Organizing the playroom was one crucial step in reclaiming part of our basement for my own use, and yes, reclaiming my very sanity as toys were taking over the entire house.  Besides my own three little hooligans, I have a young niece and nephew who visit often, especially when school is out, and when the gang gets together they have a rip-roaring good time... at the expense of my personal possessions sometimes (fond memories of a Wii remote cracking the big screen TV, just like that commercial).  They have always managed to leave the basement in total chaos. 

We had given the kids a large playroom in the main part of our mostly-finished basement.  We installed nice white built-in shelves and cabinets, including their own entertainment center.  There was plenty of room for romping and burning off extra energy.  And, I thought, it would be easy for them to put their toys away when they were done playing.

The result was a complete disaster area that I was embarrassed for even the exterminator to see (I imagine him saying, duh lady clean your house if you want to get rid of pests).  Kids (and the dog) all ran wild in there, letting popsicles melt in gooey puddles you didn't find for weeks, mingled with spilled chocolate milk buried under a layer of scattered blocks, puzzle pieces, chewed up stuffed animals, story books, broken crayons, and electronic games...and much much more.

I have learned a few things since my first playroom attempt.  This past weekend the playroom was moved into a smaller, more enclosed space in the basement.  The big room with the TV in it is now my deluxe exercise room (including a punching bag - much needed).  The kids can still run around and blow off steam in the big room but they are not allowed to leave toys in there.

The new, organized playroom in a smaller space:

 

If you are looking into how to organize your kids' playroom, here are a few suggestions from hard-learned experience:

• Playroom organization begins with purging.  You have to get the kids out of the house for this one, trust me, you don't want them "helping" you decide what to keep.  That said, before you do this take note of what your kids are currently enjoying playing with, and also remember things they used to love playing with until they lost all the pieces.  You want to get rid of clutter and excess, but there is no need to get rid of honestly fun toys they like if they're still in good shape.  Things to trash: kids meal toys, broken toys, puzzles with missing pieces, toys the dog chewed up.  
  
  
• A bigger playroom is not better.  The more space there is to scatter things, the more mixed up everything will get, and the harder it will be to restore order to the chaos.  It will be hard for kids to find their toys, let alone enjoy playing with them.
  
  
• Use mid-sized containers for grouping toys together. Use plastic bins and baskets big enough to hold chunky toys, but not so big as to hold a LOT of toys.  If the bin is too large, the kids will feel they need to dump the whole thing out to find the toy they want to play with.  Too small and you won't be able to group enough things together, you'll just have a clutter of bins.
  
  
• Label your bins in a child-friendly way.  Use big lettering as well as pictures to show what belongs in the bin.  I was not a perfectionist about the pictures.  I just found photos online (Amazon was useful for this) of things that were representative of the toys I was storing.  I put the labels inside plastic sheet protectors or just covered them with tape and slapped them onto the containers directly. 
  
  
• Be creative in grouping toys together.  There are obvious things, like Duplos, or wooden blocks that obviously go together with their own kind.  But what about a bin full of everything Elmo, or a collection of anything that could be called a small animal?  Give things their own special group to belong to and it will help kids remember where to put it back. Here were my catergories:
  
  Duplos
  Mega Bloks
  Thomas the Tank Engine
  Magnet Toys
  Balls
  Trucks/Cars (also included some flying vehicles)
  Star Wars Action Figures
  Costumes (big bin also doubles as a table with four small chairs around)
  Dora Toys
  Wooden Blocks
  Mr. Potato Head
  Other Action Figures
  Doll Clothes
  Barbie
  Toddler Toys
  Dolls
  Stuffies (stuffed animals)
  Kitchen Dishes
  Kitchen Food (toy food that is)
  Nerf Laser Gun and Darts
  Penguins and Puffles
  Elmo Toys
  Little People
  Boobahs and Teletubbies
  Coin Toys (a toy piggy bank and a cash register)
  Trio and Castle Set
  Star Wars Practice Blades (a narrow drawer for my son to keep two old vacuum cleaner crevice tools he likes to pretend are his practice lightsabers)
  Baby Toys
  Puppets
  Peek-a-Bloks
  
  
• Avoid catch-all toy bins as much as possible.  If you have a big pile of toys that don't seem to belong to any one set, comb through them once more and see if you can't find enough to form a category like "Dora Toys" or "Magnet Toys".  In the end, you might end up with an amorphous group of stuff that you have to resort to calling "Toddler Toys" but keep that sort of thing to a minimum, to avoid the large bin of mystery toys problem.
  
