Let's get Organized! Ideas {From the Archives}

How about a little round-up of past ideas I have shared on organizing around the home?

In the kids room:

Use vintage suitcases to keep all that fun dress-up organized.

Organize your kids Lego manuals.

In the craftroom:

Empty toilet paper rolls, perfect to organize lace and trims

Make an inspirational cork board using an old frame.

Keep those precious vintage laces and trims tidy in a vintage travel case.

In the office:

Make a weekly color-coded family calendar!

In the bathroom:

Use empty candle jars to organize your make-up.

I'll admit, since we are in this temporary apartment,  I haven't been doing any major organizing, but I do find myself constantly organizing bits and pieces here and there.  

Have fun organizing!

Decorate Vintage Suitcases with Washi Tape

I love vintage suitcases.  Some may even say I have an obsession.  (Maybe my love grew from that memory of my Abuela.)  I also love, love, love,  washi tape.  

And what better way to decorate a loved vintage suitcase (without the fear of ruining it) then by using washi tape? Oh yes.  

So the other day my chiquita picked out the colors of washi tape she liked and we decorated the suitcases that store all her dress up goodies.  

 Like it?

Of course most of the time they look like this:

What can I say, they are loved and so are all her costumes.  How fun is it to be a child!

To decorate all you need are vintage suitcases (I get most of mine from yard sales and thrift stores.  I'm always in a hunt for them.  I keep them in the craft room to store handmade goodies and supplies, I also love using them to displayed said goodies at my craft shows, and of course we use them through out the house to store other things...like my chiquitas dress up clothe.) You also need washi tape.  That's it.  Make sure to use a sharp blade when you get near the hardware.  Other than that it is supper simple.

Have fun decorating!

Organize Ribbons & Trims Using Toilet Paper Rolls

It's as simple as one, two, three!

Yup. 

All you have to do is:

and

Easy pease.  What did I tell ya. 

Now start organizing!

Organizing Lego Manuals

Did I ever tell you my little guy loves Legos?  He sure does.  He can spend hours building and building more.  Some of his results can be pretty darn amazing.  What I don't find amazing are all the Legos spread through out the house.  No-se-rie-no!  But I guess that's a small price to pay (and a lot of complaining to clean up) for letting his imaginations thrive.  Right?  Right.

Like the lego pieces I find all over the place, the lego manuals were also getting out of hand.  I tried keeping them in a clear bag for him, but when ever he took one out, the rest would end up out as well.  Then one day I saw this.   A binder to keep them organized.  Well, now isn't that just a clever idea?  So I got myself working and made one similar.

 
Using an empty large binder and a three hole punch I began my work.

I hole punched each manual and inserted into the folder.   Because some manuals are too thick, I took them apart and hole punched them separately. 

Finally I decorated the outside of the folder with bright Lego colors and labeled it Lego  Manuals.

When my little guy arrived from school he was excited to find this waiting for him on his bed.  And so far, it has gotten a lot of use and I've not seen one manual laying around the house.  Yey!

Hope your week has been good to you so far.

organizing with jars

I love jars!  It is always hard for me to toss them because I know there's always some way I can use them.  Realistically I can't keep them all, so many do end up in the recycling bin, but then there are those lucky ones that get tucked into a closet waiting to be used.

My friend Noelle just gave me the lovely blue ones you see on the photo above.  I love them! And they look perfect on my kitchen windowsill. I can totally picture them full of wild flower clippings come Spring.

The other day I opened mentioned closet, that holds my stash of jars and well, I was overwhelmed by what I found.  At the same time, my mind got into creative mode and started to think of different ways I could make use of them.  Most of the jars once use to hold candles.  Those are the ones I'm the laziest to use because it requires a bit more work to clean them out.  This time though, in the organization/decluttering mode I am in, I challenged myself and got working. 

I began by placing the jars in warm water to allow for all the left over wax to melt.  I then tossed the wax and peeled the labels off.  Before the remaining film of wax  cooled off, I washed each jar with warm water.   

Once cleaned and dry  they were ready to be used.  Hum.  Where to use this lovely jars? One of the shelves in the toiletries/linen closet needed some reorganizing, the perfect place to make use of my newly clean jars!

Can you guess what kind of candle the large jar below held?

Yankee!  Yup, I need to start collecting more of these.  I love the size and the nice tight lid.  It would also be perfect for organizing bits in the craft room or spices in the kitchen. 

Other inspiration around the web to get me going:

In the craft room:  These are all great ways to use jars around the craft room. I especially like the small mason jars and sugar dispenser holding yarn and twine.  Perfect to keep the kid's yarn in place, instead of seeing the ball of yarn rolling all around the craft room, and getting tangled, and knotted, and...well, you get the picture. 

Clockwise from top: Yarn in mason jars homemade simple; jars on shelf inspire co; sugar dispenser real simple; under a shelf country living; sewing kit in a jar martha stewart; attached to the wall homemade simple;  on the table inspire co.

In the office/kids work area: How cute are those farm animal lids!!! 

 Clockwise from top left: animal lids apartment therapy; stack then sideways homemade simple; collection of  collections collection a day 2010; pencil organizer kootut murut.

In the kitchen or in the bathroom:  I'm in love with those shelves made out of old drawers.  I know not exactly jars, but you can display your lovely jars on them. 

