Time to clear desk space!

Time to clear the desks in the kids rooms in hopes they will be motivated for a new start this school year.  I went back and forth about what I wanted to store all the writing utensils in, last year  I used one big container for all the pencils and markers but that didn't work so well when we went looking for a certain color marker or a pencil that was already sharpened we had to shuffle through the bucket too much. So I am going to do a separate container for pencils, color pencils and markers to help ease the process. Here is a before and after of one of my daughters desks:

here is the after...ahh what a breath of fresh air

here is a close up of one of my side projects for the color pencil container. 

As much as I wanted to buy new containers...in the spirit of condensing I decided to 

find ways to reuse what I have. So this was a blue christmas bucket 

with bears on it that I bought from dollar tree last christmas,

I just covered it in some zebra print duct tape (I already had) that I bought last year also

because I thought it was cute but really had no project in mind.

I liked it so much I'm looking for stuff to cover with this tape now :-)

storage area condensed

This is one of my sources of frustration, everytime I look in this area I just think to myself there is too much stuff over there and I don't even know what half of it is. 

So I started by emptying out the space completely

Then comes the hard part, condensing it down and putting it back in a neat organized way. One thing I know after emptying this space is... never buy those 30 gallon storage containers because you will just keep putting stuff in them until they fill up (it's like I felt obligated to fill them up and make use of them) but that's a bad idea because you end up with some of everything in one container and you lose track of what's in there. From now on I will stick to small ones that I can have more control of and label them.

Okay this is much, much better but I will call this phase one because I want to get rid of those huge containers. I actually have 2 of each, I emptied one and put one inside the other for now. This was supposed to be a 2 hour project but it was more like 3 hours because I had to take the last hour to take all the papers to the recycle bin, pack up all the donations in a bag and gather all the trash and throw it away.  It also forced me to pull some papers out of these containers and keep them in plain view so I can get rid of more stuff but I didn't have time today so in plain view I will be forced to deal with them soon.

I am determined to start today

A little sleepy from working until 2am but I am determined to take the time clean out my storage area in the basement. I have my (what I call) motivation in a can AMP energy drink by my side to assist :-). I also found motivation in my new 2012 IKEA catalog that arrived today, they are so organized I love it. I am alloting 2 hours to this project in hopes that I can finish it today. I keep hearing Peter Walsh in my head too after I read his book "lighten up" to eliminate sources of tension in my home and take my space back! So here I go...pictures to follow, when I'm done of course :-)

Welcome

Welcome to Brighter Day 

I am starting this blog because my sister thought it was a good idea (she pressured me into it!) and in the back of my mind I thought maybe this will be a good outlet sort of like a public diary about my ongoing organizing projects, they are ongoing because I have two daughters who are 7 and 9 that are still organizers in training (my husband is too). 

I also have my little quirky things I love like gadgets such as the “as seen on TV” or in my Harriet Carter catalog that I love to browse and discover unique things that are sometimes useful and sometimes just entertaining. I love to be creative and use my hands to do things so who knows what may show up on this blog. So between cooking, cleaning and working I will find time to post again…until then