A weekend of organizing!

For Menu Plan Monday click HERE.....

Coming up this week on Hopewell Takes on LIFE! The one where she takes back the house!

Photo credit & book link

Last week I reviewed Laura Whittmann's new book Clutter Rehab. This week, I started in attacking the problem spots in my house. And, boy! did I make progress!! First, I made an ACTUAL LIST (rare for me) of the places that needed to be fixed, then I used the steps she recommends HERE to accomplish my tasks. Now, before you have visions of tv shows on people who hoard grocery bags and matchbox cars and drier lint [YES! I do know this is a mental illness--I've had one such person in my family] I have organized and KEPT organized many other areas of my home. Example: Our Laundry Closet.

A Little Background Information:

This post may prompt you to say "Who has to LEARN to de-clutter?" Well, I DID for one! I grew up in a chaotic house marred by my father's depression and my mother never getting over once having live-in help.

Photo credit: http://www.realsimple.com/home-organizing/organizing/storage-ideas-00100000066140/page2.html

I did not know what "organized" meant until I visited my friend Sue's house in the 6th grade. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, had a place and was in it in that house! Her father had an actual workbench with tools neatly hanging above it and had rows and rows of baby food jars attached by the lid to a shelf, each carefully labeled with the EXACT size of screw, nut, bolt or dohicky within. I was in awe.

Not only did they never use the groceries straight from the car or try to cover their nakedness with a four year old Reader's Digest as they went, soaking wet and shivering, in search of a reasonably clean bath towel, but they actually knew how many towels they owned! Blew. Me. Away. I swore my house would be like this.....until I walked home and had the organizing dream sucked right out of me as I stepped in our front door.

Fast forward a lot of years. My cousin is nearly OCD--I once put my purse down after arriving at her house and didn't see it again till I asked for it on leaving. She looked at me like I was crazy and said "I hung it on the guest purse hook in the closet where it belongs." O-K........ Did I mention she's an incredibly successful home decorator now??

Anyhoo, I bought my first home and decided things would be different. I found this book (this was before Organizing Junkie had launched her blog--actually before Al Gore invented the Internet):
In my eyes, author Denise Schofield was a GOD. Idolatry here I come! [Kudos, I think to the Chinaberry Catalog, for bringing it to my attention.] Life got way, way better!

Fast forward AGAIN to adopting two kids, plunging into the worst depression of my life, ruining my life by buying way too expensive of a house and making it worse by buying a mini-van we also couldn't afford and certainly didn't need......life sucked. It sucked so badly I lost and never found MY copy Ms. Schofield's book as well as the library's copy of her other book Confessions of a Happily Organized Family!! (Ok, we found the library book--at the bottom of the cedar chest as we were moving!) Finally I "dug out" by taking a new, much better paying job and moving into a nice tiny house with a tiny FREE car! Life keeps getting better!

So, what did you DO already?? I hear you....

I used Laura's P-R-O-C-E-S-S

P---plan of attack! I made my LIST of what wasn't working, what IS working, budget etc. My budget was pretty much nothing, but I gave in and decided I could part with $10.

R--remove items. I went to AREA #1--the dreaded back door entry way. Which is also the ONLY entryway since the living room is too small and we have a chair parked in front of the front door. Otherwise we'd all have to squish up on the little couch--not happening while I'm alive. Besides, how can 3 cats nap on ONE couch when one of them is our Coco??? Glad you understand....now back to organizing! Ok, I took everything out of that lovely bench which though lovingly given and assembled by my Mom and my kids is NOT the shoe cubbies I passionately wanted!! I'm working on letting that go, in the meantime I had to conquer the chaos.


Sorry the photo looks as bad as the area DID......



Yep, that's what GREETED us when we came in! No wonder the kids complained that I walked in the door and started yelling......


So I REMOVED everything from the cubbies and the area. Worn out shoes, mismatched flip-flops, one house slipper and misc trash were simply thrown out. Bye-bye!

O--organize piles. I made it simple. I threw the trash straight into the giant wheelie trash can I dragged to the back door and put shoes that were still in use in another pile. ALL trash went straight to the trash.

C--"containerize" – find storage solutions. Containers create boundaries according to Laura. I had previously gathered up all the useable storage containers so I looked them over and tried a few. My goal though was to make the bench work for us.

E--evaluate plan. Could I get this mess to something we could keep "decent" if not "perfect." Maybe......


S--solve/Simplify any remaining issues. I didn't like any of the available storage containers, but couldn't recall seeing anything for sale (except the originally desired shoe cubbies) or nifty little wall-mounted thingys from IKEA, but they were out as I didn't think the landlord would go for screwing them to the wall or to the cabinet.

Time for a compromise that doesn't have to be permanent. Go with what you have!


Then I put my few pairs of shoes in their cubbies, put P's work boots and mowing shoes to the side behind the door and added a basket (I'm not thrilled with a white plastic monster sitting there, but it beats the mess we had!) to hold flip-flops in front, my oversized, but oft-used cookbooks in the back and the library bag and other tote bags in it too. Not ideal, just WAY BETTER!


All this week I will be posting the results of my de-cluttering and re-organizing mission this past weekend. Some areas are working fine so I left them alone. Some I'm trying something new. In NO AREA am I letting DESPAIR over-take me. I'll be sharing some ideas I found at Laura's website, I'm an Organizing Junkie, as well as from participants in her many Organizing Challenges as well as from other sources. If you need inspiration to tackle similar projects, please stop by!