Craft Room Tour

My life is full of clutter.  I HATE clutter.  No matter how much I dislike clutter, I can't seem to eliminate it from my life.  Anyone else have this problem?  Sure you do.  Very few people don't have issues with clutter in some part of their lives.

I've been ignoring living with the clutter in our home for the past couple of years.  I'd much rather do what has to be done, play with the kids and then curl up with a good (or even bad) book.  Much easier on me than trying to sort through all our stuff.  'Bout as helpful as an ostrich burying its head in the sand, right?

Okay.  No more excuses.

• I'm feeling better and getting my energy back.
• Neighborhood garage sale in T minus 19 days.
• Little Man has turned 2 and there no more little Wises coming along.
• My life will be much simpler and nicer once I do this.

My craft room seemed the perfect place to start - since my husband kept making not so subtle comments about how much better he thought all my stuff would be moved to the basement.  I can't really blame him with the room in a constant state of chaos.

So, here is where it all started.

Actually, I believe this is after I had already gotten started.  I didn't like this.

Configuration 2 didn't work much better.

I moved our dining room table into the room instead of having everything spread through 2 rooms.  The table is a great space for me to lay out material for pattern placement and cutting.  It was just too much visually right against the basement railing. 

Configuration 3 started the creative juices flowing and I was able to get everything functional and looking nice at the same time.

Having the dining room table in the room is amazing!

I 'needed' a space devoted to the actual sewing process in the room, too.

This desk is a relic left over from my husband's college days.  This picture was taken after I had moved our massive computer.  It's a large surface to work on: plenty of room for both machines to remain set up and a place to sit and work on my laptop.

Putting the shelf above the desk has allowed me to use some of the vertical space in the room.  Bobbins, my Sidewinder, a radio and some odds and ends are housed up there.

I moved the desk down the wall a few inches to make room for some storage.  The drawers are holding thread, scissors, pins, fabrics and the little bit of felt I have.  The little cubby on the desk has a plastic bin in it holding my patterns.

The bookshelves are now organized and de-cluttered, as well, holding sewing books, magazines, my tools and the rest of my fabric stash.

The last area is the first a person sees when walking in the front door.  It should work well for ironing, but I'm not sure if I'll keep it like this.  (Pay no attention to the mess in the background.)

I'm loving the new space!  It's organized.  It's inviting.  It's calling my name.  Best of all?  No one else has stuff in the room.  This space is mine all mine.  Now to get a project going.

Domino Effect Projects

We all have them.  Those projects that once started seem to affect so many other areas and make the work drag on much longer than expected.  The projects that (almost) make you wish you hadn't started them in the first place.  Has one come to mind for you?

This seems to happen to me often.  {Okay, so it doesn't so much happen to me as I cause it, but let's not nitpick.}  Another problem with this is I tend to drag bring my very patient husband in on the project.  

My most recent Domino Effect Project?  The kids' new closet.  While I'm glad the 2 big girls now have a closet big enough for them to grow into, it has caused so much more work for us than I thought it would.

Here's the chain of events.

In order to open the closet up to their room we had to empty said closet.  My bedroom when from something like this-

to looking like this-

^Notice the Pack-n-play in the pic?

Once we got the girls' clothes in the new closet, my room looked a little better.  

Okay, so it really isn't that much better, but that closet acted as a storage room for us.  So, now we had to figure out what to do with all the junk stuff we've been holding on to for no good reason.

Enter our basement.  Now, I'm extremely grateful to have this space.  If you don't have a good system of storing your stuff, thought, it will eventually look something like the pictures below.  Especially if you let the kids have free reign.

yes, that is a cabinet laying on the floor 

I've cleaned the space several times.  Unfortunately, my kids, like most, don't care to pick up after themselves, so it continues to get messy.

Another tile in the dominoes - Remember the pack-n-play in one of the pictures above?  In the middle of our closet project, I decided to move our youngest out of our room into a room of his own.  He now occupies what was our guest room.  But, what to do with the guest room furniture?  Yep, move it to the basement!

Sorry the door is in the way, but you get the idea.  It works well for us and our guest - as long as no one visits during the winter.

Previously, we had shelves along the wall the bed is now up against.  See?

 I got tired of cleaning up the kids' toys and took all the shelves down one day and moved all their toys to another area.  See them on the shelves against the concrete wall?

We have a strict rule in our house that the kids are not to go on the other side of the stud walls where my husbands tools are.  So, by default, the kids can no longer get toys out without our help.

Once the holidays started rolling around, so many things/projects were placed on hold.  I could only stand seeing a basement look like this for so long after the holidays were over, though.  And, poor Kevin had a couple of days off to help me.

