MacGyver and the Marshalls: Organization 101

This is going to be a pretty boring post for most people, unless you are really into cleaning and organizing :) Most people don't know this about me, but I love to have things organized. When I was a little kid, one of my favorite books was the Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room because I loved how organized their toys were at the end of the book. Having my surroundings organized makes me incredibly happy (It's always the little things in life, isn't it?). However, I get super overwhelmed when there is a large amount of "stuff" that I don't really know what to do with- this is embarassing to admit, but a huge pile of unopened mail has been known to reduce me to tears, lol! So I really have to work myself up to ready to tackle a huge organization project. When we moved into our house in January, we obviously unpacked all of the major things that we would use every day, like clothes, kitchen stuff, etc. We also unpacked most things that are easy to put away, like books and DVD's. But after several months of living in the house, our basement/family room was still filled with packed boxes. The things in these boxes were a random assortment of things that we don't use on a daily basis but don't want to throw away or give away, like board games, random memorabilia from our wedding, office supplies, etc. In April, we painted literally every surface in the basement- walls, ceiling, doors, and had carpeting put in. Because of the carpet, we had to remove everything from that room, and instead of sorting through everything and finding permanent homes for it, we just distributed it between our two extra bedrooms upstairs and the utility/laundry room in the basement. Until this week, a few items have been unpacked, but the bulk of it still remained sitting in boxes, cluttering up our house.

I finally worked up the motivation to tackle this project! What was really preventing me from doing so before is that I was just so overwhelmed by not being able to figure out what to do with all of the stuff once it was unpacked. What helped me the most was to make a list of categories that these unpacked items fell into, and then come up with locations for each category of items. The categories I came up with were:

suitcases, bags, and travel-related items
electronics and related accessories (i.e. cameras, camera cases, chargers, etc)
photos and photo albums
craft supplies
sentimental memorabilia (i.e. cards, other random things I can't bear to part with)
gift wrapping materials
decorative items (i.e. candles, vases, frames)
Eric's sports cards and related items
sleeping bags, air mattresses, extra pillows and blankets, etc.
office supplies
board games
small kitchen appliances and serving items that we don't use regularly

I was able to divide up all of these items between the closets and dressers in each of the extra bedrooms, a hallway closet, a cabinet and small shelf in the laundry room, and the closet in the family room. We started on this over the weekend and I finally finished putting away the last of everything tonight. I feel SO much better now that this stuff is put away! Here is a before and after of our third bedroom:

Before: Yikes!

After: Clutter free, but the room is in serious need of some decorating help! I have a big project up my sleeve for tomorrow

We organized tons of other spaces in our house over the last few days, basically every single closet, cabinet, and drawer. I forgot to take "before" pictures of these other spaces, but here are some "afters": (Disclaimer: these are not the prettiest spaces in our house, but are super functional!)

Eric worked really hard on organizing his tools and workbench: