Look What The Mail Man Brought!

Remember this?

Well, it finally came!

Check out all the goodies:

Now, I just have to figure out what's what and how to put it to the most effective use.

Thanks again, Laura!

If you like organizing, you really should check out Laura's blog I'm an Organizing Junkie. She provides a lot of great ideas and often has awesome prizes like the one I won!

How Exciting!

Read THIS !

I know! I was shocked too!!

Thank you, Laura, you made my day!

And THANK YOU for inspiring me, all of us, to be more organized!

Org Junkie's Monthly Organizing Round-Up - May (Kid's Rooms)

(to see more round-ups click above icon)

May's Round-Up was Kids' Rooms. Unfortunately, my only child died nearly 3 years ago at 26 weeks gestation. We had only moved into our house a week before her death. The room we planned to be hers sat empty for a while, and eventually morphed into a storage room. I kept the door closed at all times because it was too depressing to look into the room and not see a crib or any little girl accessories. We hadn't had a chance to buy anything for her between our pending move to this house and the fact I was hospitalized for 2 weeks followed by bed rest at home for the remainder of my pregnancy.

Recently, I had the thought that maybe I would turn my daughter's room into a craft space since she is my biggest inspiration and I have not another space in my house that could be used solely for crafting.

I was already planning to do this during the month of May when I saw that Org Junkie chose Kids Rooms for this month. It has been a difficult month, besides being emotionally draining to do the room, but also because I have been sick with not one, but two, nasty colds, and not to mention other things popping up that have had to take priority over the room. At last, I've finally got it to the point where I think I can share. There's more to do, but all in due time. I don't think I'll win the contest or anything, I may even be too late to officially enter, but it was good motivation anyway!

After I cleared out the room, I painted it in a color called "Grape Lavender". I just love the color and how the room just feels so much more...NOT like a storage space.

From the entrance BEFORE:

Same view AFTER

Inside the Room BEFORE:

Same View AFTER:

(I got all these shelves at yardsales!)

Facing the other direction AFTER:

I started filling up the shelves with items for my memory box project:

I have more to do but I think it's off to a good start. I want to find a better table. The table that I have currently is actually a card table and it's too plush on top to really be good. So far I haven't had any luck finding a good table, so I'll do what I can with that one now. I am eventually going to put more shelves in the closet, or a closet organizer that can be kept in there permanently, to do some more organization. I have a few things to put on the walls, including that bulletin board that you see in the photo above. Hopefully I'll have all that done when the CRAFT ROOM challenge is here.

If you linked to me via the challenge, please come again soon to keep up to date on the progress of this room!

Monthly Organizing Round-Up - March (Dining Room)

This month's Round-Up was the Dining Room. I don't have a separate dining area, so I worked on the part of the kitchen where we eat. These two shelving units were given to me by a friend a few months ago and I keep trying to utilize them but I can never get them organized the way I want. I still don't think I got it the way I want but I did purge some things. I couldn't afford any new containers or organizers nor did I have alot of time to do so. The only thing I purchased was a desk-top filing thingamajing with hopes we will be able to file things at a more immediate pace than we do when the files are in the filing cabinet (which is upstairs in the computer room)

Before:

After:


It doesn't look like much was done, but many papers were purged and put aside for shredding. Some things were filed. The phone books were put on the bottom shelf. I'm not sure if it looks any better or tidier but perhaps it's a start.

Before:


After:

Again, it doesn't look like much was done, but I went through all the baskets you see here and purged some things and moved some things to proper locations throughout the house. I had originally bought these baskets for the office but the space I have in the office isn't working, so I put them on these shelves until I can get something better.

April's Round-Up is The Master Bedroom. If you want to participate in the Monthly Organizing Round-Up, please click the icon at the top of this post for more details.

Click the links below to see my previous Round-Ups!
February Round-Up

Made it to the Top 12!

You may remember my previous post in regards to the Monthly Organizing Round-Up. Imagine my surprise to find out I made it to the Top 12! Thanks, Laura! How exciting! Now I'm motivated to work hard at the March Round-Up!

To check out the other Top 12 winners or to join the next Round-Up click here.

Monthly Organizing Round-Up - February

I think I missed the deadline for the Monthly Organizing Round-Up. It's totally my computer's fault! I am having so many issues with the computer lately, it's hard to believe it's only a couple years old.

Back to the subject at hand. This month round-up was the Kitchen which was perfect for me because we really needed to figure out how to set up our counter space. At Christmas, I got my husband a new coffee pot and he got me a new kettle, both of which took up a different amount of space than our old ones. We also got a food processor which does not fit in any cabinet nor do we have room for it in the pantry so it has to sit out on the counter. However, by doing this we had no space for our toaster and other necessary items. It also did not help that the plug in where we had the coffee maker could only have one thing plugged in it at a time, so some real thinking had to be put into how we wanted to set it up and yet have it not be an inconvenience.

Before:

As you can see in the Before pictures, things were pretty crowded on this side of the counter and we sometimes had no space to really do any prep work.


The dish tray is not usually out if it's not being used but I put it out to show you why I need this much space on this side of the counter.

After:

We decided to try putting the microwave in this corner since it is a deep corner anyway, and took the canisters right out of this spot. Rotated the spice rack and the utensil thingy. Lo and behold we had enough room for both the toaster and the kettle ! They can easily slide out when we need to plug them in, but look at all the counter space for prepping meals! (please ignore the fact that this is the ugliest kitchen ever)


We put the coffee maker and the food processor over here where the microwave used to be and magically there is tons of counter space over here. Just imagine when the dish tray isn't out how much space we have! We put two of the seldom used canisters up in the cupboard and the tray that held them we will store in the storage room until we either re-purpose it or figure out whether we will use it after we renovate the kitchen (someday).

Tell me what you think? Does it look better? So far it seems to be proving efficient.

Next month's Organizing Round up is the Dining Room. We don't have an official dining room, but I do have some organizing to do on the other side of the kitchen where the table is!

To get in on the fun, click here!