Michelle My Belle

My sweet Michelle (yes she's mine, she and I have agreed on this) came over the other day to let the kids play.  While she was here I told her about my dirty little secret.

For those of you who have been through my house, you have see the amazing large closets.  I'm talking, could be a bedroom size closets (LOVE).  My secret is that I have had a tendency, over the last 7 months, to toss stuff in the back corner and shut the door.  In our older house, I had things pretty well organized simply so we could fit in our space.

Part of it is due to the depression.  I have generally felt overwhelmed to do much more than keep up on the laundry and vacuum.  Part of it is laziness, and part of it is 5 little people working against my every move.

So I took my sweet friend through the deep recesses of our home and said, "Look at this!  I don't even know where to start."  Michelle loves to organize and label things.  Her children have their toys in labeled tubs.  One tub comes out to play and it is returned to it's space before another tub is removed from the closet.  That's the kind of plan I need.

She wandered around saying, "What would I do with this space..."

The first idea I have already implemented.  My laundry area is typically a mess.  I don't love to do laundry and the way our space is designed, if I get too far behind we are trapped in our house.  The piles cover the door to the garage.

 Our pantry joins the laundry space and Michelle said, "I would use all this for laundry stuff.  There's plenty of room in here and you could put baskets here.  One for each child.  As their basket fills, they take it and put it away."


Here's the before:

There was all kinds of clutter stashed there.  I went through it all and put some away, threw some away, and sent all the painting supplies and tools to the garage.

Then I headed to Wal-Mart and picked up 4 (I already had one) laundry baskets at $2.97 each.  There are five baskets for the kids and one larger black basket on the bottom for Goodwill.  So as I sort through, anything I don't want to keep I just toss in the black basket.  Before I always had a black trash bag next to the dryer.  This looks much better :)

After:

While I was hanging out in the pantry I decided to take out the laundry cart that has been just sitting in there.  I had every intention of using it and I never really did.  It just sat back there in the way.  Once that was gone, I organized all our food and baking dishes and pans.  I'm so excited!

I am actually excited to do laundry...GASP.

Next project is Brennan and Tanner's closet/storage room.  I've already started on the Legos.  Michelle sent me this LINK for a great idea for Lego organization and I found the sets of drawers on sale at Wal-Mart for $7 each vs $15.  SCORE! 

Today we'll pick up the rest of the supplies.  I am determined and finally feeling up to taking it all on.  Thank you Michelle, all I needed was a little motivation and some awesome ideas!