 This was taken after we started working.  Has to look worse before it can look better, right?  UGH!  There were so many boxes full of books, it was ridiculous!

The shelves that once held the toys got reused in a new location.

Kevin using his hammer drill on the concrete wall.

Starting to fill up!

 Here it is full.  There is even stuff just sitting in front of the shelves because we ran out of room.  (Shameful!)  We put up some vapor barrier we had on hand from another house to help remind the kids not to go behind the walls.

Our basement is looking much better these days.  

 And all the storage space is full.

Wondering what the next domino tile to fall is going to be?  A YARD SALE!!!  We are going to be having one of the biggest 'I'm Not Having Anymore Kids' celebration yard sale ever!  I already have most of the stuff in the basement separated in 'keep' and 'sell' categories.  This decision does cause another domino to fall, though.  While I've gone through the basement, I still have the rest of the boxes in our bedroom, my kitchen and craft room to go through.

Bonus - cleaning up the basement will allow me to draw up detailed plans for transforming it into a functional finished living space.  Won't that be nice?  It should be completed about the time the kids are going off to college at the pace I move.

Do you have some dominoes falling?

Early Reveal - Big Girls' Room

I'm not completely finished with this project, but I HAVE to take a break.  I'm about to get burned out.  Plus, Halloween is right around the corner and I have 5 little kids to get ready.  Can't let them down!

So.  I decided to do an early reveal and let you all in on the current project sucking the life out of me.  :)

Background:
Our home is a new construction.  Another family built the house and then had complications at closing making them unable to finalize the purchase.  {We found it when we came to the Saint Louis area on a house hunting trip 3 years ago.  (Hard to believe that much time has passed!)}  While it is a beautiful home and has lots of space for our family, there are somethings we would have done differently had we been the ones to build it.

Here is a view of our upstairs floor plan.

 Lots of space, as you can see, it just isn't in the best place for us to function well.  So we decided to change it up a bit to help us right now and in the future.

We don't use the 'his closet' other than for storage.  {Here is one of it's transformations.}  Our 2 oldest girls share 'bedroom 2' which has the largest floor space and smallest closet.  A closet that is already full and not functioning well.  Just imagine what it will be like when there are two teenagers using the space!  What else is there to do but reconfigure and punch a hole in a wall?  At least that's my solution, and fortunately my husband was willing to go along with my idea.

Our floor plan now looks like this:

Unfortunately, there is no getting rid of that black rectangle in the middle of the wall - HVAC lines are way out of our jurisdiction.

Wanna see it in 'Before and After' format?  Of course you do! :)

Before:

Only picture I can find, so ignore the mess.

After:

Where closet use to be.

Inside.  See where the door to Master was?

View into closet from girls' room.

As you can see, I have still have some finishing to do.  However, the kids are now back in their room and the closet can be used.  We do need to get a step stool for Girl #2 so she can reach her clothes, poor thing.

Last things to be finished up.
-Paint
-Wall decor
-Bed reveal
-Closet shelving reconfigured

We'll get there.  Any suggestions on closet configuration?

**Linked to Somewhat Simple, Sawdust and Paperscraps

New Wall Calendars

I seem to be on a never ending (trial and error) mission to get organized.  Not too long ago I made a little message board to put next to my wall calendar.

It worked, somewhat, but it really just look horribly cluttered on my wall once it was filled up.   Plus, I need to have two months up so I can see easily what is going on in our lives: everyday, school and work trips.
Did I make something?  NO!  I sold out and headed to the local Wal-mart for these dry erase boards!  (Something similar to this.)  My craftiness only goes so far, people!

Click on picture to view larger.  Sorry for the glare!

I also had to figure out a way to rotate the boards.  I didn't want to constantly be rewriting on two boards each month.  Grabbing some Command Picture Hangers as an impulse purchase, I figured it was worth a try.  They work brilliantly! Now, I only have to erase one board a month and can still have them in right to left order (for my poor little anal-retentive mind).  I do need to grab some different colored markers so I can have everything color coded.  I am DETERMINED that I will not forget about pajama day at school this year!

The Original Scrapbox

Have you seen this before?  I stumbled upon The Original Scrapbox about 2 weeks ago, and I find myself going back to it time and time again to drool over all the products.  When you click on the link above, you will get to see a short video.  The Original Scrap Box is a scrapbooking storage system with fold out table and cabinets for the home.  (Yep, you read that right.  A table!).  It offers shelving, racks, carry totes, ribbon boxes and drawers.... I mean, could it get any better?!

It blows my mind!  Of course, I look at it and think how much cleaner my craft room would look.  I think this is the one ...



Although, this one looks really nice, too.