  
• Set the rules for long-term playroom organization success.   Our rules are simple:

1. No food or drinks allowed in the basement (including the playroom).
2. All toys need to put away when you are done with them.
3. Before bed, every single toy in the whole house has to be put back in the playroom (with exceptions for stuffies to sleep with, and my son's Lego collection which lives in his room).  

This weekend we couldn't keep the kids away for ever... when the purging was done, they were around for the organizational part, and they really wanted to help.  They enjoyed taping the signs onto the bins and putting items in their new homes.  Today the cousins came over and once again threw toys all over the room (much to my kids' dismay!), but they had been forewarned that they were expected to put things away in the places as I had labeled them.  And lo and behold, before their mom came to get them, they had everything put back as if they had never been there.

 

And yes, it is more fun for the kids to play in an organized playroom, especially for my 2.5 year old who thinks it's like Christmas, all these "new" toys to play with.  I'll have to keep reminding them all to clean up after themselves, but kids like knowing what's expected of them.  They didn't want to have a messy playroom before, they just didn't know how to handle it.  Now they have an easy-to-understand system of organization to help them quickly put toys where they are supposed to go. 

Maybe I won't need that punching bag quite so badly as I did before.  

 

Posted by Caeli at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In our basement we have an extra refrigerator.  It was the refrigerator that was in this house when we bought it, and it works fine, but when we remodeled the kitchen we went with a stainless-look refrigerator (giving up, I might add, several cubic feet of refrigerator and freezer space in our kitchen to fit it into our design, since we did not want to spring for a sub-zero).

The extra refrigerator comes in handy for storing the organic chickens and turkeys we buy from a fellow homeschooling family.  But when we bring home the birds it is sometimes necessary to let them remain in the refrigerator part for a few days before moving them into the freezer.  That is where the problem starts... they are in plastic bags, but the bags are not leak-proof.  As a result, there was quite a mess on the shelves of the fridge, and in the freezer as well since my husband transferred them directly over without paying attention to the leaky mess. 

I ignored the problem for quite a while, being too busy with many other remodeling, painting and organizing projects.  But I am now all about anti-procrastination.  I asked my husband to unplug the fridge so it could thaw out, and intended to have him clean it shortly thereafter.

We both forgot about it.  I would only remember it late at night when we couldn't do anything about it. 

But finally late one night this week I remembered before we went to bed, and made an appointment to get up at 6:30 AM the next morning so we could tackle cleaning the fridge together.  It had been unplugged for several days, with the doors shut... a big no-no.  I wanted to take care of it before any more mildew grew.

Here's what I know about cleaning refrigerators.  You shouldn't use strong chemicals.  The ideal is probably hot water and vinegar (maybe 1 gallon to 1 cup ratio).  I threw in a little bit of dish soap too, since some of the mess was kind of stuck-on.  Our hot tap water is very hot indeed, so I felt confident we took care of any chicken messes quite thoroughly.  My husband brought all the shelves, drawers, baskets and bins upstairs and I scrubbed them while he wiped down the interior of the refrigerator and freezer.  

Finally, our early morning collaboration (only took 1-1/2 hours) resulted in this:

 

That blue box is a generic box of baking soda, just in case of any lingering chicken odors.  

Now that I know I have a clean extra refrigerator/freezer, I look forward to the next chicken butchering season, when I will learn how to make our own chicken stock and keep it stored in the freezer.  I know, just what everyone dreams about, right?  And I'm a vegetarian!  Oh but it feels good knowing your family has whole, organic food to eat.  And an extra refrigerator to store it in!

Posted by Caeli at 09:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every good woman loves a shiny sink.  If you're one of the Flylady's followers, you shine your sink every day.  I have a porcelain sink, but if you have a stainless steel sink, you may have run into some trouble trying to get the crud out and get it truly shiny.

My friend Jo, the one with the knitting blog,  has come up with a way to shine her stainless steel sink.  After trying Comet, stainless steel micro-fiber cloths, and stainless steel spray cleaner, all in vain, she finally found her secret weapon.  It was Magic Eraser's cleaner for Wheel and Tire.  It made her stainless steel sink shiny without much scrubbing.  The scum and the dullness that had been caused by coffee and food being poured down the sink, were taken away by this unexpected cleaner.  

She thought some of our home remodeling blog readers might appreciate this tip, so here you are.  I hope you soon have a shiny stainless steel sink too! 

