My journey began sixteen days ago.

Sixteen days, three rooms, several trips to the dumpster, one journey to organization. This is my journey.

It began with this post:

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The Mess that lies within… My 30-day Organizational Challenge

*deep breath*

I have a problem. Just a little one. Ok, no, a BIG one. … I’m a recovering Messy. But don’t worry, it’s okay, I’m in rehab and I’m quitting. As many of you know, that’s a long and hard road and once you quit you’ve got to steer clear of clutter and mess completely. Just one little pile, and you’ll fall off the bandwagon and straight back into Messy-ism.

The bad news is that I have three kids who are constantly bringing mess into my house. They leave it here, there… it’s right out in the open! They aren’t even ashamed of it. Everywhere I go I have to see mess and clean it up quick so that I’m not tempted to leave it there. Sometimes it hard, real hard. But I’m giving it up and that’s that.

The good news is there’s hope! I have a plan. I have a goal. And now I have support.

So, sit back, grab a snack, and read along as you discover what lies behind “the door”…

The kids know the rule: We don’t open that door.

This is the inside of “the door that stays closed.” What you see here is the inside of what is supposed to be my baby’s room, but he only sleeps in here since it’s never been in a usable state, not in the whole 2 years that we’ve been in this house. (For more background info, see here.) My intent now is to turn this room into a play and school room and put all three beds in the other bedroom for sleeping. The bad news is that to get this project organized, I’ll have to clean the other room, too. The good news is that to get this project done I’ll have to clean the other room, too! Yay! Two birds with one stone.

Seen here:

1.) a wall calendar not in use b/c all the pieces are scattered. 2.) cereal boxes (for the organizational tip Laura gave last week ), a small box fan, a small plastic basket not being used, stacks of clothes that won’t fit in the dresser (because it’s time to pull out the clothes that are too small or wrong season), and some small sealable containers such as country time lemonade containers that are on hand in case I need them to contain game pieces, etc. when I’m cleaning. 3.) This dresser will be moved into the closet along with the baby’s hanging clothes. All his clothes will remain in this room, while his bed moves to the other room.

This crib will be moved to the other room. You can see that I’ve kept the area around it clean enough to get in the room and let him sleep in there. That’s about it. Hiding under it is a changing pad that I need to sell or give away. In front of it is a diaper pail I need to put in a convenient place so it will be used, or sell or give it away also.

This is where the real mess begins.

1.) a quilt in a trash bag that needs to be returned. 2.) The box on top is felt and fabric that needs to get stored with my fabrics. The box on bottom is a box that we found when we cleaned out the closet a couple weeks ago. It has playdoh toys, crayons, misc. school and craft stuff. (Yes two weeks ago, this room and the closet were WORSE until a friend came over and helped me.) 3.) A bench-seat-style wooden toybox that was mine when I was little. On top of that some misc. things we pulled out of the closet when cleaning. This toybox will be moved to my bedroom and used for blanket storage. 4.) A lamp, not plugged in that needs to be strategically placed somewhere. 5.) A large toybox full of toys, but also some shoes and miscellaneous things–occasionally the kids break the rule, sneak in, dig through the toybox, and dump things on the floor. That would be the mess of toys around the toybox. Behind all this you can see the door into the closet.

(Standing by the crib) this is the wall opposite the bedroom door.

1.) An adorable rocking piano toy that stopped working suddenly. I “was going to” have my dad look at it, but haven’t. It has a Christmas table cloth draped over it we found when cleaning out the closet. 2.) A box of books from my childhood I am saving for my kids - mostly Nancy Drew hardbacks. 3.) A hamper with a small amount of outside toys that I brought inside when we had two stray dogs hanging around and I didn’t wanted them chewed up. 4.) A white laundry basket with mostly toys and the occasional misplaced school item. 5.) A small box of Hardy Boys hardbacks I confiscated from my mom’s house when my brother didn’t want them, aslo being kept for future reading.

Seen here is the wall opposite the crib. I don’t know if you can tell in the pictures, but this is really a very small room. I’m guessing around ten by eleven or twelve. 1.) 2 boxes in the corner from previous cleaning and sorting, mostly empty. The top one has some shoes that don’t fit the kids to be stored and passed down. The bottom one has a few toys. 2.) The bookcase. My main area of detailed organizing. This bookcase will hold school items, craft and coloring items, and games. All the reading books will go on another shorter bookcase being brought in from my room that will go where the dresser is now. This bookcase will go where the bench-seat toybox is now. 3.) The large toybox from the other picture. 4.) All these are unused storage containers/items that aren’t being used!! 5.) These are stacks of games and puzzles, most of the pieces are scattered.

