Tackle It Tuesday!

Last week, my husband was off work so we tried to make the most of our time by doing some organizing around the house. Well, okay...that's not ENTIRELY true. We mostly just played our new Wii. But when we weren't doing that, we tried to make the most of our time. :)

Here are a few projects we got done:


1. Put away all bulky baby toys and accessories.

We put our swing, bouncer seat, playmats, infant carseat, walker, and all other bulky baby items up in our attic. Since our youngest is now 15 months old and I'm not currently pregnant, we figured we might as well free up some space for at least the next 9 months. :)


2. Put some of the garage "stuff" to good use.

For some reason, I have a desire to pick up items from our neighbor's trash cans that I happen to think is a perfectly good piece of....whatever it is. For example, we have three twin-size headboards in our garage right now. Just because I liked them and thought I could use them for my business (which I still plan on doing, btw!). But regardless, these sorts of things take us space. This next item is something I pulled from the trash can a few months ago. I have another plan for it, but for now I put it to use in our master bathroom.

You'll see how I used some of my basket collection in point #3.


3. Clean out master bedroom closet and set up home office for my business.

If you remember my post about my youngest daughter's bedroom, you'll remember that our closets in this house are ridiculously spacious and therefore make a great place for a home office. Also making it a great place for STUFF. Here's all the STUFF we pulled out of our closet (minus the obvious pieces of furniture that belong in our bedroom):

We sorted through clothes and junk, threw away a bag of crap, gathered a bag of giveaway clothing, and put the rest neatly back into half of our closet. Here is what we still need to find a home for. Not bad if you ask me!

The other half of the closet is now my office. Somehow we wound up with three desks in our house, so we figured we might as well put them to good use. One of them is used for our PC, the other is a junk pileup (literally), and the third is now my office desk. My husband wired some electrical outlets into each of our closets while the kids and I were out of town last month so I would have a place to plug in my laptop and other things. We're considering adding a phone line to the office closet too, but that's on our list of things to do. Here is my new office!

Here's my new datebook! I'm so excited to be more organized this year!





And finally, here are the baskets I used to organize. These hang above my desk. One holds pens, one holds cords and wires, and one holds *gulp* stuff. :)

4. Clean off master bathroom counter.

I admit it. It's a pigsty most of the time. With a 5-foot countertop and only one sink, it's a pretty easy place to collect junk. Which is exactly what tends to happen there. I hate it, but it seems inevitable that it will only happen again, so I hesitate to clean it off. A few weeks ago, I decided I would gather up all of our household medicines. I realize that if we had a medicine cabinet this would be no chore at all, but we do not. As I began picking up Tylenol, allergy medicine and old prescriptions off the counter, I realized that was the bulk of what was there. Random medicines. So I put all of those into a bag and stuck them in our closet (yes, out of reach of the children). After that, the counter was really pretty easy. Just a few things that needed to find their home and I was done. Isn't it lovely?

Sure, most of you probably have a countertop that looks like this ALL the time, but for those of us who don't, this sure is a pretty sight. :)


5. Organize kids' "kitchen items".

We have kids' items in our home that are only used at the table, usually under adult supervision. These include: games, coloring books, puzzles, and playdough. Since these items are used in the kitchen, I had simply placed them on top of the fridge for easy access. However, as our stockpile keeps growing, I knew I had to find a better solution. I picked up this drawer stacker for free at a garage sale this past summer and thought this was the perfect solution to our top-of-the-fridge problem:

Ok, I think that's all the projects we tackled last week. Have you tackled any household projects lately?