Easy Organization
I have a love-hate relationship with cleaning. Like, I love for my home to be in pristine condition, but oops, there is a hairball tumbleweed on the floor from the dog or a pile of crayons on top of the table and my world crumbles into pieces. Remember those days back in high school, Dad, when I had stuff piled up 3 feet high on my bedroom floor and I had to create a path just to go to sleep? That all was a result of 3 pencils I left out on my desk.
Ok, maybe that is a bit excessive, but I do seem to get extremely overwhelmed by messes and that leads to no cleaning AT ALL until Chris and I are both thinking “Wow, we’d better spend our time over the next 3 weeks clearing out all of this crap or the this house may be condemned!”
To keep us from getting to frantic cleaning mode, I try to keep things organized. A place for everything and everything in its place, you know. Take for example Pinky’s stuff. As much as I would like for her to have everything confined to the playroom (which is also the music/sun/dog toy room,) that is a bit unrealistic because she doesn’t just live in that room. So, I try to have little nooks and crannies where we can neatly stash her items without the room looking like the Barbie Dream House barfed all over it.
One of the best places for stuff to be stashed is the bottom drawer of our built-in kitchen hutch. It is officially named the craft drawer and is the perfect place for Pinky to grab some pom-poms, paints, yarn, etc. It is also in close proximity to the dining room table, so that makes easy access to a surface for artistic creations to be whipped up. (I hear that the floor works well for projects too!)
The problem with the drawer was that there wasn’t any organization for the items inside, which lead to it looking like this…
Messy, huh? Luckily the drawer can be closed when it looks like that and no-one has a clue of the chaos within.
After fighting to get it open, I decided it was time for a mini drawer makeover. I gathered a few supplies from other locations around the house and got to work. When I emptied out the drawer, it looked so much better without all of that stuff in it that I actually considered for about 2 seconds just throwing it all away. *WINK* Just kidding.
I grabbed some wrapping paper from my stash and lined the bottom of the drawer to keep it safe from markers without lids and glue spills. Of course the wrapping paper may easily rip and warp when wet, but it was what I had on hand and it can easily be replaced if/when that happens.
While I was de-junking the craft drawer, this was what was going on right outside on our deck. I know that the photo is horribly out of focus, but I just thought it was too cute that all three of our kids, human and furry, were hanging out together.
So this is what the drawer looked like after I had my way with it. Much better, right?
I found several baskets around the house that didn’t have a real purpose and were basically just taking up space.
Just having something to put the stuff in and keep it separated will hopefully help keep the drawer a bit more clean.
And because it is so much more colorful and pretty, I’m hoping that it will deter future drawer jumble disasters in the future, but we shall see…
The bright colors and easy to find supplies immediately inspired some sock puppet making and also made clean up a breeze. I vote that this mini-makeover was a success!