Clockwise from left: Displayed in old drawers nest full of eggs; tooth brush/ flower holder etsy; on three tier stand zsa zsa bellagio.

In the garage or tool shed:

baby jar tool organizer homemade simple

Why stop there!  You can spruce up those jars by painting them with bold colors or use some chalk board paint to label them. 

Clockwise from top: blue jars a pumpkin & a princess; white jars and rope too much time on my hands (I WISH!) ; chalk lids wit & whistle; chalk labels apartment therapy .

The possibilities are endless.

Now let's get organized!

organizing: small changes

Hello there!  How are your new year goals/resolutions coming along so far?  Still working on them?  Did you give up?  If you're anything like me I know you won't give up that easily.   I'm cheering you on!  I know you can do it! (Hey we gotta motivate each other.  Right?)

I'm sure you're wondering how I'm doing.  Have I started them?  Yes, I have!  Small accomplishments, but rewarding ones.  So far I have gone back to the gym and plan to continue doing so.  I'm also going to bed earlier.  Yey!  I also started  working on a schedule to maximize my time during the day.  Maybe wake earlier (a hard one for me.  Even now that I've been good about going to bed early.)  and hit the gym first thing in the morning so I have the rest of the day to: parent, work, blog, craft, home school and so on.  I really want to find a way to fit all that and more into my days.  Ahem, any tips?

When it comes to organization, though I haven't necessarily started organizing my craft room, I have, however,  gathered a lot of inspiration through Pinterest.  I'm sure I've mentioned before my addiction to pinning and pinning and pinning.  I think my addiction may be as bad as buying fabric!

Well then, let us go back to the organizing shall we.  

I believe that sometimes tackling the smaller spaces around your home first, is better than trying to tackle a large room (like my craft room), so here are some small changes I would like to make around the house in the next few days to begin with.

In my closet:

portable hooks via martha stwart

 Reorganize my belts.  Currently my belts hang from a hanger, but slip off very easily.  That drives me crazy.  Isn't this the perfect solution to the problem? And so easy to make.  You can see the how to at MarthaStewart.com. 

creative scarf solutions via smallrooms

Tackle the scarfs!  I recently organized my scarfs by hanging three or four per hanger to keep them from wrinkling.   I thought I was the coolest person on the block, but then I saw this and well...all I could think of was- why did I donate all my old shower curtain hooks!!!  Another perfect solution for small spaces.  This way I can hang more scarfs onto one hanger and use up less space.  You can find more creative scarf organizing solutions at smallrooms.

In the linen closet:

there is no direct link to this photo, I stumbled upon it on pinterest.

Um, again- why didn't I think of this before?!!!!  To keep your bed linens tidy and organized simply put your folded linens in their coordinating pillow sham.  Wow!  I totally love this!  Really I do.  You don't understand how picky I am about folding my bed linens, how I carefully fold each sheet (fitted or not) until they all sit perfectly even on my shelf.  Craziness, I know.  But that is just who I am, and I am in love with this solution!!!!

In the kitchen:

scrapbook organizers in the kitchen via Chica and Jo

Our house is not small by any means, but I do have a small kitchen.  Something I didn't mind before I started enjoying cooking and had kids.  If I could make any changes to this house it would be just that, a larger kitchen (and maybe more closet space.)  So I'm constantly looking for solutions to organize my kitchen. You would be amazed to see how much I can fit in our small galley kitchen without keeping it all out on the counters (did I ever tell you I hate clutter? Especially counter top clutter!) Using a craft paper (or magazine) organizer to hold different items around the kitchen would be a perfect solution for my shelves.  To see other ways to use the craftbook holder in the kitchen visit ChicaandJo.com. 

Organizing, even in the van:

16 ways to organize your recycling via Better Home and Gardens

Need I say anything else?  Not pretty, but very practical.  Though I would skip the plastic bag to keep it greener. 

Finally around the craft room:

paper towel holder via realsimple.com, box ribbon organizer via marthastewart.com and multi-tiered pants hanger via cratingkeepsakesblog.com

Ribbon!  I have lots of it and need more ways to display it while keeping it organized.  I will share with you one of my own solutions (for a slopping wall) later, on the mean time I share with you the three solutions I found and plan to use for the rest of my ribbon.  I really like the paper towel holder solution RealSimple.com came up with.  I'll be looking for one (or several) of these on my trips to the thrift shops.  MarthaStewart.com also came up with a nice solution using photo boxes, but it takes a bit more work to make.  I really like the multi-tiered pants hanger solutions that they came up with at CreatingKeepsakesBlog.com. 

Jewelry organizer tutorial by Tonya Staab

Jewelry.  I like to make it for friends, as gifts, for me, for fun.  I like the idea of displaying it in my craft room using an old type set drawer.  I have one that was given to me and I planned to use in my nene's room for him to display all his small Lego pieces, but I just might change my mind and keep it to display jewelry.  Shhh.  Don't tell him.  Okay?

Are you inspired yet?  Want to start organizing?  Still need more inspiration?  Then visit DaNita's blog Delightful Order.  She created a roundup of all her organizing tips.  And she has many.  Check them out and get inspired!

Happy Organizing!