It's the Little Things

 BEFORE:

 

AFTER

 

 

This little box was fun to make, and it's making me inordinately happy!

Organizing, a Life-Long Task

 I found this when I was cleaning and organizing.  Based on the handwriting and the fact that I thought I might make friends with the neighbor girl, Kristy Krull (didn't happen). I'm guessing about I'm about 8 years old here.

 Now that my husband is working from home full-time and he's moved his stuff to his man cave downstairs, I asked him the other day if he was going to empty the bottom drawer of one of the two filing cabinets that makes up my desk.  He replied, "Oh, that's not my stuff.  That's a bunch of your old grad school stuff."

He was right.

Obviously, I don't need it if I never knew I had it, right? I'd recycled almost everything related to my dissertation a few years ago. So I sorted through the drawer of folders and notebooks and tossed everything I didn't want or that brought back bad memories. But I was surprised how much I wanted to keep. It was a time of growth and exploration. I especially loved my Milton class and I had great fun with a project I did for a Renaissance Lyric Poetry class. I was also surprised that I wrote with such liveliness. My academic papers rarely sounded academic. I'm surprised my professors let me get away with that! I'm also surprised how much I trusted them - I looked through notes and things and found I was very open with them about my intellectual struggles.

Looking through drafts of seminar papers and pages of notes felt like meeting someone I used to know, only the someone was me.

Organizing Christmas Ornaments

This probably not a good option for stuff you have to get into and out of often.  But I think it will work for ornaments because it means that we can easily spread out the box lids to see and select the ornaments that we want.

Here's BEFORE:

 I deliberately made some sections bigger than others, although I wasn't organized enough to actually measure anything!

 There are just big pieces of cardboard in between the box lids.  I didn't measure those either.

 Yes, these are ordinary paper box lids with name tag stickers.  (Name tag stickers are my favorite organizing tool.)

Hope this helps you think about what you might like to organize.

Organizing and Progress

I hate that futile feeling that I'm just doing the same things over and over again: laundry, dishes, picking up, answering emails, etc.

So every week I try to do something that will either be a more or less durable improvement in my life or that represents a long-delayed task.  This week, I put stickers on my computer keys.  I didn't know they made such things (they were in a pile from a friend to keep or donate), but I'm delighted because my fingers usually wear the letters off of keyboards.

Here you can see the stickers, some keys without letters and some keys with stickers.

Life, improved. 

Laboring on Labor Day

I am SO proud of this.

Honestly, it's going to make life much easier than having them all jumbled together in a file.

Incoming! (Space for our new freezer)

The freezer is going to be coming in a week or so.  I mostly just want to document that the laundry room was ever this clean....

Remember that it used to look like this and you'll see why I'm so proud:

Garage Sale

I promised AFTER photos so here they are:

We used 15 tables of varying sizes, plus a door placed between two tables, PLUS boxes of books on folding chairs.  And we needed every inch.  We got rid of a LOT of stuff!

The garage sale went quite well.  We made $537, although probably half of the items that brought in big money were from other people.  The dialog went something like this:

ME: "My husband wants to have a garage sale, although I keep telling him we don't have enough stuff."

FRIEND/BOSS/RELATIVE: Oh, I have some stuff I was just going to drop off at the thrift store.  Do you want it?

ME: Sure!  Do you want half the profits?

FRIEND/BOSS/RELATIVE: Nah.  Just keep it.  I was just going to donate the stuff anyway, and garage sales are a lot of work. 

So that's how we got the Wii, the steam mop, the party dresses, and the scooters.  We did have some big things that were ours: the bodhran, the pull-up bars, and the small table.  We probably priced things way too cheap, but, hey, they are out the door.

My biggest garage sale tips are:
1) Join a neighborhood garage sale if possible
2) "All unmarked items .25" - or .50, or whatever.  Saves SO MUCH time!
3) Signs: "All plants $3"  "All books _____" "All fabric = make an offer."
4) Start working on it a few months in advance.  It's still way too much work for the $ you'll get, but you won't notice as much!
5) Try to have at least three people there for safety as well as convenience.  Oh, and occasionally bring the profits into the house in case you do get robbed.
6) If someone does want their profits back (or part of their profits back) then they need to do their own pricing.

