Five people. Three dogs. Itty bitty too small house. What are the chances we have crap flowing out of every corner? That answer would be 100%. And I’m tired of stuff being everywhere I turn. I’m tired of things being every which way and there being no order in this house.
So here and there I’ve been collecting things we don’t really use to donate or hold a garage sale or something. I got very lucky that someone I know is pregnant with a boy, so all of Kidlet Three’s baby stuff went that way, other than a few keepsakes I couldn’t part with. I have some supplies from the breast pump to sell or donate still. I’ve marked up most of the clothes that Kidlet Two has outgrown so I can sell them. Though if I ran into someone who needed them, I’d just give them away. (Getting rid of the kid stuff makes me sad that there will no more little babies coming to our house, but I digress.)
I need to go through all the rooms and gather up all the stuff we don’t use and don’t need to get rid of that crap. There are pack rats in my family tree. I started to display some of those tendencies once upon a time. I think I’m cured now though, as parting with things is becoming less and less difficult. Especially when I stuck a bunch of stuff in a corner to get it out of the way and I haven’t touched anything in those boxes in months. It seems like plenty of reason to part with that stuff to me.
The kids’ stuff is a little trickier. The oldest kidlet is a pack rat. Getting her to part with anything is exceedingly difficult to the extent I’ve tossed stuff when she’s gone because we really don’t need to keep every scrap of paper she may have ever doodled on at some point in her six years. Really. Plus we have a range of toys because of the range of ages. They. Are. Everywhere!
So, The Feminist Breeder did a blog post on her obsessive organizing habits. She’s using the Trofast system from IKEA, which is not wallet draining system. She even labeled it all and everything looks Type A perfect. It seemed like a system that might work for us. Unfortunately, the closest IKEA is in Chicago, six hours away. And the shipping costs are heart-stopping. So short of a road trip (And hey, I could make weekend of it!), I’m not getting these pretty neat organizing devices.
In a fit of inspiration, or maybe it was frustration, I used my Google Fu to look for something similar to this system. I found a DIY hack of the Trofast framing, which makes it possible to get organized. I might be able to talk to the husband into building pretty things for me to put all the kids’ crap into. Then I can put pretty labels on all the things and hopefully have less disaster and more things mastered.
Because I tried to clean the hellacious room that is the computer/play room this weekend and There. Is. Crap. EVERYWHERE. Tubs that used to hold things are overflowing. There are things that need to be thrown away and/or replaced. Toys that could probably be pitched or given away. The kids destroyed that room and I turned a blind eye to it and now there is a giant mess. Denial is a bad, bad thing.
While I have some vague ideas on making all this stuff work, I need to create a concrete organization plan so I know what I need and how it will look when I’m done. I have to know these things. And I need to organize my home office supplies as well. It’s all getting so messy. I need a month off of work to make it all happen, too. I may have to call in some favors to get this accomplished, but I have to have the supplies first. This will be my big winter project. What will you be in working on over through the end of the year?