 

Posted by Caeli at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am afraid that indeed, you do have to wash clothes before storing them.  I will tell you why.

When I took on the momentous task of organizing, sorting, reducing, and storing my children's too-small clothes, I had not planned on washing them.  After all, they had been washed before being brought back to the bedrooms last time (I won't say, put away in their drawers because many were just piled up here and there).  And I know I will wash them before putting them on the next kid who may use those clothes. 

Yet when I did research on how to store children's clothes, I found again and again that it was recommended to wash and thoroughly dry the clothes before storing them.   Still, I was not convinced.

Then I learned why they HAVE to be washed before storing (thanks to the blunt words of a professional organizer named Cynthia Braun on her website organizeyourlife.org):

1. Washing clothes removes mildew spores that could take off while in storage
2. Washing clothes removes insect eggs that could hatch into bugs that chew holes in your clothing
3. Stains, which contain bits of food like grease or other substances, or body fluids like perspiration, attract insects to clothing that is in storage

At the very least, clothes should be put through the dryer before storing, which should knock out the insect eggs.  However, that does not sound very effective to me. 

If only I had not thought I could get away with storing the clothes without washing them first... I had them all sorted into piles by size and gender.  Now, I am washing them in loads by size and gender, in order to avoid the task of sorting them out again, even though some of the loads are pretty small. 

The moral of the story is: don't hesitate - just wash the children's clothes before putting them into storage.  And dry them really well - or you'll just make things worse!

 

 

 

Posted by Caeli at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my children's clothes adventures, I have completed the process of gathering all the too-small clothes, culled out the ones to donate or throw in the trash, and having belatedly decided that I really DO have to wash all these clothes before putting them into long-term storage (more on that later), I am discovering the best way to store children's clothes.

Short of buying specially-made archival bags and containers, I believe I have the best solution right at hand.  We have collected a number of plastic storage bins (Sterlite, Rubbermaid and others) and have been piling clothes and other unsorted and undecided-about items in them for years.  But as the Flylady says, "You can't organize clutter" and these bins were just containers of clutter.  It was easy to recover the ones that were holding unsorted clothes in them.  Others I found in the garage with a couple of tools in them (soon relegated to the workbench where they should have been, though the workbench itself is a study in clutter collecting), and another was being used for surplus hat and mitten storage.  I decided the hats and mittens were part of the clothing project, since some were baby-sized, so that bin was emptied out too and is now available for long-term clothes storage. 

Here is a look at one of the clear plastic conainers I am using for the boys size 5 and 6 clothes:

 

The advice I found online recommended not only using bins, but placing the clothes inside of plastic bags before putting them in the bins.  There are apparently two reasons for storing clothes in plastic bags, or Space Bags, within a plastic bin:

1. Increased protection from moisture, dirt and insects
2. To squeeze out the excess air and increase the amount of clothes that can be stored in the plastic bin/storage container.

 But which is better for bagging up clothes for storage, Space Bags or ordinary garbage bags?  I have found a use for both:

I think the Space Bag is easier to use when you have an impossibly large stack of the clothes that you want to compress to a height small enough to fit under the lid of the plastic storage container.  I had a lot of size five boys clothes for some reason, but the Space Bag fits on one side of the container, leaving the other side free for the size 6 clothes.  The size 6's were placed in a tall kitchen can garbage bag, and I leaned on it and squeezed as much air out as I could, then sealed it shut with packing tape.   It made a nice brick of clothes that fit easily along side the size 5s, so I could get two years worth of clothes into one bin.

Here is another look of a couple years worth of clothes compressed in their plastic bags and sealed with packing tape:

 

By the way, I did not separate the clothes into seasons, as I know some people do.  So far I have not seen the need to store away summer clothes in the winter, or vice versa.  I have kids who like running around the house in shorts and T-shirts in the middle of winter, and on the other hand I sometimes have to dress them in jeans and sweatshirts in June.  If your climate has a sharper division between the warm and cold seasons, you might want to store the clothes separately to make it easier to grab just the ones you need when you need them.  I also don't have that many clothes saved that it would be difficult to pull out what I need and reseal the bag with the rest of them if I wanted to.

My only problem is that I keep coming across additional clothing items in the sizes I've already sealed up.  I'll have to re-do those bags, but I can handle it.  I am making progress toward having a nicely stocked supply of clean kids clothing ready for future children, God willing. 

