Home Organization - Playroom

For this weeks organization challenge on A Bowl Full of Lemons we are doing the playroom. I do not have a separate play room. What I do have is a large family room where all the toys have an area. We don't yet have couches for our family room, so the play area is less contained than I'd like.

I admit that these are not current photos. They were taken in the summer. But things are pretty much still like this. Every few weeks things get really bad and the kids seem to dump out every toy they own. I gather them from all over the house (where they shouldn't really be). And then we sit in the middle and sort and put away.

I have gotten rid of a bunch of toys. Everything broken, or puzzles with more than 3 missing pieces got tossed. A whole slew of toys got donated. And things got put away up in boxes in the tops of the kids' closets to be rotated with the other toys later.

The bottom photo is how it's generally supposed to look. And they do look that way about once a week or so. But it never lasts. When my kids clean up their toys it's only about 2% cleaning and 98% playing with things they just found in the mess.

The train table is rarely used for train tracks, the floor just has so much more space to lay the tracks on. The drawers under the train table house the tracks and building blocks. The stuffed animals go in an old laundry basket. All the other toys are sorted into cloth bins. Each child has a color (purple, pink, blue or green) and has their toys in their bins. They have a matching bin with their other toys up in their closets. And some of the bigger toys go in the empty spaces of the shelf, or on top of it (or the train table apparently).
And please ignore the mess by the sewing machine...I haven't gotten to organizing my craft area :)

Home Organization -Dining Room

On A Bowl Full of Lemons Home Organization 101 challenge, I am working on the dining room. I don't have a separate dining room. When we added on to our house we put the dining table into the large new family room. It makes it easier to clean I guess, with one a table and chairs to worry about.

Where the dining area used to be I put in a credenza. I bought it off Craigslist. It was a medium brown color, so I painted it and I replaced the old knobs too. It fits some of my larger kitchen gadgets and baking supplies. And the drawer on the right end is my junk drawer, so I don't have stuff piled on my kitchen counter (well, not as much stuff). For the organization challenge I decided to take advantage of the wall space and add some shelves. Now I have some more space to put things. And right now that includes Christmas decor.

Home Organization - Mudroom

Still catching up on the Bowl Full of Lemon's Home Organization 101 challenges. This past week I did the 'mudroom'. I don't actually have a mud room, but I do have a blank wall near my front door. When we first moved in to this house I bought a storage bench thing for shoes, and some hooks for coats. It was fine when there were only 4 of us, and 2 of them were small children. Well, it's been 5 1/2 and a lot has changed. Those kids are getting bigger, and there are twice as many of them. And that means more (and bigger) shoes and coats.
So, I made a trip to Lowes and got more coat hooks. And I actually went through the pile of shoes and got rid of the ones that were too small or worn out. Now everything fits (except large boots), each person has their own coat hook. So much nicer for the entryway.

Home Organization - Kids Closets

I'm a little behind on the home organization challenge from A Bowl Full of Lemons. I guess my Pinterest challenge and Halloween and birthdays have kept me pretty busy. Anyway, the next challenge is kids closets. My kids share rooms, 2 girls in one room, 2 boys in the other. So their closets are pretty full. We also keep their dressers in there to free up floor space in room. We've been fairly organized in the past, but it was definitely time to clean it up and get things back in order.

First up the girls room:

The girls have a lot of dresses. I put up a second, lower shelf and closet rod so the younger one could reach her own clothes. That has been a good and a bad thing. I do find the dresses scattered across the floor every now and then.

The top rod has the girls' leotards, some sweaters and jackets, skirts, a couple nice shirts, and dresses and Indian suits for my oldest. The bottom has the Indian/Fijian dresses and regular dresses for my younger daughter. I separated out the long and short sleeved dresses for her.

On to the boys room.They don't have quite as much to hang up, so they have just one closet rod. They also have a box for outgrown clothes, and the hanging organizer for misc closet things.

The clothes for my 1 year old are on the left and for my 6 year old on the right. They too have their Indian suits on the ends. On top of the outgrown clothes box I also keep the extra diapers and wipes.

It's so nice to have things straightened up again.

Home Organization - Master Bedroom

It took me a little over a week to clean and organize my master bedroom, which was last weeks challenge from A Bowl Full of Lemons. Mainly because I started the week with the flu, then my kids got it. And I usually do a lot of cleaning while my youngest naps, but this week he napped on my bed. Not as easy to clean the room he is in.
Anyway, I got it done. Now that it's clean I realize how little decoration it has. I still need to get better curtains, a rug, a headboard, and I'd like to put photos or art on the walls. I do some family photos on one wall (with the dresser) and one of my flower photos on another wall, that I put up this week. But it needs more. It is feeling very bare right now.

^ My clematis photo

On to the photos. Before, in need of serious picking up. Lots of clothes on the floor, some of them are even mine. And a bag of clean laundry that I haven't yet folded.

My dresser. The drawers  are organized, but the top needs work. It's sort of a catch-all right now.

 After, cleaned off dresser. I can actually find my jewelry now.

I have a floor! Boy does it need a rug. And I need to move the bassinet back to the garage now that baby is 18 months old (to be fair, he still fits in it because he is tiny for his age).