Left:

1.) A shelf that WILL be coming down. On it are dolls, mostly breakable. One broken that never got glued back together. 2.)A (storage) basket with hangers. 3.) A (Storage!) container with mostly toys. Behind this stack is a stack of boxes. Two of them are among my most dreaded elements of this task. The “boxes of scattered pieces”, seen right. 1 & 3 are the boxes that hold crayons, puzzles pieces, games pieces, you name it. After everything is put in place, we will go through these two boxes. Anything that can be put together with all its pieces can be kept. Anything with missing pieces will be thrown away. Box number 2 has a few toys and some miscellaneous things.

And then there’s “the closet.”

For the longest time, this closet was a scary place to enter. It was full from floor to ceiling and side to side. This is place things got shoved when we were unpacking. Slowly, I went through some of it, but it was still packed. Recently, 2-3 weeks ago, a friend came over and this closet is one of the things we worked on. We pulled out a bunch of stuff, it just needs to be finished. I plan on keeping the baby’s dresser and hang up clothes in here. I would like to store the fabric and sewing stuff in the top, as well as the gift wrap box and gift bags, etc. There is plenty of room in the top of the girls’ closet for storage, but I don’t think the containers I have their off-season clothes in will fit up there, so they might stay in the bottom of the baby’s closet. They’d be more accessible there anyway.

Pic #1, 1.) A baby playmat to be sold or given away. 2.) A box of kids’ clothes to be sold or donated. 3.) Toybox lid. 4.) Base to my infant car carrier. Pic #2, 1.) 2 tubs of off-season clothes for the girls and hand me downs for the baby. Pic #3, 1.) Gift bags. 2.) old computer to go out to hubby’s room. 3 & 4.) Boxes, I don’t remember what’s in them. ? Pic #4, 1.) humidifier in box. 2.) storage container with some momentos to be weeded through and appropriately stored or discarded. 3.) old satellite receiver and scanner - hubby’s room. 4.) A porcelain doll I don’t know what to do with - given to my daughter on her first birthday. 5.) My gift wrap/ribbon box. Pic #5, 1.) briefcase and camcorder - also going to hubby’s room. 2.) I think that’s a box of sewing projects. 3.) A box with summer swimsuits and floaties, etc. 4.) A box of fabric

And then there’s the other bedroom…

Remember how I said I have to clean both rooms to get one project done? Here’s why:

How’d it get that way? 1.) They. have. too. much. STUFF! 2.) They don’t have a place to put it since most of the toyboxes are inaccessible. 3.) They don’t want to keep it clean. They “like it dirty.” Well, they’re just gonna have to learn to like clean.

#1 is the tv, it will stay here but move to another corner. #2 is a dresser used for dress-up clothes, but not used much because most of the knobs have broken off (we’ll replace those). It will be moved to the other room where the tall bookshelf was. This is where the baby’s crib will go, since the bunk bed on the opposite wall pretty much has to stay where it is.

On the right: 1 & 2 are little desks that will go where the baby’s crib is now. They will sit along the wall facing the wall the dresser is on, where I’ll hang up the little chalkboard. The little bookcase in my room(left) will go where the dresser is, the tall bookcase will be located behind them by the closet door, and the desks will have easy access to both. Number 3 which you can barely see is the fourth and last of the toyboxes, which is what all that stuff is spilling out of. That will go in the other room in front of the window for all the baby’s toys. We currently have four toyboxes (not including my childhood one, the other two I haven’t mentioned are the long green and purple things in the first picture of the girls’ bedroom) and we’re only keeping three. One of the green and purple ones might go in the bottom of my closet, either for storage of winter clothing or storage of stuff to sell on ebay.

And that’s the beginning of the story…

So now, this is just the beginning of this story. Now I have to make it happen. My goal is to complete this project utilizing what I have and spending as little money as possible. Good luck to everyone else who is also “kicking the habit” - whether you are taking part in this challenge or not. Just say “NO” to clutter!

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And now here’s the rest of the story:

I started with a pad of paper and a pen and I developed a well thought-out plan of attack. I thought about what I wanted to accomplish, what needs needed to be met, how I wanted each room to function. Setting those guidelines helped me determine things like, “which room should the tv go in?” After I knew what I wanted to do, I called in the re-inforcements — my sister-in-law. With her help I was able to get a great jumpstart on my project. That was especially helpful since I got such a late start. Our first task was to get the girls’ bedroom cleaned up and reorganized as the “kids” bedroom so that they would all have a clean place to sleep, and all the furniture would get rearranged into their appropriate rooms. We started by cleaning up: throwing away the trash, taking out the dirty laundry, and scooping all the toys into the available toyboxes. We then pulled out the furniture (and toyboxes) that weren’t going to stay in there and moved in the new items. We got everything rearranged, vacuumed, straightened the closets, made the beds, hung a shelf, hung a canopy, and before you knew it, we had a beautiful “new” bedroom for all three kids to sleep in. Check out the before and after pictures:

We put a smaller tv on this printer stand (which was serving ineffectively as a shoe stand in my closet) and used the bottom shelves for a couple of blankets and pillows. There are also two sleeping bag chairs at the end of the crib to sit on and watch tv.

