Clutter Rehab Toys and...

Today Mike had a car to deliver to a customer so he took Nathan with him and left Cameron with Mommy.. We went to work on the Living Room, cleaning up and purging toys we have grown out of ; namely the Duplo Blocks/ Mega Blocks. They are happily in a Rubber-maid Storage Tote in preparation of listing on Craigslist or something similar.

I also moved their Lego Blocks into a Steralite 3 drawer container and set it next to the couch just out of the line of site of the room, but still accessible.  The top makes a great building surface for just one child... Cameron tried it out and decided it was a good height to stand up and build..



 




Next I decided to move an empty game table drawer set out of the room. It was holding up a speaker for the television so I needed a replacement for that job. The speaker's mate is setting on the sub-woofer (all black) so I re-purposed the Duplo bin covering it in black fabric to match the sub and the speakers now match. (no cost involved and stores the bin for later use...) I will most likely move it our the chair slightly as it should be centered in the space, but I'm pretty happy with it..   The next step is to either get an antenna or fix the homemade one that is laying on the floor (hence the black cables hanging out of the front of the shelf.)

Back to organizing, I'm going to sort some of the ATC and Art Journal supplies into the game table drawers to clean up the front entry but still be able to create with the boys in the space. I pulled some fun pages from magazines today in the clean up / recycling efforts so I have lots of pieces to use for ATCs and Art Journal pages.  I will post the Art Journal pages for swap-bot later tonight.

Clutter Rehab: Boys' Bedroom

My husband has hopped on board the clutter rehab wagon and jumped in to help with the boys' bedroom this weekend. Actually he did most of the work.
We purged toys, we sorted and purged clothes (if it is too big it has a box in the top of the closet), we hung dress shirts, we moved Lego and game pieces out of the bedroom, and finally we pulled almost all of the Fisher Price Little People out of the bedroom and bagged them up for donation. I let the boys keep the castle and woodsman's piece as they have a lot of Playmobil Knights and no castle for the knights. I am going to continue purging as I catch up on the laundry, but it sure looks good...
We limited the boys to a couple of small blankets each and collected up the remaining to be donated as well... I am hoping this will also help them realize that even when things seem tight and they don't get what they want, we are still blessed to have so much.

Clutter Rehab: necklaces

While reading "clutter Rehab" I was happy to find the suggestion for necklace/ jewelry organization, it was one similar to what I had recently done. In the book Laura suggests making one, well I bought a tie organizer thing at Wal-Mart. It only had 6  hooks but fits perfectly on the side of the cupboard near my sink.  I alternated chunky necklaces with think delicate ones... Funny thing is I hardly wear them, but they do look pretty on the wall..

Clutter Rehab: The Christmas Decor

I took down the tree and was content to just put the ornaments in the garage cupboard until I realized they would not fit in the box I had planned for them. That started a purge and reorganization of the Christmas shelf. My husband purchased speakers for a project build recently and still had all the boxes. See how all the smaller boxes fit in the heavy duty shipping box made us both think of using them for the ornaments. 20 minutes later all 3 of the boys were cutting and building divider boxes for ornaments, while they did that I worked on sorting and purging for broken ornaments (a long sad story, but I now know ornaments should not be stored in Steralite drawers.). The boys brought me the divider boxes and I started putting ornaments in... I now have a box of black ornaments, a box of red ornaments, and 2 boxes of gold ornaments. The burgundy ornaments remained in their own box and the coca-cola ornaments are still in their previous box. Everything is put on one shelf. I still have 3 smaller boxes to sort (handmade ornaments and sentimental ornaments from growing up) but it got too cold in the garage to work on it anymore.  I am happy with the results so far and will continue on my clutter rehab journey... This afternoon I am working on a pile in my office.