My problem areas

Hey hey!! How are you on this fine Thursday? I love Thursdays. :) I’m feeling GOOD because I’ve finally been tackling some my problems areas over the past couple of weeks. Not my hips and stomach – but the ones in the house. ;) I’ve let the house go just a little lately – I’ve been so focused on the reno that everything else kind of falls apart. Well, I mean, we aren’t living in filth or anything – but I don’t keep up with clutter well when I’m distracted by DIY projects.

There comes a point when I’m done with it though. Like D.O.N.E. You know it’s serious when the caps come out. So I’ve been working on small projects here and there just to make me feel better.

Our garage, along with my car and our kitchen island, are just spots I don’t keep up with. They are perpetual messes. I’ve tried to change my ways and have gotten a little better with age, but not much.

The garage is worst of them all – after a summer of working on projects it is an absolute disaster. Thing is, we always park in there – so no matter how bad it is we make room for the cars, so that’s something. We may have to jump over things to get to them, but we can park inside!

My work bench had become an absolute PIT:

I can’t believe I show you some of these pictures – but I always want to share the real stuff with the pretty. I’m normal. Well maybe not, but close.

But I had that spot looking GREAT after about an hour of concentrated clean up:

I’m gonna be honest here – a few of those things were chucked into the other side of the garage – that’s also a disaster. I really would have just put it away, but we can’t really walk through that part right now…cause it’s a disaster. Baby steps. (For the easy DIY instructions on how to make that work bench go here.)

I have talked for YEARS about trying to get a better handle on the paper that comes into our house. I’m just a piler – it’s me and I refuse to fight it any longer. I pile it up for a couple few weeks and then tackle it all at once:

The basket is now mostly empty again:

My goal is to sit down once a week to address everything in the basket – we’ll see if that happens. Snort.

My favorite organizational project of the past couple weeks is this one though. Listen carefully when you look at it – you’ll hear angels singing:

Do you hear them??

I picked up this little organizer from the hardware store about, oh I don’t know – six months ago? Yeah. 

My little bits of DIY things have been floating around everywhere up till now. I’ve kept some in tackle boxes:

Which is actually a great solution if you only need a nail or screw occasionally. They aren’t big enough to hold the number of pieces I have though.

Mama needed something bigger and better. This thing is amaaaaazing:

I sat down and sorted everything and was in absolute heaven. I’m not kidding, I kept saying “This is amazing” out loud every few minutes. I would worry I was running out of little drawers and then I’d realize I had a ton more and I’d say “This is amazing!” again. I’d find random little things that I just had a few of and there would be a spot just for them. It was a beautiful time.

It was made even better by my BFF the label maker:

I mean, this is a must. All that organization is worthless if you’re going to have to pull out eleventy billion drawers to find one little thing.

I rediscovered all kinds of little doodads that I love. Tons of my favorite anchors that I didn’t realize I had:

You just screw them in instead of drilling a hole in the wall first – so easy! And those jobbies on the right are great for corralling cords behind furniture. Cause you know how much I hate cords.

It was GLORIOUS! Whoo hoo! Now I just need to decide where I’m going to keep my little organizer – you can hang it so I’m thinking maybe in our utility closet. That way I don’t have to go out to the garage for every little thing.

I tell you what – a little decluttering and organization makes a girl feel good! I say it all the time but even focusing on small areas will make you feel so accomplished. If the clutter is overwhelming in your house set your sights on one problem area at a time. Set the timer if you need to and just go after it in little bits so you don’t get frustrated.

What’s your worst problem area? Areas? Overall our house stays clean and picked up…most of the time. But there are spots that I let get out of control way too often.

My Monica closet

It’s true. I have one. I didn’t used to have one -- it starts so innocently. Oh, people are coming over, I’ll just throw this bag in the closet! Oh, so and so is stopping by? I’ll just throw this thing in the closet. Oh we’re hosting dinner? I’ll just throw ALL THE THINGS in the closet.

The renovation didn’t help – but it brought it to a point where nothing else would fit in there (dangit!) so I had to address it. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’m in a serious fall nesting mode right now too – all I want to do is clean, decrapify, meal plan, bake, all that goodness. None of it is really happening but the desire is there. ;)

We could still hang coats in the coat closet and we could still shut the door so that’s something, right?:

I knew it was getting bad when things would creep out from under the door and I’d desperately cram them back in with my feet.

Usually the vacuum lives in there but it hasn’t been put away for approximately six months. Apparently lots of people came over in that time. ;)

I’ve been so focused on finishing up stuff in the family room that I have neglected all the CRAP that has been piling up around our house. The other day I seriously couldn’t handle it any longer. Out it all came from the closet:

I’ve told you for years that I’m a bagger. It gives me great joy to throw all the I-have-NO-idea-what-to-do-with-you stuff in a bag. It makes me feel organized when I’m not. And then one day when I can’t take it anymore I clean out the bag. Probably not the best organizational process ever but it’s how I do. I’ve come to embrace it.

