The Organized Life

Organization is something I very much enjoy. I love bins with crisp white labels. Drawer organizers bring a smile to my face.

Mr. Husband and I moved into our house and are not yet living the organized life (sad day). I know that eventually we will get there. Just not quite yet.

Today, though, was a big step toward the organized life. Our home has three bedrooms. Two are on the main living level. Being that we are in a split-level home, the two bedrooms are upstairs. The third bedroom is in the basement. From the beginning, upstairs bedroom number two was to be the office. We completed it with a computer and desk, filing cabinet and three bookshelves. Will all that space for storage, Mr. Husband and I still managed to keep a pretty cluttered and pretty messy office. The culprit you ask?

My craft stuff.

It was everywhere! Now, before I get ahead of myself, I need to talk about bedroom number hree. My husband and I love just about every outdoor summer activity and are slowly getting into quite a few outdoor winter activities. That being said, we have a lot of stuff. The easiest thing for us to do was to out all that "stuff" in the basement bedroom. Man, did it every get full! Golf clubs, snowboards, tents, sleeping bags, luggage, backpacking backpacks, snowshoes. The list continues with more stuff that was taking up way too much space and was not stored properly. Only one of the bedrooms in our house was functioning properly, and that's only because the only thing we do there is sleep.

Back to the craft stuff. I have a lot of that, too. I finally bit the bullet and bought those clear and stackable shoebox sized storage containers. I used some extra white return address labels and a Sharpie to get to work. Before I do anything, I have a habit of writing a list. I jotted down ideas for the buckets I would create: things that stick (glue, tape, etc.), things that cut, paper, stamps, block carving, paint, paint brushes, ribbon, sewing stuff, markers and crayons, stencils, ink pads, and a bin for miscellaneous stuff. I filled up ten bins! Ten bins of stuff that had previously been in bags on the floor. It felt SO good.

When we bought our house, the downstairs bedroom had a lovely white desk and hutch. With the hutch removed, I knew it would be the perfect sewing table. And here my sewing machine sat since I got it, untouched. I couldn't even fit a chair in that bedroom.

In an attempt to make a long post as short as possible, I spend the day in the downstairs bedroom. I made my way through piles and piles of things. I gored our backpacking packs and day packs properly. Our snowboards are within reach (we better get more snow!). The snowshoes were moved to the garage, along with the golf clubs and tennis rackets.

My lovely labeled clear stackable bins were moved downstairs. My bin of leftover fabric is actually near my sewing machine. I have paint, paintbrushes and canvas all in the same room. And, My chair fits in the room (pictures soon).

I'd venture out and say that today was definitely a success.