Organize Me

As you can see by my Great Purge of 2012 post, a huge organization project is going on in our house lately. I am in the process of switching offices with my hubs, so that project is on-going and I'm still waiting for some of my new furniture to arrive, so there is a bit of a lull at the moment but I am looking forward to getting it completely finished. I already feel like I can breathe lighter! We have made a few trips to Goodwill and have been just giving stuff away, which feels great too! I can honestly say that my garage doesn't look any worse than it did before, in fact it looks a bit better...there's still work to do in there, but anything that was taken out of the house has been sold on Craigslist, is waiting to be sold, has been given to Goodwill, given away or put in the trash...I did NOT want to just simply move my clutter, I wanted it gone! We are very blessed to have lots of room in this house, however, sometimes, like in our case, we were holding onto too much stuff just because we had space for it! I'm working very hard to remedy this problem and plan to be very strict about what we keep and don't keep from here on out!

One of my favorite organization projects so far has been our closet under the stairs/coat closet.

It was an utter disaster before...and so easy to ignore. We would just throw something in there when we had people coming over and say "hey, I'll put that away later when I have a free minute!" Let's face it, we don't have many free minutes, so this is how this closet became the awful mess that it was. No more of that!!!

Then after a few Goodwill trips and trash pickups, it looked like this. Way better!

But then while I was laying in bed one night (my best ideas come to me while I am trying to fall asleep...main reason I don't sleep great!) I realized I could make an awesome wrapping area towards the back, which was empty for the first time since we moved into this house! The next day I set off to make these plans happen and I love how it turned out! My two HUGE dining table leaves live in this area as well. I need them far out of reach of the kiddos! :)

I have had this Elfa gift wrap cart from The Container Store for about 6 years now. It has definitely come in handy and I love the organization it brings. It has totally paid for itself over and over, but my wrapping paper selection was getting to large for it! The wheels broke in our last move, so I have just had it sitting, sans wheels in my old craft room. I really didn't want it sitting out in my new craft suite and I didn't want to have to leave it up my hubs' new home office. So this area seemed like the perfect solution. On the right side is my gift pile...just gifts I keep in case I need an unexpected present for someone and don't have time to shop! Then I have some gift boxes on the left that I have kept just in case. The drawers are full of tissue paper, gift bags, leftover wrapping paper pieces, etc.

I have some of my ribbon on top of the gift wrap station, but the rest is upstairs in my old craft room closet. Love how I can have scissors, tape, gift labels, etc in the top drawer of this cart!

Now, onto my favorite part of this gift wrap area! I used to have wrapping paper in a bunch of different rooms and it was making me crazy! Now I have it ALL in one organized spot! Gotta love that! Woohoo! 

These fabulous wrapping paper organizers are actually plastic bag dispensers from the lovely Ikea. They were $1.99! I mean really you can't beat that price!! I'm sure you could find similar things like this elsewhere made for wrapping paper but I can almost guarantee they'll be way pricier! Another bonus is that you can order online if you don't have an Ikea near you(so many Ikea items are not available for online purchasing!). I bought a bunch of the dispensers and actually plan to buy more because I keep coming up with more ideas for these babies! I also bought some similar square shaped baskets from Ikea and I show you what I did with those soon!

I ended up having the hubs screw the gift wrap holders (what I call them!) into the wall. They come with adhesive stickers on the back, but some of my wrapping paper is too heavy to be held by just the stickers. They have holes for screws or nails, but you'll need your own nails and screws, which I was lucky enough to find a bunch of during the purge, so I saved myself or the hubs a trip to the Home Depot! :)

 I have to say, just looking in this closet makes me happy. It's really nice to finally have a place for certain things and have that area organized. I feel such a sense of relief lately because of all the purging and organizing. It's really a TON of work, but I'm glad I'm sticking to it because once I'm completely finished, it'll be that much more of a relief! Hope you all had an amazing weekend! We sure did. As always it seemed to fly by and I can't believe, yet again it's Monday!

xoxo,

Ashley