But listen, this time I let it go waaaaay to long. So I sat down in front of that pile and started the process of sorting. If I don’t know what to do with it immediately when I touch it, it goes into a deal with you later pile. Of course that’s the biggest one:

The others were toys/kid stuff, recycling, file, put away, donate, decorative stuff to put in the storage room and a teeny tiny pile of stuff for the husband to deal with. Of course his pile has the least amount of stuff in it. Of. course.

Here’s the pile I was left with:

This is the pile that makes my brain hurt when I look at it.

Seriously, what are these??:

They’re trash now, that’s what they are. I used to keep every little gadget, afraid I’d need it later. I don’t anymore.

I made it through most of that last pile pretty easily – it’s when I got to this last bit that I stood there for a good five minutes just staring at all of it:

CORDS. Bleh, you know I hate them. Gah. And the Christmas tree cord was in there too – I might as well just leave it out at this point.

But I got through it. It’s all put away and one cluttered, messy spot is clean! The vacuum is now back in it’s home:

I even wrapped up the cord instead of hanging it from the top of the vacuum – you KNOW I’m feeling accomplished when that happens!

And now things don’t fall out when we open the door!:

I’m serious – I feel like I could conquer the world right now. I almost pulled the cookbooks out and started the meal planning. Almost. First I need to get rid of some more crap.

Spots like this can be daunting – I find that if I make sure I have the time to address it and pile things I can get through it a lot faster. It completely overwhelms me to pull individual items out and then put them away one by one. This was a step in the right direction – now to get that fireplace and the rest of the family room done!! Thanks for all your comments on that by the way!

Do you have a Monica closet? (If you never watched Friends you may not know what that is.) Or a Monica room perhaps? I’ve had those too. ;)

 

P.S. To see how I use the shoe cubbies for non-shoe storage and what those big hooks are, check out this post.

The best things I’ve ever done

Hello my friends! Our recent family room renovation has had me thinking lately…about the things that I’ve done in our house that have made the biggest difference. Some are little that only cost a few bucks. Some are bigger, but all are projects that I look at every time I walk by them and say “I’m so glad I did that.”

There are a lot of them, but these are my favorites. :)

This one is just “looks pretty” item but it was so easy and cheap! Last year I added some $10 hardware to the garage door to make it look more like a custom carriage door and less like the basic one that it is. I LOVE how it looks every time we pull up to our house:

It’s such a little thing but it makes me so happy. They’ve held up well too – no rusting at all. I’ve heard these kits went up in cost a bit but I believe they’re still under $30 – not too bad.

One that wasn’t so cheap but was still cheaper than paying someone were the DIY bookcases in our dining room. They are the first thing you see when you walk in our house and they make a BIG impact:

Our plan all along was to make this less of a dining room and more of a lounging space – but I’m playing with the idea of a larger table again. We’ll see. I’m SO proud of these built ins – not only because they’re pretty but because they are a perfect functional solution for us. The added serving ware storage is an extra bonus.

Another cheap and easy project that I am SO glad I did – adding some privacy to our bathroom window:

It took months before I stopped ducking when I walked by it at night, but now we’re used to it and I LOVE that it offers privacy but still lets the light in. And it was just a few bucks! I thought I not being able to see outside might bug me, but it doesn’t at all.

Of course a BIG one, the project that got me thinking about all of these – the removal of the wall between our family room and office. Oh that was a happy day!:

It’s come a long way since this photo but this shows where the walls were. From the very first day all I could think of was that it should have always been like this – and I knew it was the right decision. This project is the most expensive of all I’m mentioning here, but it’s nothing compared to the estimates we got to add on to the house. (And it was a whole lot less mess too.) You can follow along with the progress on this room here.

Years ago I wanted to brighten up our kitchen and I started by covering the black outdated tiles on our backsplash with white beadboard. It made a HUGE difference in this room:

Yes, someday I will paint the cabinets, but in the meantime I can’t believe the difference it made in this space. All for less than $50 if I remember correctly. And yes, it’s held up incredibly well, I have no complaints! As long as it’s painted in a glossy white paint that you can wipe up easily there shouldn’t be any water or mess issues.

Another big project was our master closet storage that I created out of kitchen cabinets:

Our closet was truly the thorn in my side for years and years – an utter disaster area and I was so fed up with it. I wanted more storage but wanted it to be closed storage – not just shelves that I knew we would clutter up like before. The cabinets have worked BRILLIANTLY. Ugh, why didn’t I do it earlier?? I still have plans to add shelves in the corners for even more storage. Again, the cost of the cabinets was way, way less than a custom closet system.