I hung that shelf to hold all their fancy dolls. You can see how much cleaner the top of the closet is, too.

Organizing the hats, ball caps, backpacks, and totes.

I hung the canopy up again, it had to come down when we had the cat. I’m hoping it stays up this time. Plus, they’re getting new sheet sets for Christmas! Shhhh.

The only things left to do in there that I would like to accomplish at some point is to paint the shelf and tv stand white and get some fasteners or a staple gun and fasten the cord for the light fixture to the ceiling so that it doesn’t hang down. I don’t want it to get pulled on and pulled out of the light.

One room down, one to go…

The next task was to dig in and get working on the new playroom and school room. With a second visit from my sister-in-law we got right to work on cleaning it up. We picked up the floor and put everything in available boxes and toyboxes (minus the obvious things like trash and laundry.) We made a stack of the boxes along the back wall, and got to work on the closet, pulling out everything else that did not belong in there. After that we were able to move the dresser into the closet and then shuffle the rest of the furniture around and bring in the little bookcase out of my bedroom. As we did all of this, we did some generic sorting–books to the bookcase, that sort of thing–so there would be less to go through when I got to that step. At the end of day two, I posted this:

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See the floor? Cool!

Starting from the door..

Here’s the new bookcase for all the reading books. There’s is a basket on the bottom for all the tiny little board books that don’t “shelve” properly. Think I can teach my one-year-old to “read” only those books?

On the right is the school ‘corner’ - I’ve got the chalkboard up (figured it was better to put it up than add it to the pile since I aready knew where I wanted it to go) and the school desks in place. The guitar and pretend refrigerator that you can barely see can’t go in place until “the pile” is put away. That big brown box?? FULL of organizational containers ready for use!! Behind the desks is the tall bookcase which will house all the school and craft supplies. It is only organized in a very general way. But after I purge “the pile” (there are crayons and flashcards, etc, in there) I’ll have a better idea of how much stuff I need to organize and come up with a detailed plan.

The closet has made a phenomenal transformation already. The dresser fits nicely. There will be plenty of room to store what I need to store and have breathroom.

There are 3 boxes of fabric and materials, but I think I’ll have one storage tub leftover that will contain all of it. Love it!

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And then I was on my own…

After those two big work days I was on my own. With only my three little ones to help (HA!) I set to work on the toyboxes. I pulled all four of them to the living room and dumped the toys into one huge pile. I circled the trash can, a carboard box for the women’s shelter, and three of the toyboxes around the pile — one of the toyboxes had to go. My eldest daughter and I began the task of purging and sorting the toys. We put all the baby’s toys into one, all the dolls and doll stuff into another, and everything else into the third. Once we were finished I took the toyboxes to the playroom and moved the remainder of the stack to the middle of the floor. On another day, I worked on that stack and knocked it down to just a few boxes and a laundry basket. Then my sister-in-law came over for a couple of hours and helped me go through the last few boxes — the infamous boxes of “pieces.” WOW - was that a task! We gathered a bunch of containers and began sorting everything: crayons/markers/colored pencils, pens/pencils, game pieces, puzzle pieces, craft items, cards/flash cards, playdough accessories, legos, play money and other counting/math items, and other miscellaneous items like ponytail holders/hairclips, small toys, refrigerator magnets, etc. It took a few hours. After she left, I could see how much we had done, but it still felt like everything suddenly looked MUCH worse. There were containers of things everywhere! With a pounding headache I was forced to go to bed and leave it for the next day. I hate leaving it for the next day.

The final stretch.

The last day was AWFUL. There were so many containers of so many little things…and my kids wanted to get into all of it!! I really didn’t think I was gonna be able to get it all done in one day. I started by putting away what I could. The craft stuff, crayons, paint, etc, went immediately into the closet. After that, I filled the shelf on the bookcase with the colored baskets so I’d have places to put things and then I got started on the rest of the pieces. There was only one way to do it. One container at a time. I sat down with all the cards and quickly sorted them into the larger flashcard size and the smaller playing card size. I set aside all the empty boxes and a stack of plastic sandwich bags for afterward. Then I went through each stach and sorted them into piles, put them into a box or a bag and put all the cards into one of the baskets. I did the same thing with the puzzles, sorted the pieces into “large,” “small,” and “wooden” piles. Then I had my daughter help me put all the puzzles together and we put them in the closet. I went through the rest of the containers and further sorted or containerized everything else until they were all gone and all those baskets were full. After that was accomplished, I put away all the remaining items that needed to go in other rooms, did some touch-up organizing in the closet, added the toys to the bottom of the bookshelf, did final furniture placement, and vacuumed the floor. Gee, it sounds so easy when you write it. This last stretch literally took me ALL DAY to do. I think some of it was the “extra help” I was getting, though. Man, once it was finished, though, it sure felt GOOD to stand back and see the final result. I don’t know how I managed to get it all done in time. All I know for sure is that GOD is GOOD, and he’s given me the motivation and energy I needed to keep at it and not stop until it was finished. Here’s the finished product:

