Organizing stuff

We've been on a big organization kick lately.

Last Saturday, Mitch organized the garage. It was already more organized than most garages, but Mitch just loves making it more functional and neat. I'm amazed. I come from a family where the garage is used for storage. Mitch comes from a family where the garage is used for parking cars. I must say that it took some getting used to his philosophy (because I was always wanting to "just put it in the garage"), but I LOVE parking in the garage. I am so spoiled. I never get wet getting in and out, and my car is never icy! The little things bring me joy.

On Sunday we came home and gathered ALL the toys in the family room, put the boys to bed, and sorted toys. We got rid of a BUNCH of toys! Very cool. We also brought the little table and chairs downstairs to Cole's room and put all "Cole appropriate" toys within easy reach throughout his room. We took pictures of some of Grant's toys and labeled canvas bins with them and reorganized his room a little. He loves it and is doing a great job of keeping up with making sure his toys are in the right spot. He has also rediscovered a lot of toys that he forgot about. Nice.

Also on Sunday, we moved the white dresser that I keep trying to get rid of into my scrapbooking room. I LOVE it there! Lots more storage and a great spot to put the little TV my grandparents gave us. We also moved the chair from Cole's room into the scrapbooking room, so now Mitch has a place to sit and watch TV while I work on paper projects. My scrapbooking room has become a second family room! We have been hanging out upstairs a lot lately!!

On Tuesday, I gutted the little closet in the downstairs hallway (where I used to keep my scrapbooking supplies) and reclaimed it as a wrapping paper station. I found an old spring-rod that I was going to use for curtains in my bathroom and hung my ribbon spools on it. I reorganized and sorted all of my gift bags and wrapping paper, ribbon, bows and accessories and put the little items into mason jars and sorted by color. It looks cool. Since we built a "desk" into the closet, I have a great surface to wrap last minute presents! All supplies are ready to go.

Let's see . . . I also cleaned out my silverware drawer, reorganized my throw-away plastic food containers and straightened up my pantry. Hee hee!

Next is the office. Well, actually, I cleaned up my desk and created a surface organization system a couple of weeks ago (I used to just pile stuff and now I've gone vertical!). Next is going through our filing system and purging, throwing out all old software manuals and boxes, putting child locks on the cabinet doors (WOO HOO!), and pulling out our big, honkin' scanner and setting it up. I have my little "All-In-One" scanner, but I want to be able to scan my 12x12 layouts and not have to piece them together . . . which is something that I learned today, by the way.

I have to tell you, I'm loving all of the organization going on, and so does Mitch! I'll let you know if we tackle any more projects.

Oh, by the way, the reason Mitch decided to organize the garage last weekend was so he could put together the new foosball table and we could set it up in the 3rd car garage. However, he brought it into the house to set up, then convinced me that we need to keep it in the living room until it is not so rainy outside and we can move it out the front door and into the garage. So, now my living room has a chair, a bookshelf, a fake ficus tree and a foosball table. Who says we don't have furniture!?