Cleaning Grand Plan – Misc. Recap

 
What a busy week!  I felt like I was hardly home and when I was home, I wanted to spend time working on my free Craigslist find and NOT on silly organizing.  I did make it through most of my list, though.  Here’s my status:

• Clean Goodwill pile off the dining room table and take it to Goodwill! [x]
• Put old toy shelf on Craigslist
• Put away decor items sitting on coffee table in living room [x]
• Clean out closet in play room [x]
• Find home for box of VHS tapes (preferably not in my home) [half done]
• Wipe down walls and baseboard in living room/dining room [x]

I didn’t put the toy shelf on Craigslist yet because I thought I might be able to use it when I cleaned out the play room closet, but I didn’t, so I’ll put that up next weekend.  And I still need to take care of the box of videos.  Though I did have my husband put all the VHS tapes in a bag for Goodwill, apparently there were even more DVDs underneath those!  Now I have to figure out what to do with them.

The big job this week, though, was the play room closet.  I spent several hours this morning taking everything out and putting only a portion back in.  It was a big task and I still have a headache from it!

You may remember what it looked like before:

Actually, this is after I removed a bunch of stuff because I couldn’t open the doors at first.

After loading up two large bags of recycling and one bag of garbage, with a bit to donate for the next Goodwill trip, this is what it looks like now:

Once again I had to curb my desire to head over to The Container Store and I just used what I had.

The tall multi-drawer shelf on the right was given over completely to the girls’ art supplies.  They now have easy access to yarn, googly eyes, clothes pins, and popsicle sticks.  This led to an afternoon of art making for them.
I’ve left the green and pink cubes empty for now so my sister will have somewhere to put her clothes when she visits next weekend.

I’ve seen many cute wrapping centers all over the blogosphere recently.  I don’t have one of those.  As much as I love them, I don’t really need a dedicated area.  You’ll see our wrapping paper bin to the left, behind the doors.  But the thing that made the biggest improvement in this closet is the gift bag organization.

Before, we were overrun with gift bags.  Every time we’d get another one, we’d just throw it in the closet.  In fact, they’re the reason we couldn’t open the door.  Now they’re all organized roughly by theme (baby shower, holiday, kids bags, adult bags) and hanging separately in the closet.  Tissue paper, bows, and clothing boxes also have their own bags.  I’m very pleased with it!

The cardboard box on top of the bins is empty and waiting for the various egg cartons, cereal boxes, and other garbage stuff that the girls will inevitably want to save for an art project.  It drives me nuts to see their stock piles of recyclables, so I figured I should be proactive and address the issue now!

I’m going to be taking a break from the organizing next week.  It’s another crazy, busy one; ending with me taking the Girl Scouts camping and my sister arriving mere hours after I get back.

I’m nearly done converting my Craigslist freebie and I’m so excited to share it with you tomorrow.  Here’s what it looked like a few days ago:

It’s taking on a new life now, though.  It’s a coffee table no more!

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