Home Organization - Linen Closet

This weeks challenge on A Bowl Full of Lemons - Linen Closet. My linen closet is very small. On the one hand it makes cleaning it up fairly quick. On the other, it means I have to be really organized to fit everything in. I've organized my linen closet before, so this weeks task isn't all that difficult, just a little straightening up. I like the easy weeks. It helps make up for the difficult ones (like last weeks master bedroom...which I am still working on).

-The top shelf are large quilts and hand made baby blankets.
-Second shelf is napkins, placemats, seasonal towels, extra cleaning rags, a basket of misc things (like bed sheet stretchy hook things, to keep the sheets taut), and 1st aid kit. The hanging shelf has table cloths and an apron I hardly ever use.
-The 3rd shelf has guest towels, burp rags and bibs, and extra kids towels.
-On the 4th shelf down are bed linens (toddler/crib, twin, baby blankets...and a snuggie).
-And on the floor is my bedding, all neatly folded and stored inside the matching pillowcase. The blue one is still in the wash from when I changed my sheets this past week while cleaning my bedroom.

I may not have folded it as neatly as I could have, but they are all organized and in their spots...and the kids even know where things are/go.

Home Organization - Laundry

Once again my small house has made for an easy week in the Bowl Full of Lemons Home Organization 101 challenge. I don't have a laundry room, just a wash and dryer in my garage. It did need a little cleaning, but since I've already spent so much time in the garage, most of the cleaning was done. I put away some stuff that has been left piling up on the dryer, wiped down the outsides of the machines, and checked the lint filters and dryer exhaust duct thing. I admit I still have the sweep out the garage, but that will have to wait until the paint dries on my shelves. Then I'll be done.

Home Organization - Office

Week 4 of the Bowl Full of Lemons Home Organization 101 challenge -- The Office. I don't really have an office, so I cleaned up my computer desk. I usually have a stack of papers and some trash, and the kids have pencils and things out (and play with my husbands military coins). So I got a trash can to put by the desk for the trash, put the pencils in the box on the shelf (we have a big box for random writing instruments), cleaned up and put the coins back, and got a file thing for our papers that won't be filed away in the filing cabinet yet (school stuff, bills...). Didn't take too long, which is a nice change after taking about 3 weeks for the garage.

Speaking of the garage. I have moved some stuff to my shed and made more room for my car to fit comfortably (see my garage part 2 post). I now have room to paint the shelves I've been meaning to put up. When my husband returns we will go through the rest of the stuff and move things into a long-term storage area (crawl space under the family room). Nice to have a place to park now that the weather is getting colder and rainier.

Home Organization - Garage part 2

Still working on the garage for the Home Organization 101 at A Bowl Full of Lemons. It's been a big job. I have more trash, a small amount of donate things, and another box of my husband's papers to go through. And I have a load of stuff that needs to relocate to our shed too. But, after two and a half weeks I can finally park my car in there. I haven't been able to do that in years. WooHoo!

Home Organization - Pantry

My 'pantry' is just a tall cabinet in my kitchen. So this weeks organization challenge from A Bowl Full of Lemons on organizing your pantry was actually pretty easy. It only took me 2 minutes. I had cleaned it out a couple months ago and actually kept it pretty nice in the mean time. And in my garage, I have my long-term (or at least longer term) food storage. It is still fairly organized. And I have plans to build a can rotation shelf for my smaller vegetable and soup cans, to take up some of the vertical space.

My kitchen is looking pretty good.

In other news, our retaining wall is in in the back yard and the patio pavers are started.

And my garage is looking better. I took a load of stuff to the dump this morning. Now I have a nice clean place to sort through the last of those boxes. My car might fit in there soon.

Home Organization - Garage

Well, this week at A Bowl Full of Lemons the organization challenge is the garage. I was kind of hoping that would be much much later, but she put it right at the beginning :p  So, I went ahead and started tackling things. I am still not done. But I have made progress, which is hard enough with 4 small kids.
+ I gathered up a bunch of empty cardboard boxes to take to the recycling center (who knew I'd have a few dozen of those in various sizes).
+ I sorted through plastics totes full of kids clothes. I have 2 boys and 2 girls. And we aren't completely sure we are done yet. So we save all the clothes for hand-me-downs. I now have 3 totes of boy clothes, 6 of girl clothes, 1 of gender neutral newborn clothes (we don't find out the gender ahead of time), and one box of baby linens and blankets. Thank goodness for space bags to help squeeze more into the totes. Eventually these will be stored in our crawl space under the family room.
+ I have a pile of clothes and toys to be donated. My dad helped me out by taking an old wooden bed frame and it's drawers to the donation trailer for me, since it wouldn't fit in my car.
+ I sorted some of my husbands tools, which will soon be relocated into the shed in our backyard, that my father-in-law built for us.
+ And I have gathered some of my husbands many (many many) computer parts into plastic totes so I could move them out of the way.

My husband has promised that when he returns from his deployment he will build me more shelves, for the north wall, so I'll have a nicer place to put things.

Food storage still looking pretty good

I still have to sort more toys, bring in the rest of my craft stuff to my craft area (that needs organizing...later), go through old shoes to see if any are worth handing down, go through my husbands military stuff and put it away properly, gather and sort all kinds of papers magazines and books that found their way out to the garage, and go through the kitchen stuff and knick knacks that are in the garage.Since this next week is pantry organization, and my pantry is only one small cupboard, I will use the week to keep working on my garage.

Update: After 2.5 Weeks I can actually park in there! Check it out!