Home Organnization - Zee Garage and Studio

While it's been great reliving my New England vacation thanks to blogger land, the majority of my past week has been spent on that home organization project. 

Thanks to Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons there is a blueprint to follow.  Check out her Blog Series called Home Organization 101.  I'm skipping around on the sequence she suggested as I needed to tackle the garage first while the weather is cooperative to an open door and hauling things out on the driveway or into the trunk for the Goodwill.  The other big area is my studio -- it has become a second storage area and is just as overwhelming as the garage.  So I'm tackling BOTH of them.  Glutton for punishment here.

Did you know that four banker boxes of paper fluffs up and E-X-P-A-N-D-S  to 10 large trash bags of shredding?  My trunk, back seat and front seat were filled to the max as I left for the county recycle center yesterday!

 

Glad that's over!  Another trunk full of old printers and miscellaneous stuff was donated to the Goodwill (second trip in the last week).  Feels so good to get all that stuff outta here!  And I am making headway -- look at the freshly polished computer desk sans stacks of file folders which were on each side of the keyboard.

Seeing a nicely organized and cleaned area is so motivating to carry on.

Why I Need to Put My Laundry Away Right Away

It was just too tempting on a cold morning -- warm, folded towels, washcloths and cleaning rags, sitting in a chair, waiting to be put away.  Scarlett didn't appreciate being awoken from her nap for the picture taking as you can see from her one eye open, one eye half shut pose. 

I've been on a cleaning jag lately.  My daughters begin arriving this Thursday for in and out days up to and including Christmas, so this morning I'm sprucing up their rooms -- washing sheets and blankets, dusting and vaccuming.  Then this afternoon you'll find me back in the bonus room.

Ahh, the bonus room has been my project room way too long!  Through the years it has been a combination of the girls' play room/TV room, a home office, exercise room, scrapbooking room, and always storage room.  It has some fantastic features!  It's a room that was added on to the house, above the garage, by the previous homeowners.  You approach it via a nice stairway from the family room downstairs.  It's open, with large windows on three sides so I feel like I'm in a tree house.  It has a large walk-in closet and floor to ceiling cupboards along one wall (the fact the storage boxes still spill over into the main room is a sign I need to get rid of more stuff).  My husband's huge desk, credenza, the desk top computer and printer are the main features of one front corner.  The treadmill is in another corner. The rest of the room is up for grabs in terms of purposing.

But I have ideas!  Organizing the office area into sections for my nonprofit, volunteer projects, hobbies, and personal files is a given.  Then a hobby section where I can spread out my paper craft supplies, photos and albums, and genealogy records.  The treadmill stays and maybe that exercise corner needs enhanced with things that will inspire and make it more 'spa' like.  Do I need music there?  The entire room needs better lighting and a fresh color scheme.  There will be trips to the recycle center and Goodwill in my future.  And the room needs a new name.  I hate the name "bonus room" -- it needs to be my studio, my office, or my hobby room.  Something more definitive.

Time to get busy!

Serendipity

I simply couldn't decide. Two scratched up, mismatched book cases sat in my studio, doing their job of holding books and videos, but sorry sights as contributors to the decor. I'm finally reaching the end of the re-organizing project in this room and one of the last things to do was paint those shelves.

These shelves have a history. We made them 23 years ago in our garage when we lived in Southern California. They were for our very own Montessori School that we started down there! What an adventure! My sister and her husband were owners of a very successful Montessori School and were helping us get one of our own going. Carpenter that he is, my dad also joined in to help us build a couple dozen of these sturdy little shelves for the classroom. There were perfect specifications for them. Low enough that children could reach even the top shelf -- about four feet wide and three shelves high. Just right for books and activity centers. Then all were color coded. We spray painted them. As I recall there were blue ones for the language center, peach for sensorial, yellow for math, pink for practical life. When we eventually sold the school the buyer had some of her own furnishings, so we ended up with about seven or eight of these shelves to take home. These shelves have been wonderful! With growing kids of my own they were used in their bedrooms, in our closets, as toy and book holders in the family room. I've used some at work for my speech therapy supplies. I love these shelves!

So here they sat, moved one too many times, faded and showing signs of wear. One was a faint shade of peach, but I wasn't even sure what color the other one was anymore. I couldn't decide what color to paint the shelves. With mainly blue and green decor in the room, I was concerned I'd pick out a blue or green that would clash. Finally I decided to go neutral and paint them plain white.

It was dark in the garage when I fumbled around for the paint a couple mornings ago. I found the can with the light colored dot on top, grabbed my brush and a screwdriver, and in the early morning hours sanded the shelves in prep of their new face lifts. I opened the can of paint with the screwdriver, dipped in my brush and slapped the first bit of color on the shelf. Not white! Instead, the lovely gray-blue that is in my bedroom. I love this color. It is soft, subtle, looks gray going on and drys to a quiet sky. Why hadn't I thought of that color?

Serendipity -- I found the perfect color for the book cases quite by accident. The freshly painted pair awaits, like old friends with arms outstretched, to welcome the re-organized content.

My studio is almost complete at last.

Getting to the Bottom of Things

This weekend I'm tackling the cleaning of my "studio". It's actually been called a sundry of names including the bonus room, storage area, home office and upstairs family room, but treated as indignantly as "the catch all room." My goal is to completely empty the room and its adjoining storage closet of all boxes, bags and extra-items-in-case-we-might-need-them items. Then rearrange the furniture and create a studio for myself. My crafts include writing and photography and all associated tasks -- journals, cards, scrapbooks, colorful pens and papers....

Yes, the small TV will stay so I can catch up on news or become inspired by watching some shows. The office desk and computer will stay where I can look out the front window while I work, watching the tree boughs gently bend in the evening breeze. The bookcases with their family albums and videos will continue to stand guard over our family history.

But I can do without the boxes of clothes and toys and various other odds and ends that still need sorted through. I started this project awhile back, but you know how it goes. Armed with a bucket of Murphy's Wood Soap suds and a couple of trash bags, I've been able to condense 3-4 more boxes today and completely clear out the bookcases so they look and smell fresh and clean again.

My big find of the day helped my daughter -- it was her old backpack from Cambridge, England days with a wallet containing $90! She was thrilled with that find! And, no, I was nice and didn't play "finder's keepers, loser's weepers."