Both of those are The Workbox, just in different finishes.  See all the bins and pouches inside the cabinet?  It comes with 81 canvas totes in various sizes and 20 clear zippered pouches!  No extra buying.

Of course, in my mind, I would also 'need' this -

All the totes and pouches are included with this one as well.

There are other products available. Like this.

The CraftBox: Vanilla Raised Panel Craft Storage Furniture

Or this.

The EZ View: White Craft Desk Craft Storage Furniture

There's even a Sewing Box for those of us who sew.  And a Paper Tower for storing, you guessed it, paper.  Although, I think the Paper Tower would also work well for  storing a stash of material.  Or both- I'm equal opportunity.

There are several different accessories available, as well.

I'll give you one more piece of information... Shipping is FREE in the continental USA on several of the products.

Okay..... pick your chin up off your lap and wipe away the drool.  :)  One of these days I'll be posting a picture of my craft room all nicely organized featuring one of these amazing cabinets.  Until then, I'll keep going back to the site trying to decide which finish would look best in my home.

Kids' Closet: Part 1

This is just about 1/3 of the way done.  When will it be complete?  I have no idea.  So, instead of waiting to show you the finished project, I thought I would go ahead and get this part up.  I can always post as more parts of it are completed.  Plus, I'm pretty stinkin' excited about it and wanted to share!

As you have seen from other posts, my husband is quite handy.  If you haven't seen any projects he has done around our place, click on 'hubby projects' on the right side under 'Labels', and you can see just a few.  Let's face it, though.  There are only so many hours in a day and Kevin spends roughly 12 hours of the day away from home.  He can't do every project my crazy brain dreams up.  *sigh*

I needed a fix for this closet.

We took the doors off several months ago to keep them from getting broken and to save little fingers from  getting smashed.

The clothes where up way too high for a 4 yr old and 2 yr old to use.  Plus, the clothes (summer and winter) were packed in and hard for me deal with.  There needed to be a lower rod and some shelving/drawers of some sort.

My first attempt was a flop.  My faceframe split on me and I had trouble getting the joints right.  So I took a break.

The kids HAVE to be able to help out around here and that includes being able to put clean clothes away.  So I got the bug again a couple of weeks ago.  Round 2 went much smoother.

I took over a small part of the basement and got to work.  I had the MDF cut from Round 1 and decided to confiscate a couple of 1x2 pine boards from another project.  Once it was all put together, I painted it white.

It then fit like a dream in the closet!  Now both kids can put clothes away and get dressed all by themselves.  A huge help for me and a huge boost in confidence for them.  Win - Win!

I secured the shelf to the wall using drywall anchors and screws.  The lower rods are left over from a Closetmaid purchase made last year.  It's lacking a top, but I'm still trying to decide what I want - painted white or stained wood.

Close Up

Honestly?  I had SO much fun with this!  I'm ready to get Kevin's shop set up in the basement and start busting out some woodworking projects.  (Have you seen www.ana-white.com?)  The table saw is truly intimidating.  I'm sure I would get over it with practice, though.  Also, I'm thrilled I purchased a Kreg Jig over a year ago.  (Just wish I had gotten around to using it sooner.)  It made putting this together quick and easy with no noticeable nail or screw holes to fill.

I'll let you know when I've decide on a top and if I'm going to make drawers or just get baskets for storage.

Bragging. Again.

Projects are multiplying and chasing each other around in my little ol' noggin lately.  Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day.  AND, I am a mother before being a crafter.  (Ugh.  Priorities!)

So, here's another project sweet hubby was able to finish up and put in our garage.

Yes, there are only four slots for bikes. But, we figure by the time child #5 is riding a bike, child #1 will either not be interested in riding or can just use the kickstand.  (Genius, I know!)

If you would like the information on how to do this, feel free to email me and I'll go get all the measurements for you.

OYOL- Week 2

Brenda has a downloadable worksheet over at her blog to help with this week's assignment/challenge.  After going through this exercise and getting it all down on paper, I was thinking 'this shouldn't be so hard. Why, this should be easy to accomplish each and every week!'  You know what, though?  It was TOUGH!  (It seems as soon as I get started on something I have at least 2 little ones that need something.)  To be quite honest -  I didn't even get a shower until 5:45 pm yesterday.  We have to leave the house at 6:30 to get to services on time.  Thankfully, 'Greatest-Husband-in-the-WORLD' stumbled upon my list and helped me out by cleaning the kitchen after supper.  SO nice not to come home to a dirty kitchen!

As you can probably tell, I'm playing catch-up.  I got started a little late on this project, but that's okay.  Thought I would share my list with you before I sign off.

