Organization Containers December 5, 2009

I love to organize, absolutely love it. I hate to clean the kitchen and wash dishes, but I love to organize.  Part of organizing means that everything has a place and since I am frugal by nature, I tend to reuse items until they fall apart. So while cooking in the kitchen, I laid my eye upon some containers and brain bolt!

 

Spray paint + cheap items = modern organization decor items

 

I scavenged around the house for containers, anything and everything made it into my pile.

My Final Score

• Heavy paper boxes from a clearance center, they’re Christmas items, but at $1 for 6, they are a lot cheaper than their non-Christmas alternatives.

• Tins hanging in the kitchen from Christmas cookies
• Empty litter containers (not litter boxes, but the boxes litter comes in)
  

• Cans from veggies/fruit
• Glass jars from food stuffs
• Plastic fruit containers (the kinds that strawberries come in)

MY MISSION: Create cute chic decor boxes to store items in.

MY TOOLS: My trusty spray paint in various colors, wrapping paper, decorative scrapbook paper, trims like ribbons and such.

MY PROCESS:

1. Clean containers of any foodstuff, litter, and stubborn labels.
2. Cut any holes if you need to.
3. Spray paint or cover the boxes/tins with fabric/paper

1. Optional: Add decorative embellishments such as painted stencils, ribbons, glitter, etc.
2. Add items to the containers.
3. Put items on various surfaces around the home.

1. Admire your handiwork and your beautiful organization containers on the cheap/free.

Shopping from the Closet November 30, 2009

Ok, another article prompted me to write a post about shopping from your closet, well-shopping from our closet.

We are blessed enough to have a fairly large closet. In fact, we joke that we can fit a full size bed in there (we actually can). However, I wanted something a bit more. I love design and I tend to express myself through various outlets, including my clothing. Considering this, I decided that our closet needed to become a store in a sense. I wanted to enter in each day and be able to shop from my items and put together outfits and simply play around in there.

1. Take inventory of the space: what are we working with really?  

   Originally we had only one clothing bar and shelf around the room. A big waste if you ask me, so I quickly added a second bar. Since the room is so large, we’re treating it like a dressing room instead of a closet.



2. Decide on a system that works.We needed a place to store shoes, but we can’t use those hanging bags since we’re more of tossers instead of placers; double rods for shirts and tanks (mostly for me, since hubby mostly owns long sleeves and the placement of the initial bar means the second bar to closer to the floor. This creates a situation where his shirts drag on the floor, not so for most of mine.) ; an area for long dresses; an area for jackets/outerwear; an area for accessories such as jewelry, belts, scarves, purses, etc; an area for hubby’s keys and badges;  a place to sit down to put on shoes; a place to air out the clothes of the day; a basket to hold sewing kit/shoe polish/lint roller/etc for quick repairs; and of course a mirror to make sure you look spiffy.
3. Get the right materials. 

   This doesn’t always mean expensive. For our shoe center we used cinderblocks and pre-fab shelving (if you can get to the store by yourself, definitely go with some basic wood planks, not the pre-fab stuff, but hubby insisted), pegboard and bulletin boards for accessories and the additional rod was from a discount store.

4. Sort 

   Since I’m the organizer, I did the sorting while hubby wisely stayed out of the way. I made several piles: seasonal for clothes that we didn’t need at the moment, trash for clothing and items that I would be too ashamed to donate in their current state, donate (or have a swap party) for clothes that were great, but just not great for us, keep for stuff we wanted to keep, and need repairs for items that needed simple repairs.

5. Decorate. 

   Add a picture (even framed calender photos look nice), a full length mirror to see the latest creations, an ottoman to sit and take off shoes, maybe even a pretty light fixture or paint on the walls.

Finish! Enjoy shopping!