Posted by Caeli at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am organizing, culling, and storing my children's clothes that they've outgrown, in case we need them for future babies.  Over the past two years (the years child #3 has been around to date) the clothes have been piling up in all our bedrooms, depressing me more and more every day.  When I decided it was time to declutter the house, finally dealing with the children's clothes was at the top of the list.

I began by gathering everything - mostly baby and little kid clothes, but also a few related items such as blankets, slings and baby carriers.  I went through the dressers and pulled out all the too-small clothes, not bothering to make decisions about donating, tossing or keeping at this point.  I just wanted to get them all down to the kitchen and dining room, which is my staging ground for this project.  Soon I had several clothes baskets that looked like this:



My husband and I then scrounged up every big plastic storage bin we had in the house.  I washed them with hot soapy water, then set them out all over the kitchen island and dining room table.  I stuck a quickly scribbled note indicating clothing sizes and gender, stuck them on the bins (two sizes per bin) and these became the "keep" piles.  I filled up several garbage bags and boxes for donation, which were soon loaded into the car and taken to Goodwill.  Several articles of clothing were relegated to the garbage as well. 

This was the view in my kitchen and dining room when I started sorting out the clothing I planned to put in storage:





At first I was really torn between culling and keeping clothes.  My first instinct was to get rid of as much as possible... the shear enormity of the piles made me think, we cannot possibly store even half of this, with more hand-me-downs being generated every year.  However, the financial aspect soon struck me: this is a fortune in clothes.  If anything is in pretty good condition, I should keep it.  It will save our family major moo-la someday. 

I am now much further along on this project, so I'll take some more pictures and demonstrate what I've learned about conserving space while storing lots of children's clothes. 

Posted by Caeli at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are my 10 Commandments of Storing and Organizing Children's Clothes:

1. Thou shall keep the boxes from all thy kids' shoes (so thou'll know what size they are when thou needs them).
2. Thou shall remove all stains from clothes when they happen, and thou shalt not leave clothes stored or piled up somewhere with stains on them for years.
3. Thou shall always wash dark colors in cold water.
4. Thou shalt not let kids stretch out clothes that are too small for them.
5. Thou shall have a labeled bin ready to store clothes as soon as they are outgrown so thou won't have to wonder what size they were (because the tag is now unreadable). 
6. Thou shalt never buy more clothes only because thou can't find the ones saved from the previous kid.
7. Thou shall pair socks after washing, and discard the orphaned socks.
8. Thou shall throw away clothes have holes in them or are hopelessly stained or faded.
9. Thou shall donate clothes that thou never liked, are duplicates, or thou has too many of.
10. Thou shall wash all clothes and dry thoroughly before storing them.

All of the above, I learned the hard way.  Up until a couple of days ago:

• I had a mountain of baby clothes piled up on top of a changing table in my bedroom.  The pile reached halfway up the wall, and constantly shed little socks onto the floor. 
• My 5 year old daughter could never find any clothes to wear.  Her dresser seemed full, but everything was too small.  In fact, she really does not have many clothes; good thing it's almost Christmas.
• My toddler's clothes were overflowing out of her dresser, and another mountain was forming on top.  When I removed all the clothes that were too small, what remained fit into two of the three drawers, as well as some thing now hanging in the closet.  We never used hangers before for the kids.

Getting the too-small and junky clothes out of the dressers was a huge blessing to the kids (and to my sanity).  I just informed my 8 year old son that he now has socks paired together in his drawer, so he should wear them every day.  He opened his eyes wide and said in a hushed voice, "They're all together?"  I said yes, and he yelled "Thanks!" and gave me a big hug.  That just makes it all worth it. 

Posted by Caeli at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hats and mittens can be the bane of a mother's existence in the winter time.  It was bad enough in the summer, trying to find two matching shoes to put on a child's feet, now you have to add pairs of mittens as well as some hat or other before you can let them out the door and still consider yourself a good parent.  In addition, you will at some point have to make the switch from shoes to boots, knowing full well that this means large unwieldy pieces of footwear will be standing in puddles of melted snow in your front hallway. 

After about a week of chasing after mittens and hats, I was inspired to find a solution to this problem.  We never had a single spot where the hats and mittens were supposed to live.  Putting them in the coat sleeves was not always practical, as there might be a little snow on the mittens or gloves, which would then just stay moist and make the coat sleeve damp as well.  Growing up, my mom had a dresser for hats and mittens.  The wet items could lay on top of it until they dried.  I don't have room for the dresser solution.  So I had my one organizational genius moment, and came up with the ultimate hat and mitten organizer, which each of my kids from the 8 year old down to the 2 year old can handle putting their things away in, and it doesn't really matter if the things are a little damp. 