I actually rather enjoyed this garage sale.  Most of the work was done in a leisurely fashion, and it felt good to get things out of the house.  We made more than enough to pay for the freezer.  People were quite pleasant despite the heat.  I like sales.  It was all good.

It's still my last one, just because there are other things I'd rather do more.  But it wasn't a bad experience.

Garage Sale

We're having a garage sale.  (Not my idea.  His.  I vowed never again after the last one!)

We're buying a freezer (for garden produce and grocery store deals!) and the best place to put the freezer currently has boxes filled with craft stuff.

I'm never planning to craft for $ again.  It's not worth it.  For fun, yes.  As in, to make our home attractive or for gifts.  And I might try to sell some craft just for fun because I like sales.  But as a revenue stream - no.

So there's lots I can get rid of.

Here's BEFORE:

Here's DURING....

Hopefully AFTER will happen eventually!

Triumph! A Clean Craft Studio!

I cleaned my studio!

It’s not perfect, but I can actually create stuff now.  Sometime, it will be beautifully organized.  But for now, I’m happy to see usable space.

For your own inspiration....

BEFORE

 AFTER

Makes me happy!

Query on Organization

Why am I getting steadily more and more organized at work.....

.... while getting steadily less and less organized at home?

Which reminds me: Laundry. 

Lucrative... cleaning

Yesterday I cleaned off my desk and found $50.  

I should clean more often!

Plus it feels so good to have more of the space in my house usable.  And organizing took less time than I thought it would.  Next, the studio.....  Maybe.  Soon.  Or maybe later....

Organized? Not so much....

I just cleaned off my desk and took an ineffective swipe at my inbox.  I found 6 To Do lists.

Now my desk is much more functional, but I'm wondering what having 6 To Do list says about me!

They aren't different kinds of lists, mind you, although I do have that too.  One for work, one for long term, one for short term, and sometimes a daily one.  The six were all daily ones.  I guess that just means I lose things a lot!

I'm feeling much better, though.  A cleared-off space on my desk to work always makes me feel more in control.  And now I'm going to go downstairs and work on Mom's rug and some tiles.  :)

Organizing Done!

I did three rooms, starting at 9:30 and finishing up at 5:30, with a break, of course, for lunch.  I'm going to post a How To Organize a Big Mess later, but first, some Photos of Triumph!

The studio
BEFORE

The table where I'm supposed to create stuff....

AFTER

Organizing Update

I've spent two and a half hours organizing so far, and it's going so well I'm thinking of tackling an additional area....

I'm really bouyed up my my progress.

Lunch break is over, though--back to work!

Organizing!

I'm going to spend all day Saturday organizing my studio so that Sunday I can actually make stuff in it!

That's the plan.

If I post it here, it's more likely to happen, right?

Saturday Cleaning

I've taken so many BEFORE photos of chaos lately that it's starting to bug me that I don't have any AFTER photos to post!

So today, I'm cleaning/organizing.  I can't take it any more!  Wish me luck..... :)

(If you never see me again, you know that the dust bunnies ganged up on me and finished me off.)

Life Hack #9: How to get organized without buying anything

Here is the before.

 

The problem?  Lots of wasted space.  Lots of inaccessible items.  General chaos.

I used stacking boxes in order to make better use of the space.  It isn't ideal, but I'm trying to use a space for something that is not intended, so it is inevitably a makeshift solution.

The black box on the lower shelf is empty.  It's used as a riser.

Turn a Drawer into a Set of Shelves

Easiest, quickest DIY ever!  (If you have tools, that is.)  Seriously—about 15 minutes.

I have a tiny worktable in the bedroom and I need to make good use of space.  So for the cost of one board (about $2) and a free shelf, we made this:

 ...out of this:

1. Take off the drawer handles.

2. Measure and cut the board to fit.  Think snug.

3. Test to make sure what you are going to put on the shelf actually fits:

Two screws on either side will hold it in place.

DONE!

Before:

After:

Operation Organize!

I did this on Tuesday because I couldn't stand it any more!

Yes, I cleaned my studio.  Again.

I can tell I'm making progress on getting organized, though, as it took me less than a day. That was mostly because I had places for most things.

(I also firmly resolve not to accumulate any more craft raw materials until I actually have room for them...)

Hopefully these pics will inspire you for your own organizing projects:

BEFORE

AFTER

I feel so much better now!