Organizing...again!

This time of year, especially since Gracie was born, I spend countless hours late at night pondering all the organizing possibilities before me. Some call it a sickness (namely my husband) but I quite enjoy coming up with creative and frugal ways to make our house better. And to me, better means more organized, less clutter, and easier to clean. 

My recent project was to re-vamp Gracie's toys. First of all, there are tons of them. Tons. Second of all, she only plays with baby dolls and dress-up 95% of the time. But then, she will complain that she wants to watch TV all the time because she's bored. What?!  Third of all, she doesn't play down in our basement playroom unless Kia is over because she feels 'lonely' down there without her. Seriously?!  Lastly, she doesn't sleep during nap time anymore, but is still required to stay in her room to rest/play quietly for 90 minutes or so. So taking all of the facts into consideration, I landed on the idea to leave her baby doll, kitchen, and dress-up stuff downstairs. She has baby dolls stashed everywhere in this house, so don't feel too sorry for her. But as for the other toys, she and I went through them and purged (very, very little) the items she doesn't play with. Then we moved the rest up to her bedroom closet so that she could play with them during rest time and when Momma and Daddy makes her turn off the TV... which is after 2 episodes of any show. 

Ryan added the required extra shelf this afternoon, so the process is complete!  It was very cheap, I might add. I think the total cost to add some hooks to hang the purple play dough and puzzle bins, a few bins to store sets of toys, a few bins to set out the toys that are in rotation, a few pieces of lumber to build the shelf, a few screws, and an L bracket was less than $25. 

Now her closet has 2 zones - toys and clothes. The left is for her clothes. I have 3 stacking bins that hold shoes, clothes that are too small, and clothes that are too big (top to bottom).  We use a hanging organizer to lay out her weekday outfits each Sunday night. Then on the right side is all toy storage. The 6 cube organizer used to live downstairs, but it fits perfectly in her closet. Each cube holds a toy/activity that is 'in rotation'. I use toy rotation with Gracie for several reasons. The main reasons are to keep her toys feeling fresh and fun, and also it's easier to clean up with fewer toys available. I switch out toys every 2 weeks or so. But I'm thinking that if she requests an out of rotation toy to play with during rest time, that will be a good way to keep her playing independently for the entire quiet time. Sometimes she is ready to be done with rest time before Momma is!

Below are a few pictures of the new toy organization. We're pretty happy with the results! 

Book Storage

Gracie is all about books. She loves to be read to and she loves to read books herself (ie. flip trough the pages looking for puppies). But either way, Gracie's books end up on the floor a lot! Kyle and Kia are big readers too, so when we're altogether, pretty much every book ends up out. I LOVE that they're all readers, but I don't like that the kids can't pick up the books without a lot of assistance. They just end up in a heap on the shelves until I stand them up properly. Even Kyle has trouble putting books away the 'right' way.

So I decided to search Pinterest for book storage ideas. I ran across the idea of turning a bookshelf on its side to store things. It occurred to me that I could have Ryan build small shelves to help store books for little readers. I still wanted her books to be easily accessible, but I wanted the kids to be able to clean them up unassisted too! I also liked that they could choose their book by seeing its cover, instead of pulling out book after book because the spine isn't helpful when you can't read words yet.

After 2 hours in the garage and about $25 in wood, here's what Handy Daddy built for us! They're perfect and exactly what I imagined. Gracie has already put books away... independently and successfully!

Before and after... much better!

Bath Toys

Gracie's bath toy collection just keeps growing and for some reason they end up all over the house. Kia and Gracie both enjoy moving toys to new rooms all day long. In an effort to organize the bathroom a little better and keep the toys more out of reach, I found this cheap idea on Pinterest. It cost about $10 and required a quick trip to Walmart and Dollar Tree to make it happen. Of course when taking pictures of the new bath toy storage, I couldn't resist the opportunity to snap a few pictures of my wet baby. Isn't she so big?!

Mission Organization

So I have become a bit of a Pinterest Junkie these days. My main time-waster is searching for organization ideas. So far I have reorganized my pantry, my tupperware/food storage container cabinet, my gift wrap supply storage, and Gracie's toys. I don't have pictures of all my hard work just yet, but here are a few pictures to show off my talents.

So for Gracie's toy storage. The main problem occurred because some people (who shall remain nameless... i.e. Daddy, Mommy, Grandpa, Grandmas, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, etc) spoiled her rotten this year. She got so many presents. So many, many presents. I'm not even kidding. I tried to display them all on the fireplace hearth to take a picture of her surrounded by all her toys, but there were too many to fit! I'm serious. Whatever Gracie did this year, it must have been good! I decided against the present picture on the premise that none of my other offspring need to have proof of such a massive gift explosion (spoken like a true second-born, huh?). I don't suspect Gracie will ever see the likes of this Christmas again, nor do I suppose our other child(ren) will either. Seriously, we were overwhelmed with all the love for Gracie this year! Such a loved baby girl!

But back to the problem of having so many toys. We had already decided that our basement was going to become more of a family room, which includes some of Gracie's toys. We chose a few of G's new toys to store in the basement where we hope to spend more time as she gets older. I found a great inspiration at the The Red Chair Blog and was able to replicate for my own house. There are still many toys to store upstairs. I'm working on a living room toy storage solution as we speak! But for now, here's the basement! When she gets older, anal Momma plans to take pictures of each cubby and attach them inside so Gracie knows exactly which toys go where and can put them away properly. We'll see if I actually do it and if it actually works.


My pantry storage has been a work in progress for a while now, but I finally put the finishing touches on the project just this week. I wish I would have taken a before picture because our pantry was sort of tornadic before.

I found several inspirations for my pantry organization on Pinterest, but the basic idea I decided upon was to use bins to categorize the products in our pantry. The categories are: Condiments, Seasoning Packets, Pasta, Sides, Snacks, Dinner Items, Baby Items, Cereal, Chips, Baking Items, Icing/Sprinkles, Random Stuff, Paper Goods. I found these white bins at Walmart for like $4 a piece. I think I spent $30 total on the bins for my pantry project.

The second step is to get rid of all boxes from the boxed goods that have a plastic sack inside (cereals, snack crackers, etc). Just store them in the plastic sacks... that saves lots of storage space.

I still have a few items that aren't in bins. Things like canned goods, cake mixes, and spaghetti sauce have their places on the shelves.

After I had finished filling the bins, I attached 3M removable hooks for hanging lunch bags, trash bags, and other items.

Just this week I got the bins labeled so the husband can find things on his own. We've been using system (sans labels) for about 2 months now and our pantry, thankfully, has not returned to its tornadic state again.

As with the toy storage, I have plans of turning the pantry doors into a whiteboard for writing grocery lists and other notes and also a magnetic board to store spices (in magnetic jars) and other things I have yet to think of!

Ryan isn't exactly a huge fan of my Pinterest addiction. He has told me multiple times over the past week that I need to focus less on my "projects". He says I fixate on them and can't think of anything else until they're done. He's a little bit right, I'll admit it. But at least I'm not a procrastinator. We balance each other out, I think!