily Project

The only thing I did today was go to the store and buy a cool basket with a lid on it to store our Summer Reading Program supplies. It contains the boys' Summer Reading programs from the library, a detective game from the library, The Governor's Summer Reading Challenge, a book list from last year's Governor's Summer Reading Challenge (which we didn't really do), and a humongous book list that I printed off our school's website. We will have a lot of ideas for books this summer, which is great because we all love to read.

Daily Project

My project for today was shopping! I love that kind of project. I bought some small baskets to group things together in one of my desk drawers, and I bought two collapsible, canvas baskets for the family room. They are perfect. They match the room and they are the perfect size. One is for our library books. Hopefully if they are all kept in one place we will return them on time and not get fines. The other one is to keep a few toys and books in for Amaya. Her bedroom is in the basement, along with ours, and it has been hard to keep some of her toys in the family room without it looking messy. The boys' bedrooms are right off the family room, so it is easy for them to go get a toy and take it back when they are done, not that they've done that before the last few days, but it's a start.

Daily Project

For today's project I totally finished the family room. It took 2 hours and 40 minutes and included cleaning off the stereo speaker and end table, which the kids use for desks, decluttering and organizing the entertainment center, organizing my camera bag, cleaning off Spot's crate, which is like an extra desk top for me, and organizing the contents of a wire shelving unit that holds mostly paperwork for both home and work. What I didn't do in this room, that I consider to be a separate job, is to organize the contents of a filing cabinet and all of my paperwork. I have a lot of paperwork to go through, but it is going to take time and I'm going to save that for later. It is all grouped by categories right now and each category has its own folder or -- I don't know what to call them. They are metal, mesh-like bins that are for paperwork. I am not going to organize the paperwork until I can get to a large room downstairs that is full of paperwork. I want to tackle all of the paperwork at the same time.

All I can say is it is so nice to get one room totally organized. I only had to say, "Pick that up and put it away," about 500 times instead of 1,000, so we are making progress.

The family room took me about 5 hours to do. It's going to be a long summer.

Daily Project

My project today was two leather chairs in the family room. One of them is right by the front door to the house, so everything gets dumped there: backpack, diaper bag, purse, camera bag, mail, etc. The other one had newspapers, toys, papers, crayons and other miscellaneous clutter there. It took me 20 minutes to clean off both chairs. I thought it would only take a couple of minutes, but I was wrong.

As for my desk, it is still clean and organized. I know it's only been two days since I organized it, but it would usually be a mess again by now. I have to have the front left corner to put stuff that I need all the time, like my planner, cell phone, pad of paper.

As for the family room floor, I have said the phrase, "Pick that up and put it away," approximately 1,000 times today. Every time I turn around one of the kids has dropped at least five things on the floor. Every time I had to go in the bathroom I would come out and it's like they had a free-for-all while I was in there. I would set my timer for five minutes and say, "Anything left on the floor when the timer goes off goes in the garbage," so they would hurry and pick up everything, only to have it all back on the floor within 30 seconds. Very frustrating. I realize it's a training process for all of us to learn to pick our stuff up, so I'm not getting mad about it, but I am being strict.

Daily Project

My project for the day was the family room floor. There were scribbled on papers and toys and shoes everywhere. It took me 30 minutes to pick it all up and then vacuum. I wanted to do more today but this morning I went on a field trip with Carson's class, then this afternoon I had to work, but just as I was dropping the kids of at my mom's house my job cancelled so I turned around and went back home. Then tonight my mother-in-law invited me to a get-together at her h