Tonight I was very unfocused, but all my puttering did bring about some results!
First of all, I thought I'd list books on Half.com for sale as my organizing thing, but I mentioned it to NT and by the time I sat down to do it, I saw he was doing it. Sweet! But then I felt like I had to figure out something I could do myself.
First I thought about organizing the girls' craft supplies, but then I realized I wanted a giant Tupperware box for that. So I checked in the front hall closet and saw some half-full cans of paint. I went on the city website and looked up how to dispose of it, and found there's a dropoff center (we'd have to get a car share, but that's OK). The site also said if the paint was latex and dried out and less than a quarter full, you could just put it in the trash. But when I picked one up at random, it felt more than a quarter full, and I thought I felt movement.
So I'm going to have NT pry them open tomorrow and if they look usable, I'll Freecycle them. If not usable, we'll do a car share and try to bundle a few other chores we've been putting off.
So that was progress of sorts, but I couldn't see any visible results, so I still wanted to do something! I'd noticed some stuff in the closets that we probably didn't want anymore and could maybe put in our friend's garage sale next month, so I thought about just cataloging things in there and making a garage sale list.
I found the modem for the alternative internet service we tried to save money with a year or so ago, and I took that down to see if we could Craigslist it. Then I noticed a giant Tupperware on a top shelf. I took it down, and it just contained some paper-making supplies and some random 45 records. I managed to put the paper-making kit in the same box as a screen-printing kit (AS has a lot of crafts supplies tucked in odd places), and set aside the 45s to Freecycle. That meant I could use the Tupperware for the girls' crafts supplies!
Here's the 45s and the internet modem:
The top shelf of that closet already looked better just by getting the big Tupperware out of there:
So I took down the cardboard box of their old crafts supplies and three boxes of NEW supplies they got for their birthdays this month. I organized, put things into baggies, consolidated, and threw out a bunch of scribbled/painted/stickered paper and various scraps:
I managed to get all four crafts boxes' contents into the one Tupperware, which can either go under the crib, under the bed or on the bottom shelf of the changing table in the girls' room:
Once the main cardboard box was cleared out, I thought it could be used to store various hats and gloves that were scattered over another shelf in the front hall closet. So I brought that stuff out, we tossed a few unusable hoods and odd gloves, and we fit the rest into the craft box.
That meant a bag of bags that was on the closet floor now fits in the shelf along with our gloves/hats box and with our other bag of bags:
And, it also means there is a free spot in the sewing supplies storage unit where the crafts box was!
Day 3 declutter/organize results!
April 4th, 2014 at 05:14 am
April 4th, 2014 at 01:35 pm 1396614908
Do you have any concern about having those craft supplies accessible to your kids if under a bed where they could reach them, get them out and ingest or use on a wall when out of your sight? Just something to consider.
April 4th, 2014 at 07:46 pm 1396637186
Luckily, the Tupperware I found is pretty hard to open. My oldest can be trusted not to get into something if she's told not to, and the youngest isn't strong enough to open this container.
April 4th, 2014 at 08:38 pm 1396640296
April 4th, 2014 at 09:59 pm 1396645192
How do you manage bulky winter garb when this ghastly winter goes?
April 5th, 2014 at 05:07 am 1396670853