School Room Updates

Hello there remember me? I am rejoining the blog world after a nice long break. Even if it was unintentional. Between traveling to my brothers for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Epiphany, sickness,  and life in general time just disappeared.

I thought I would show you one of the biggest things I have been working on the past couple of weeks. Our School Room and office! This room is rather small for 5 people to be in all day so having a place for everything is so important. I have been sorting, purging, and organizing and I am finally finished! It is so nice to be completely done! (Well unless we don’t move and then I will make more permanent changes)

Much is still the same. The buffet stores extra school games, science supplies, and the kindergarten stuff. On top of that is the children’s workbox. It holds their work books, Awana books, and other things they want to keep there. Hence the curtain it’s never neat and I can’t stand the mess!

On the top is office supplies, rulers, pencils, paint brushes, etc.

 

This is the other side of  the room. It has seen the most change. I added the expedit shelf from IKEA to gain more storage and the file holders from Ballard designs.

 

My brother and his wife gave us the map for Christmas. It just happens to be the perfect size to fit above the shelf, and perfect for our state studies. We had to switch to a dry erase board from the chalk due to allergies. I do miss my old board! The boxes on the bottom hold taxes, files, office supplies, and play dough. The basket is one that my husband made and the handle was broken. It now works perfectly for all of our flashcards.

My binders fit perfectly on the shelf. We use most of these daily.

I still love the jars of markers, crayons, and paint out of reach. I do keep some on the table within reach now that my youngest is 5, but I love having them up high as it keeps the messes controlled!

We store our science and history notebooks in these files where they are easy to access everyday.

This is my little corner or the Teacher’s desk and office.

Even the inside of the closet got organized! We keep our office supplies in here along with the printer and shredder. I like that my printer does not get as dusty sitting in the closet. My laminator sits on the top shelf along with more CD storage and school projects. The puzzles and games are on the next shelf. The middle shelf holds our paper and printer. The bottom shelf holds our state notebooks, computer supply storage and our file box of prepped lessons. Now when my husband comes in the room he doesn’t have to ask me where anything is, its all easy to locate!

So there you have the new and improved school room office. I don’t mind spending our days in here now that it is organized!

Legos, Legos, Legos!

About 9 months ago when we were getting our house ready for the market there was one project that I knew needed to happen to have any concept of clean in the boys room. Yes, all those Lego bricks needed a decent storage system that worked! Our original system was to small and therefore not working. There were always Legos on the floor because there was no place to put them.

This is the  system we started with.

The other problem we have is one son wants all the pieces separated by color and size, while the other one wants to keep all of his sets together. I began searching for ideas online and came across this one. Perfect! The only problem is we were getting ready to put our house on the market and move. I didn’t want to go buy anything new so I worked with what we had on hand.

Enter storage solution number two. All of the Legos were moved to the basement and organized by color. We kept some of the sets together and combined some into what we call the “everything” Legos. Those would be all the random pieces I have been collecting for my children since before they were born. This is a photo after we moved some of the Legos back into their room. Sadly I don’t think I took any photos of it while in the basement.

You can see that we had labels but they had all ready outgrown their homes and needed extra drawers.

This is what the basement currently has. It is the Power Miners, Atlantis, and Ninjago sets. I plan to do some rearranging on these shelves but that will come in time.

Now 9 months later we are not moving as our house didn’t sell.  It’s coming on to winter and our basement has no heat, and the make-do system was not always easy to work with according to my Lego builders. At the same time Jen from I heart organizing! posts about her organizing system. The same one I had been eyeing. That was all it took! Last weekend while the boys were at a camp out the girls and I took a little trip to IKEA! Out went the Expedit shelf and Sterlite storage containers and in came the new!

We are not finished as nothing is labeled but the system is amazing! The units are the Trofast system from IKEA. The only problem we have is that by having to keep it upstairs there is not room for all of the Legos we own. Some of them still reside in the basement. I hope to get those into Trofast drawers the next time I make a trip the the store.

Each color has it’s own bin and there is one for wheels, clear pieces, and mini-figures.

We also have two bins for castle and city pieces. I plan to get the bigger bins for the sets when I get more. The smaller ones are overflowing.

As you can see we still have some work to do. The books all need a nice box to go into. I used to store them in binders but some of the newer sets come with booklets that were to big for a page protector and the smaller ones tend to fall out. I think a box will solve all of those problems.

I like the fact that there is some display space on top of the storage units. Not enough for my boys but it works for now. Perhaps I might do something with the space between the top shelf and storage. This is what it looks like most of the time as my boys play with their Legos every day.

Now I just need to find the time to label them. In the meantime we are loving out new storage!

Linking up to 

An organized basement

One of the big projects my Mom and I accomplished in the last two weeks was the basement. While it was partially organized it had piles of  things in the walkways that I had gotten lazy about and not put away. It also had furniture waiting to me moved around to be used effectively for sewing and crafting storage. Crafting storage is a new addition to the basement, I needed a place for fabrics, sewing machines, a cutting table, and all those craft supplies and unfinished projects! Warning! Lots of photos.