And finally, I know I mention it a lot but ripping the carpet off our stairs was one of the BEST things I’ve done, both for looks and functionally:

It is SO much easier to clean wood stairs than carpet! Just last week we had a drink spill down the steps and it was so easy just to wipe it up. All I do is vacuum them once every week (or two!) because we have three cats and a dog and you do see the fluff balls after awhile. Many have worried about how slippery the wood stairs are and I can tell you without a doubt that our carpeted stairs were more slippery than these. We each slid down the carpeted stairs a few times – it hasn’t happened once with the wood (knock on wood!!). This is just the case for our home, but I still think in general it’s easier to slip on that curved edge of carpet.

Because we had real wood under our carpet this project cost me less than $50 – I just needed some wood for the landing, stain and supplies. It was one of the cheapest projects but also one that was a lot of work. Pulling up the carpet and tack strips was no joke – but so worth it in the end!

There you go – my short list of the things that have made the biggest difference in our home, both in appearance and function. Function is HUGE for me – if it’s not going to work well for our family I’m not going to do it no matter how pretty it is.

Are there things you’ve done to your home that you think made a big difference? Things you want to do that you know you would love?

Master closet reveal!

Well I’m SO excited to share this with you, finally! As you know, I’ve been working on our master closet for a couple months now. The first step was purging – and while I was working on that I was contacted by the folks at Sherwin-Williams about their National Painting Week campaign. I was totally up for it, but then they told me my color was purple.

Purple wasn’t going to happen in this house – I’m the only girl here (if you don’t count one of the cats). So I was about to decline, but then I thought about it a bit more…and thought maybe I could paint our closet purple. Hmmm...

I initially think of a little girl’s room when I think of that color (my Dad painted my walls a lovely lilac when I was a kid), but the more I thought about it the more I realized it could go quite sophisticated.
So I was on a mission to make purple work. My biggest criteria when picking out the color was that it didn’t scream GIRL. This is my husband’s closet too. So I tried to go with a gray purple instead of a pinky purple, if that makes any sense.

I’m not sure if I’ve shown you this before photo yet – let me assure you that this was after I had cleaned up. Imagine this, but ten times worse, and oh yeah…you couldn’t see the floor:

The first step was to tear out the baseboards and install the cabinets for the new storage system. I shared that update with you here. Yes, I used kitchen cabinets for this project. Just call me the crazy cabinet lady – all I can do is agree with you.

I went with those for a few reasons – they were cheap (at least cheaper than a regular closet system), they were already built (so no assembly required) and they were deep – 24 inches to be exact. But the biggest reason was that they had drawers and doors I could close.

I decided on my colors and the plan started to come together:

I went with Spatial White on the cabinets and Exclusive Plum on the walls. The plum color is actually the Sherwin-Williams color of the year – I’m on trend and didn’t even know it. :)

I went with the ProClassic paint for the cabinets because I’ve had such good luck with it:

I did a semi-gloss finish and it covered great as always. One coat of primer and two coats of Spatial White later and they were done:

The finish is great – I didn’t even use a brush to paint the cabinet doors this time. Just rolled it into the crevices and the paint leveled out wonderfully. I added simple $2 handles to each cabinet when it was dry.

So for the walls I wanted to go with something that would be very forgiving. Over the years I’ve moved the wire shelves all over the place in there so there were a TON of holes. We stopped counting at 100, seriously. And they were the big honkin’ ones from the closet system anchors too.

The Cashmere paint is supposed to cover well and hide imperfections on the wall:

My husband was out of town (funny how that always happens) so my sister came over and we knocked the closet out in a few hours:

That’s me in my post-Zumba glory, don’t be jealous.

I’ve done this enough now that I’m pretty good at cutting in on the ceiling and around trim, but cutting in horizontally on the baseboards is still tricky. (I have to contort myself just so.) So it was helpful that I removed the base:

After a few more small projects that I’ll go over soon, the room finally came together. I absolutely, positively LOVE it:
I can't even believe it’s the same room. I cannot express to you how much better it functions.

My mess up when measuring for the cabinets actually worked out quite well. Now that middle section is a great little vanity area:

I raised that middle cabinet off the ground to match the other ones so I ended up with a stool height countertop. That cabinet holds off season shoes and my heels that I rarely wear – so I don’t mind that I’ll have to move the chair to get to them since it will be so infrequent.

How fun is this?:

The plum color is SO beautiful! I'm so excited I got purple now. :) It definitely changes in different light. The vanity area wall looks a little lighter than the other walls.

Here’s one side of the closet ready for paint – see all the holes?:

Let me tell you how fun THAT was, filling all of those!

