When we moved from our apartment to our home, we more than doubled the square footage. The trade off was closet space. We have one major closet, the one in the master bedroom. It’s huge. So huge, in fact, that I fit a desk in it and now have a crafting nook. A desk. In the closet. Along the narrow wall. Yet we have no entryway closet, no linen closet, no mud room storage. It’s a good thing we live in a temperate climate because our coat closet is barely wide enough for a door.

My mission right now is to find a way to organize everything so it doesn’t look like a preschool exploded in our home. Because, quite frankly, that’s a generous description of our home.

Getting rid of some media clutter

First up, is getting rid of those DVDs. Right now I have a 2 ft, by 3 ft by 1 ft stack of DVDs in the entrance way. I’m leaning towards Vudu’s DVD to Digital service. Basically you prove you own the DVD, and they sell you a digital copy for cheap. We have, by my estimate, around 300 DVDs. We’re unlikely to ever watch them, but I hate to part with things that are still functional, especially those still in the shrink wrap.

Yes, I realize I’m being somewhat irrational. Or at least not frugal. Those DVDs are a sunk cost, and it’s silly to throw more money at the problem, but it will make me feel better and I can donate the physical copies. I’ve convinced myself that by converting it to digital we’ll be more likely to actually watch them, and they’ll take up less space.

Speaking of DVDs, do you know it’s 2016 and Domingo and I still don’t own a device capable of playing a BluRay? We learned that (and fixed that) this weekend.

Those shoes!

Shoes. Shoes all over the floor. And not just our current ones but the ones Nicole & Alexis just grew out of. No entrance way closet means no shoe rack. This is another case of large space, no storage. We have a large enough wall that we can fit a storage bench.

I’d like to find something comfortable to sit on while taking off your shoes that has storage to hold said shoes. This isn’t the best solution, as we usually come in through the garage and not the entrance way, but it’ll beat leaving shoes strewn about the floor.

Toys, Toys and More Toys!

Finally we need to come up with a storage idea for the toys. What I really need is a way to easily separate and store the toys for both kids. There have been a few toys that Alexis would have enjoyed, but were buried and not unearthed until she had out grown them. We’re also now collecting quite a few sets of toys with multiple parts, (e.g. building blocks, puzzles, magnets, etc), which work best when you know where all the parts are. I had been using individual draw string bags, but they become difficult to see through and we tend to forget about some beloved toys that way. I suspect a toy purge is in order.

Lily’s death is hitting me harder than I anticipated. It was easy enough to stay distracted over the weekend, but now that I’m home alone on maternity leave I keep thinking about my kitty. In an effort to stay distracted, I’m throwing myself into my nesting projects.

Over the weekend Nicole brought the phone from her play kitchen to me complaining that it was “broken”! The phone was still working, but the sound had faded. I expected the batteries were nearly drained from frequent use. Turns out they were starting to corrode! Back in our costco days we had stocked up on what seemed like a life time supply of batteries. That was over half a decade ago. The ones in the phone were just passing the expiration date. Thankfully I had removed the batteries from all of Nicole’s baby toys since inactivity is the fastest path to corrosion. But her current toys? I knew we had used batteries from those same costco giant packs, and now viewed them as ticking corrosion time bombs. So today I opened up every single battery powered toy to check. Fortunately no other batteries were starting to corrode, but I did through out some near expired ones. I know, so not frugal of me. Better than than lose the toy, though.

Since I didn’t want to go through this exercise every year, I decided to make a chart.

Now I know approximately how many batteries are close to expiring. I can sort by date & type to get a sense of how many batteries I’ll need to stock my box with. Or at least a minimum count. I still expect that most batteries will be drained long before they reach their expiration.

My quest to organize has been temporarily stalled due to insufficient number of storage bins. I like to color coordinate our tins to make it easier to find things. What I really need is another Christmas stuff tin and fall tin so I need to wait for the fall & winter colors to come out. Curse my love of the season! So I’ve moved on to other ways I can improve my organization, besides just filing stuff away in plastic containers.

Since a move is around the corner, the first thing I wanted to do was make sure things that are “stored away” are also protected and won’t get damaged in the shuffle.

My PhD diploma is still in the cardboard envelope it was mailed to me in. The 4 x 6 proofs from our wedding are in a shoe box that were previously kept in the garage. (Fortunately the digital copies are safety backed up in the cloud. I protect my data.) These nondescript storage locations are easy to mistake as housing something less important, and then handled with less care. I forgot about the shoe box full of wedding photos during the initial move. Domingo figured an old shoe box in the garage couldn’t possibly have anything important, so it was one of the last things he looked at. It could have easily been a casualty of the move.

I ordered a blue & gold (our wedding colors) photo album to get those proofs our of the shoe box, and a document picture frame for my degree. I figure a nice frame will protect it, even if it never makes it to my wall. I’ll put the the ‘proof album’ on the entrance way console next to the Nicole’s baby book and the wedding album I had printed. The degree will still probably go into a storage box, but at least the frame will keep it protected. Now it will also be easier to find, should I ever choose to hang it on my wall.

My diploma in a floating frame. Definitely happy with this purchase, even if the diploma never makes it out of the box!

On my list was also tackling fix some crude patches I’ve been neglecting.

I’ve keep the pocket change from our travels abroad as an inexpensive souvenir. A few years ago I put them in a 3 ring binder. The trouble is I’ve never collected coins before, so it didn’t occur to me that the little plastic sleeves weren’t enough. One needs the cardboard coin holders called flips to keep the coins from sliding out. (Actually I’ve gotten around this issue the past couple years by scotch tapping the plastic sleeves shuts. Shhh! Don’t tell). I decided it was high time I get those handy coin flips.

Quasi-sorted. If I had the energy I would have each page be a different country. Oh well, that can be another task.

Lastly I wanted to deal with my bead collection. Back in the day one of the things I’d do was peruse inspiration websites, like Fusion Beads that would let me buy in piecemeal. I’d fine something like this, and buy exactly the number of beads I needed. Alas, I had more ambition that time, and I haven’t gotten around to all those projects. It doesn’t make sense to put four 6mm azure bicone beads in a box by themselves. I’ll run out of space! So I decided to get larger favor tins for these still unstarted projects. Maybe some day I’ll find the time to actually tackle them!

ETA: Okay, scratch that. The “wedding proof album” is going in a box. It’s too tall for our console, which should have been obvious to me. Three 4x6s would mean the album has to be at least 12 inches tall. The shelves on the console are not tall enough.