Earlier this week I finished painting the playroom side of the basement. The bright cheerful color makes it feel so much brighter and warmer down there. Our little library keeps growing and I am going to add another shelf when I make it to IKEA again. We also have the most read and used books upstairs in the school room. The toys are stored in the crated along the bottom. I think they are from the Container Store, we have had them for at least 8 years.I added a couple of maps to the wall and moved the movie storage next to the TV. We don't have cable and only watch movies every now and then, but it makes sense to keep them where they are used. This is the storage side for Holiday Decorations, and clothing, I am planning on curtaining it off soon. That's another project. :)  My husband's desk is also here, he does work from home every now and then so it is nice to have a place where it is quiet. We stay upstairs on those days. This is the area of the biggest change. We continued the flooring all the way through this area also. It is so much warmer and comfortable on your feet! I purchased the old farm table at a sale for 30.00. I lift up the other leaf when I need the space for cutting out dress patterns or other large and messy projects.This is across from the sewing area. It is the "new",  craft cabinet and decorative storage. Both of these pieces of furniture were originally somewhere else and no longer needed. This shelf helps me see everything easily and actually use it for decorating.I plan to use the bulletin board to pin up decor and sewing ideas, it was just sitting in a corner before. The picture frames on the right are for a projects and the ones on the left are waiting for concrete screws so I can hang them up in the basement.My little sewing nook has everything I need all in one spot. It will be so nice to work here and watch the children play.This part of the shelving unit, which is from IKEA holds a few more decorating things, cake decorating, painting, gift wrap, candles, and some seasonal items. I cleaned out everything we don't use and ended up with an extra shelf for the food stuffs.This is the canning and appliance storage side. It holds much of our food for the winter. The empty jars are all waiting for applesauce which I will be doing in a week or so. This is where I store the appliances and canning pots, although they are still upstairs being used! I have crock pots, an ice cream maker, pressure cooker and canner, roasting pan, food strainer, smoker, cider press, dehydrator, and other things I only use occasionally or seasonally. Our kitchen just isn't big enough to hold all of these big items.This is where I keep my fabrics in the dresser, and more frames that go in the children's rooms. Hopefully soon my husband will add another outlet so I can have the stereo to use and the fridge will not have to have an extension cord running across the floor. Now that I painted the children's side, I really want to paint this section also. I think it will brighten it up too, anything to make it look less like a unfinished basement. I just love coming downstairs and seeing it all organized! As I finish up the last few things I want to do, I'll share those also.I hope I didn't bore you will all the photos!

Laundry Room Shelves

I know, I know, I promised pictures of the garage, unfortunately we were not able to get it all finished and I have a few more things to do before I share it with you all. Instead here is a look at another project that was on our list.

This is my laundry room closet. I didn't take a before picture but just imagine a closet with one little shelf and hanging rod, your typical builder closet. It was completely useless for the type of storage I need it for. Our laundry room is a very small narrow space which means their is no room for big bulky things as you have to walk through the room to get to the garage.My mom and I customized the shelves to fit everything just perfect, especially the shelf for the griddle, its so big and never had a home before. I love it that everyone can put it away without my help!   I used storage containers I all ready had on hand. The metal bins are from IKEA and the wooden crates I picked up at a barn sale for a dollar each. So far I'm storing everything that was sitting on the floor waiting for a home, cleaning supplies, light bulbs, rags, and my husband's cereal, etc. I will add some labels after I am certain this is the way I want it to be. I like to live with it a while before I commit to labels. We also added two half shelves way up at the top for winter/rain boots and other things that are seasonal. I love that I am able to use so much of the closet, before there was a lot of wasted space. This project enabled us to rip out the rest of the vinyl floor from the addition we did to add a bit more space for the washer and dryer. I love the glue spotted floor so much better than the curled up vinyl that was there before. It means progress is being made, even if it is slow! I have so much more to share! It seems that we kept adding to the list of things to do. My husband has an hour and thirty minute commute one way. He is just to tired and to busy to use up his family time on projects. I was feeling quite overwhelmed with all that needed to be done. So when I heard my parents were coming and Mom could stay for two weeks I knew this was my chance. Two adults and a break from schooling and we were able to get so much done!. We not only cleaned out the garage, but the basement also. We took 4 truck loads of stuff to the good will and I have another load almost ready. It feels so good to get rid of the excess and organize everything else. Thank you Mom for all you help!

What a mess!

Welcome to my garage, yes it has looked like this for 4 years. It does not look like this anymore, right now it actually looks worse, but my mother is here visiting and we are in the middle of re-organizing the entire space. I'll be busy this weekend putting it in order and share pictures when its all done. Have a great labor day weekend!

Cleaning house

These last couple of days I took down all the christmas decorations sorted through them, fixed anything broken, finished up a few projects for next year, and packed it all up in boxes. Extra carefully I might add so the movers won't break anything. Isn't is so pretty all piled in a heap?

Lovely to see it all organized and ready to go to storage in the basement.

So why does my dining room still look like this?

Well, I decided I really needed to go through ALL of my decorating things. So I piled  everything I own on the dining room table to go through and re-decorate and then get rid of things I haven't used.

Who knew dining rooms could be so useful for everything but eating?

And while I'm busy working on this project, here is a glimpse of what the children are doing.

"I'm playing 'puter Mommy."