Here it is again with the paint AND the new light:

The new light fixture makes a HUGE difference in here. It's hard to tell in the before pic, but the old fixture just lit up three areas in the room, not the whole room overall.

It’s actually so bright I had to put it on a dimmer:

On dark winter mornings it will be nice to have soft light in here. I have another plan for even more light in here, stay tuned for that. :)

I’m so thrilled with this space but the to do list is not done. I still need to build the shelves on each side above the drawers --they’ll give us even more storage. I’m making the tall units even more storage-friendly with some more shelves and pull out drawers. And I hope to replace the wire shelving for our clothes someday too.

But for now, we’re enjoying a space that functions a MILLION times better than it used to, and it’s pretty. When this room was a dysfunctional mess I used to dread walking into it every morning. It’s amazing what it does for your day when the closet it organized and stays that way:

You can see the necklace organizer that hangs on the wall to the right here. I made that after I took these pics. :)

My husband has thanked me no less than ten times for working on this room -- it really has made a big difference for us. Here's another reminder of the before:

And the same space afterwards, with a some plum paint and storage:

It has truly changed our days, I can’t believe the difference some organization makes! I SO love how it turned out. Kitchen cabinets -- I heart you. I’ll share more details and additional progress soon!

For now, check out the other "purple" bloggers today -- a girl's bedroom at Curbly and a chair redo at Recycle Consign and Design. You can see all of the fabulous projects of various colors at the Sherwin-Williams page -- SWPaintingWeek.com.

Have a GREAT weekend! The weather is supposed to be fantastic here!

This post was sponsored by Sherwin-Williams and I was compensated for this post. All opinions and words are my own. 

DIY necklace organizer

Hello all! First of all, thanks so much for all of the lovely comments on our new moody wall in the bedroom! I really appreciate you taking the time to comment, it means a lot!

Our spring break is coming to a close and we were able to get away to NYC for a couple days with the whole family -- it was wonderful. It’s been more than two years since we’ve been there so it was GREAT to get back to the city that we love.

So I’m back with a quick project for the closet! This room has actually been done (well, close to done) for over a month now – I worked my tail off to get it ready when Sherwin-Williams asked if I wanted to be involved in their National Painting Week campaign. How fun, YES I did! So I’ll be sharing the progress in this room next week, along with a bunch of other fantastic bloggers.

But for now I’m offering a sneak peek in the form of a little organizing project for the room. This project actually serves two purposes. One is to organize my necklaces, another is to hide one of the eye sores in the room:

We have two access panels in here, and I’m sure many of you have these in your closet too. I could have cared less about them for years, but now that the room is coming together so well I want to hide them somehow. I have a plan for the other one as well. :)

This one is now hidden and I love how it turned out. I started with scrap wood (yes, I have a lot of this stuff – this is why my garage becomes such a mess!) and some side pieces:

The outside trim is the same mdf I’ve used in our mud room. This was an extra piece I was going to return, glad I hadn’t done that yet. :)

I put this together just like I did the DIY pet food tray I showed you a few weeks ago – but since I was using it the opposite way I needed to fill in between the trim and the wood on the back:

I sanded it all down and you can see what I mean by the opposite way here:

If you would flip this over it would be a tray. I was using the back of it.

Next up – putting some of the many decorative knobs I have to use. I shared how to use these for more than just furniture here. When I wrote that post I realized I had quite a few of the same crystal knobs from a dresser years ago and came up with this idea to put them to use.

I used the double ended screws I showed you in that post and when I tried it out I realized the screw would be a bit too long:

The end of it was going to go into the wall, so I had to figure out a way to make it shorter, without cutting it down. I got a thick dowel rod and cut it down into small pieces, then drilled a hole down the middle:

Not going to lie – it was kind of a pain to do. :)

But it worked!:

As you can see I painted them the same color as the panel and the walls (at first I painted it a lighter color but I quickly realized I wanted it to melt into the wall).

I measured out where I wanted them, drilled a pilot hole, then installed the pointy end of the double ended screw into the panel.

I knew it would be functional, but I was a little surprised at how much I loved it!:

This is just for my longer necklaces – I have the shorter ones on a stand alone organizer you’ll see next week.

There’s still so much I’d like to do in this room, but it’s come SO far! I can’t wait to show you everything next Friday! But for now this bit of organization is a little taste of what’s to come:

I’m so excited to share it with you!

I had most of the items for this project, but I did have to get the dowel rod. You could also just screw the knobs into wall – it would work just as well and would cut down on cost a little. And you certainly don’t need to use all the same knobs either – mixing them up would be fun. Remember you can spray paint old knobs in fun colors as well.

You’ll see the final reveal next week when we all share our Sherwin-Williams National Painting Week projects! Have a great weekend!