Pulled this table out of my dining room. It’s easily accessible for school projects that need a bigger table, for sitting and coloring (the coloring books are stored inside the pink desk), or for other crafts.

There is plenty of room for them to sit at these desks. They are centrally located between the project table, the bookcase, and the school supplies.

I’ve used the storage area under this desk for baby puzzles.

They each have a school box (with a notebook, scissors, glue sticks, etc) to contain their school supplies and prevent them from getting lost and mixed in with craft supplies. These and a container with the Math-U-See manipulatives are on top of the bookshelf — out of reach. The top shelf is school books and other educational workbook, etc. The second shelf contains flashcards and some smaller games and puzzles (those without original boxes), and other small items like these. The bottom two shelves are reserved for the baby. His toybox ended up going in the bedroom at the end of the bunkbed. I intended to put the baby doll toybox in there, but realized that when he’s napping his toys won’t be needed, and theirs will still be available this way.

The purple and green toybox holds dolls and doll stuff. The big one is “everything else.”

I used the refrigerator to store the food, plates and the hotplate stove.

The dress-up dresser is great on this wall! The two barbie boxes are stored underneath. Those don’t fit in toyboxes too well.

The closet is amazing now. That infant carrier is only there temporarily. My baby just outgrew it and now I’m putting it on ebay.

Colored paper, paints and brushes, playdough accessories, craft items, crayons - each in their own container.

Stored items on top, games and puzzles on bottom.

I love these hanging baskets. The baby won’t have a lot of shoes and hats, so they’re a good size. This will prevent these from taking up drawer space.

The three gray tubs hold fabric (on top), off season clothes for the girls (middle) and hand-me-downs for the baby (bottom). Extra blankets are folded on top.

I used the new floor space in the closet for bigger toys that can be brought out an played with and put away. Now they won’t take up floor space for playing.

Speaking of floor space… LOOK at all that floor space!!

I know it can be hard to tell how the whole room fits together in the pictures. The room is so small I can’t get far enough away to take a shot of a whole wall. To help, I’ve made this 360 degrees video tour of the new rooms!

There’s still more I’d like to do. I’d like to paint the walls and put up new curtains. But my goal was to accomplish this project with as little expense as possible. My total bill for these two rooms: $10.50 for containers and $13.00 for dresser knobs. Everything else, I already had.

But there’s more!

Getting organized was so freeing, inspiring, motivating and satisfying, I didn’t stop with just these two rooms. I also took care of these small projects:

The shelf in the kids’ bathroom.

Under the sink in the kids’ bathroom.

Under the sink in my bathroom.

Under the kitchen sink.

The cabinets over the washer and dryer.

And my journey isn’t over yet…

Like most journey’s of this nature, the journey isn’t over when the deadline is up. I’m still growing and learning. You may have noticed that the tagline at the top read “three rooms.” In order to organize these two, I had to take a bookcases out of my bedroom and add the old wooden toybox. To do that, I need to shift my dresser. So, the one project affected my bedroom, too. Unfortunately, it’s almost finished but not picture ready– so, no pictures. But I’m still working on it, and when I’m done with that, I’m doing my closet, too! I’ve got a few other little projects to do, too, but more than that I’m learning how to upkeep these areas. I need to learn how to maintain this organization so that I’m not overcome with clutter again. By God’s grace, he’ll enable me to keep it this way.

The best part is seeing the kids getting into this. They’re enjoying it, they like having their rooms clean. They are helping keep them this way. And THAT right there, makes this sooo worth it. The joy I have, the serenity of those clean rooms rather than the chaos of the cluttered ones, the healthy new habits we’re developing, and the trend this has started for the rest of the house…these are the things I’ve gained, these are the blessings God has given for this undertaking. I’m so glad I signed up for this challenge, this journey to organization!!

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Edited to add:

This was the first of several organizational challenges, hosted by Laura the Org. Junkie. You can find the others (and follow the transformation of my home, my heart, and my habits) here:

• Our New and Improved Master Bedroom and Bathroom! (May ‘07)
• The Closet Challenge (December ‘07)
• A Kitchen Re-Born (February ‘0