Re-arranging Rooms

I sure do love the mood I get into when I take down my Christmas decorations.  Everything looks so clean, so sparse.  Well, not really sparse because my home is full of things I love so it might be to the point of clutter for some people.  But I surround myself with things I love.  Anyway, back to the point.

In light of this creative mood that I'm in, I have been re-thinking the purpose of a couple of rooms in my home.  So... I have taken it upon myself to do some re-arranging.  As I sat down in one of the rooms to make a mental list, I started to get the feeling of being overwhelmed with the task ahead of me.  Yikes!

This is the plan:  I will take everything out of my now craft/laundry room and turn it into a catch-all-kid room.  Hmm... I need to come up with a catchy name for that area.  I re-painted the room back in October with the plans of purging and organizing as I put it back in the room.  See how nice and clean it is?

Well, it didn't get organized-- more like thrown back in the room and looks worse than ever now.  So... all my craft and scrapbook stuff is going upstairs to the library.  I still have to buy 3 more cabinets with that same finish to store it all in.

When everything is out of that area, then we will get three (one for each child) bookcase-type cabinets.  That will be their area for their school books, athletic equip that is not kept in the garage, toys, jackets, shoes, and no telling what else.  I have a 24 x 36" bulletin board that will go on the wall for all their school/sports/fundraiser/whatever else papers.

This picture is definitely a before shot.  Before I even painted the room.  Eeek!!  Wow, that's a mess!!  This behind the door area will be where all their craft, crayons, play-doh, etc will be.

That is all I can think of at the moment, but I am going to do some net surfing about organizing kids stuff.  If anyone has some great ideas they want to pass on, I would be ever so appreciative!

Julie, this is mainly for you.  =]  When we were stuck at home in the snow and ice, I took the opportunity to organize my gift closet.  This is the only space in my home that is neat, clean and organized right now.  Lol!!  This is pretty much what it is...

This 3-drawer cabinet contains boxes, gift bags, tissue, and flat wrap.  The bottom drawer contains only Christmas.  The middle drawer is organized by everyday, baby, birthday, and kids' categories.  The top drawer is all solid colors.  Yes, there are lots of solid bags-- 200+!  But don't you worry... I only buy them on clearance.  Those all happen to come from Hobby Lobby where I paid pennies for a bag!  I'm such the bargain shopper.  On both sides of the cabinet is where I store my roll wrap.  One side is Christmas kids and the other side is other Christmas, baby, and birthday wrap.

The big blue tote is where I store gifts that I buy throughout the year.  I mainly start buying the essentials for my kids' Christmas (pj's, undies, slippers, etc) in June.  Also, if I come across an extremely awesome deal on something, it gets tossed into the tote.

The small blue tote is the "party tote".  It holds balloons, streamers, banners, etc.  That is mainly Amariah's department.  She's my big birthday decorator.  This is awesome for me!  Not only does she love to do it, I love being able to mark that off my list without any worries.  No stress there!  =]

This tote holds the 25 cent packages of bows that I buy after Christmas.  I love after-Christmas sales!  On top of it, I keep all my solid tissue paper.  It is organized by color (of the rainbow).  Yes, I am a freak... I already know that because my family likes to remind me.  I had to show you my little stash of tape.  Every year after Christmas at Hobby Lobby, we always have tons of tape left over.  So I stock up on it at 66% and 80% off!

Then this shelf contains cards.  The box on the right is my Christmas card box.  It contains silver pens, cards, address labels and thank you notes.  The box in the middle is my card organizer.  It came from Current.  Remember that neat little catalog?  I wonder if it's still around?  I've had that box for many, many years.  It just happens to be the very first thing I ever bought, even before I married, for organizing.  I guess it can be blamed for my organizing madness!  The box on the left is mainly Christmas gift tags/labels.  There are a few everyday ones in there.

I guess this post is long enough.  If you made it this far, then thank you for holding out till the end.  If you stopped 1/4 of the way into it... I really don't blame you.  Haha!  I'm just way procrastinating!  I could accomplish so much in the next hour with the kids being in bed, Rich gone to work.  But I'm a little overwhelmed on where to start.  I think I'll post pictures as I go so I can look back and see that progress is being made.

I am grateful today for a place in my home for everything and everything (soon to be) in place.