Yes, it is simply a shoe organizer.  Each of the mesh pockets (handy for ventilation, allowing items to dry) can hold a pair of mittens or gloves, or a hat, scarf or neck gator.  My husband and I put ours in the high pockets, the kids use the ones they can reach.  I imagine that when spring finally comes, I will again put the hats and mittens and gloves away in a bin in the basement and we'll use this organizer for those multiple pairs of shoes the kids need in the summer. 

There still remained the problem of the boots, especially since we had not fully transitioned from shoe-mode in spite of several inches of snow followed by sub-zero temperatures.  Tonight, the transition was well and truly made.  Whereas the hall closet previously was a jumbled pile of boots, ski boots, dress shoes, flip-flops, sandals, and sneakers, now it is a place for winter boots and ski boots, only winter footwear, to live.  I just tossed them in there this evening, but tomorrow I will put down a throw rug for under the boots, which I will be able to shake out from time to time. 

So here is my accomplishment for today:



Not only can we find our nicely organized hats and mittens, now we can even find a pair of boots... or even go cross country skiing!  It gives one such a sense of peace, accomplishing these little moments of home organization.

Posted by Caeli at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For reasons that defy understanding, we've started a project to clean out and organize the garage.  It is a perfectly wonderful project to take on, until you consider that it is December.  In Wisconsin.  The temperature tonight at 8:00 PM is 10 degrees above zero, and we will not see the north side of freezing until March.

 But we were faced with a problem.  With Christmas coming, and a new drive to finally organize and clean our house, we want to expand the storage possibilities for the kids' bedroom closets.  We have the wood to devise some great storage shelves, but not the open space to work on them.  Cutting sheets of plywood in the garage is preferable to cutting them outside, and since it's dark by 4:45 PM, it's essential to do this work where we can have lighting.  So, that means the garage.  

 But, where on earth to start?  This poor garage has been through everything.  To consider putting car in there would be a joke.  It's been a workshop, garbage collector, remodeling staging area, and everything in between.  We've noticed that once it's a mess, it's nothing to just toss the latest garbage bag into the garage and forget about it.  Eventually, it makes it into the garbage bins.  So, we had to start with the trash.

The problem then is the fixed amount of trash you can fit into a bin.  The city switched over to these bins that the automated collectors can deal with.  I hate them.  The idea is sound enough, but how do you ever purge a large amount of stuff when you routinely fill the bins with the trash of life with three kids?  Projects generate junk, and the junk can only go away a little at a time, unless we get the in-laws to help with a trailer run to the dump.

With that said, the garage is coming along for a first night of work.  We will post pictures soon, but suffice to say being able to see the floor is a good first step!

Posted by Caeli at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Winter is here in Wisconsin, and the snow if falling outside.  Inside, there is a flurry of home improvement underway.  We have been bopping from one project to another, getting a few things done here, then there. The central vac is being installed, bit by bit... there are now a hide-a-hose outlet and a vac-pan installed on the first floor hallway wall.  That same hallway just got a paint job, from ceiling to walls to woodwork, including doors. 

But in the midst of this another great moment has been dawning... Flylady is back in our home.  You probably heard of her... the lady with the home organization website that sends out e-mails to people reminding them to shine their sink, etc.  I have had fits and starts with her system in the past.  But perhaps my day has finally come, because I have received a burst of energy and zeal for cleaning and organizing our house, and if I can channel it into daily routines and keep this up, we actually will achieve home organization for the first time since we've moved to this house.  

In this quest, I've been taking some free time to look online for ideas to organize various parts of the home. Today I was thinking about organizing my master bathroom.  I hate the above-toilet cabinet, it just does not work for me.  The shower and toilet are in their own room, while the sink is out in a nook that does not have a door on it, in the bedroom.  I hate that.  I guess the previous owners were going for a hotel theme?  It just makes everything stored in the drawers too accessible to curious toddlers.  

So I came across a good website, and I wanted to remember it, so what better to do than stick a link in my blog?  

http://storyconnection.net/blog/tag/cleaning/

It takes you through several rooms in the home, showing organization ideas that are possible for anyone to achieve.  I am looking forward to trying some things, and will report back as I get my own home organized.  

Posted by Caeli at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)