Last month I decided to spend money on what I thought was the most frivolous service I had ever craved. I hired Krista Colvin of Organize in Style to assess my house and help me out with "hot spots". (I did think to myself, "I'm saying "hot spots" to an organizing consultant... what kind of silliness is that!?")
My top priority was a "mission control center" ... a place to put mail, charge cell phones, deal with the massive amounts of kid artwork that pass through our doors every day, etc. Anyone who has visited Strider's House can attest to the fact that these things took over every available horizontal surface: kitchen table, the top of the play kitchen, the kitchen counters, the shelves of the CD rack, the top of the DVD player... usually all at once.
Well, it took two "places", and a month, but here are the before and after photos... do you think I could make Sunset a second time?
Toy closet trasformed to Mission Control
(mail, filing, recycling, shred, trash, mail station, & "go downstairs" bin):
Secretary Catch all transformed toCharging station, artwork storage
(and the kids can do it themselves!)
Oh, and I didn't even have to clean them up to take the pictures. They really looked like this after a week that I worked 6 days in a row. Now, the kitchen, on the other hand, is still a complete disaster!
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7 comments:
It all looks FABULOUS! Congratulations on following up with Krista's suggestions.
Where did all the "secretary catch-all" stuff go?
And where did the toys go? We have a "toy living room" ... what I would give for a toy closet. :) They both look great.
A lot of the stuff in the secretary was just garbage. It seemed to have meaning at some point, which expired years and years ago. One drawer was full of "piles" I had made of "things to do" on a horizontal surface in (educated guess) 2002 that Daddy had "cleaned" into a drawer and I never found it. Well, I knew it was there eventually, and that eventually, I would clean it out. The rest went wherever it belonged. Christmas lightbulbs with the christmas stuff, photos with the photos, playing cards with the rest of the games, etc...
Krista said "kids stuff in kids rooms", so that's where the toys are...and some downstairs. That's still a work in progress but close to done... I'll post pictures of that soon.
Go for it! I think this is definitely Sunset Magazine material.
And now I get Sunset magazine again. I got a "senior" discount offer of an amazing $10.00 for one year. I couldn't pass it up. I am approaching being a senior, after all.
I am officially inspired ... We have a hall closet full of items that can easily be moved - I will have a toy closet by next weekend. Ella doesn't have a room - so her stuff has taken over our living room. I look forward to cleaning it all up. Thanks again ... for the inspiration. :)
What child-filled house *doesn't* have at least one room that's a disaster area? ;-)
When we put in our 30-day notice to vacate our current apartment, the housing staff told us they would drop by within the next few days to do a pre-inspection, make sure we haven't damaged any appliances or whatnot. Despite assurances that they weren't looking at cleanliness, they stopped by the day I returned to work after a bout of sickness-- i.e. the house was a disaster! Needless to say, I was a bit embarrassed to find their "we were here" notice when I got home that day.
I'm definitely looking forward to walk-in closets and twice as much space, to help maintain order at our new place!
Actually, it was teh most frivilous service I ever thought you craved...
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