My Daily Do or Die

Read Scripture

1 load of laundry (start to finish)

Stick to meal plan

Get ready for day

Kid Maintenance

Sweep Kitchen Floor

Wipe down Counters

Be Happy

Speak Softly

Sunday

Church

Weekly meal plan / Grocery list

Monday

Clean Master Bath

Grocery Shopping

Tuesday

Kids' showers

Wednesday

Clean Kid's bath and 1/2 bath

Church

Thursday

Gather Trash

Kids' Showers

Clean out Fridg.

Friday

Mop Kitchen

Saturday

Sam's Shopping

Vacuum

Kids' Showers

I'm hoping all of this will get done easily in a week and then as time goes on I'll be able to add to it.  I need to get all this accomplished on a regular basis before anything can be added, though.  :)

One Year......

I'm tentatively linking up to this.  I say tentative because there are days (most of them) that I can barely keep my head nose above water.  Here I go adding one more thing to my daily life.  :) The main reason for this personal journey is to help me get my head above water and maybe even be able to get ahead of what has to be done.

I've really enjoyed reading Brenda's posts:  much of it can be seen in my life.  It's nice to see other people are surviving the same situations.  'Misery love company', right?!

So.  Here we go.......

Week One:  This week’s assignment is to think hard about why you want to be organized.


My reason:  To have a more peaceful and loving home that we and the kids will remember fondly in the years to come.  Also, to be able to open our home to others on a more regular basis.

The Weekend

Well, it's Monday.  We had a very busy and crazy weekend as usual even with a couple of things getting canceled.  Unfortunately, I got no sewing done.  No crafting done either.  My kitchen is clean and the laundry is fairly well caught up, though. :)

So, instead of sewing, I started tackling my mess of a craft room/office.

Here I've started clearing it all out.

And a little farther into the process. (The shelves are now down, too.)

My dining room is now a mess as well, but I had to put it all somewhere.  I decided that if I'm going to be doing several projects this holiday season, I need to actually be able to find things quickly and easily.  After I've finished clearing all the items out and rearranging the furniture, I'll have to sit down and sort things into keep and get rid of piles.  Anyone what a couple of bookshelves?

Bar Conversion

If you know me personally, you know I don't drink - alcohol, that is.  There isn't even a desire to.  I won't get in to all the who's, what's and why's about that, but just know that I don't.  :)  I mean, can you see me with a 'cold one' in my hand?  I think the closest I've come is IBC.  It's outrageously funny to even think about.  But, I digress.

So.  What do you do when you buy a house with, I suppose, something called a 'dry bar'?  Well, up until the other day, this space has just been a huge clutter catching area.  We have a LOT of clutter in this house.  ;)

We've also been struggling to keep school information and homework organized and contained.  My oldest comes home with 2 packets of homework on Monday that are due by Friday.  This makes it nice to have the possibility to get extra work done, but can make it difficult to keep it put up out of the reach of the little siblings.  She has had to turn in no less than 2 O originals on math work to date.  I can also grab things without paying full attention to where I move them.  (Does every mother do this?)

We needed a solution to both problems.  Can you guess after all the rambling what it is?  Yep.  The bar area is now our School/Homework Center.  See?

I didn't take a before picture to avoid the embarrassment for me and the horror for you.  You're welcome.

The wall file has a spot for each school age child and another spot devoted to the homework of the week.  I think I could actually use another one, but this is working out.  Instead of hanging it on the wall with screws or even the adhesive strips that came with it, I used some Command Picture Hanging Strips.  Love these — especially on my freshly painted walls.  :)

Underneath that we have all the necessary tools for completing said homework:  writing utensils, pencil sharpener, speakers (to hook up the IPhone for some tunes),  baby monitor, and tissues (homework time is stressful around here).

The laptop is there just because we haven't found a better place for it.  That goes for the Paul Harris bag holding all the current library books, too.

One of these days I envision a couple of stools placed under the bar for the kids to sit on and do homework, I just haven't found any that I really like.  We have time for that later on, anyway.  For now this area is housing all diapering paraphernalia and our TV trays.  It works.

I've got all the hair accessories in this area, too.  The kid's bath is upstairs.  And, while it might be beneficial for my heart, thighs and derrière to have the multiple trips up and down the stairs in the morning, I'll choose to get the exercise in some other fashion.  (or not)  Thank you very much!

This completes the tour of the newly converted space.  I want to get a calendar on the wall above the file soon.  That should help me remember important school dates, functions and field trips.  I'm thinking it would be good to have the lunch menu up there as well.

I'm very optimistic this space is going to make things much easier on us in the homework department.  Have I missed anything?  What do you all do to keep schoolwork organized at home?