Great DeCluttering Ideas!

Hi Friends! I just looked at this great link from BHG and wanted to share it with you! Have a fantabulous time creating your beautiful & organized living spaces!

http://www.bhg.com/decorating/storage/organization-basics/declutter/?sssdmh=dm17.637874&esrc=nwdc121912

Then I looked over at my desk with a huge pile of papers that hadn't been sorted (or tossed) for a few months. Yikes! So, this inspired me to deal with it.

 This is a magnet board that we made a couple of years ago. Two metal tins hang on the glass knobs.

The smaller one holds all of my business cards. 

There are lots of special notes, cards, & pictures on this board. 

~*~Lynda~*~

Glass Etching PART 2: Personal/Practical Wedding Gift

I enjoyed my first try at glass etching and decided to get brave and do a whole set of Pyrex dishes to give as a wedding gift. I etched their last name and I love how it looks. I assume that everyone loves Pyrex dishes like I do, which may not be accurate, but no one can deny that they are very useful, practical and long-lasting. Having their name permanently etched into the glass will make sure their dishes never get mixed up with anyone else's at social gatherings and it just looks sleek in my opinion. 

I followed the same simple steps as in THIS project. 

~ Chelsea ~

Simple Shelf

My little girl's room was starting to look more like a playroom than a bedroom. I wasn't liking how all the toys were starting to be an organized mess on one side of the room. Even after several clear-outs and putting many toys away for future use, it still was too cluttery for my taste. 

My mom got this little cabinet and my dad added some plywood for the shelves. They offered it to me and I knew it was the organization solution I was looking for. 

The shelves were both raw and ugly and the inside of the cabinet was several colors of fake wood. I was ok with the color of the outside, so I decided to save money and time and just paint the inside white. I taped it off and painted a few coats of white paint and I love the result. 

I didn't take a before picture, but here's an in-the-process photo:

And here it is completed and in her closet for organized and hide-able storage for her toys. 

Such a simple shelf with a few improvements. 

~ Chelsea ~

Attacking the Laundry Room

I don't know about you, but I find laundry to be one of the most challenging chores to keep up on. I decided I really needed to do myself a favor and make it a little smoother by organizing  my oh-so-messy laundry room. Before it had basically been a catch-all room with things that belonged in every other room of the house. It's a room we also use for home maintenance items such as light bulbs, but we could never find what we needed and would end up buying more. It was a mess and because of this, my laundry life was harder. One of the worst issues I had was not having proper places for the things. For an example, I would sometimes find that a wet laundry item (like a rag or washcloth) had been thrown in with all of our clothes making them damp, dingy, and stinky. Damp and dingy is bad, but I absolutely despise stinky. I knew I needed to put things into categories that worked and I especially needed a spot designated for wet laundry. So that is what I did.
-First I figured out what needed to go in other rooms and put those items away.
-Second I took what I wanted to keep in the laundry room and put them into categories
-Third I hit up my local dollar store and bought enough buckets to have one for each category
-Then I made labels so that the other people in my home could follow my organizational plan, thus maintaining the order I worked so hard to create
-After that, I put the items in the appropriate buckets and arranged them with items I use most often in the most convenient places.
-Lastly, I cleared larger clutter by mounting things such as the ironing board and brooms/mops onto the walls and cleaned my appliances and floor really well.
I love having an organized laundry room. I still don't always keep up on laundry, but it is definitely less discouraging with a clean and orderly place to work.

<3 Crystal

Before:

After:

Craft Niche

My parents (Lynda being one of them) are amazing for several reasons. My mom sees potential in anything and knows how to make it beautiful and functional and my dad knows how to plan, implement and create. The combination produces amazing results, such as this craft niche that they gifted to me for my last birthday.

This is what they created with a hutch, a free desk, a chair and a little extra wood for shelves and the desk top (and paint and a lot of time and work). The hutch and shelves are attached to the wall and provide so much organization space.

My mom painted and distressed all the pieces prior to bringing them over to our house. Then just a little touch-up was needed after it was all put together.

For storage organization, we painted some large aluminum cans white and covered them with some pretty paper for an additional accent of color and coordination. We glued bias tape around the top edge to cover up any sharp edge there and to make it look nice.

Here is my wonderful space more recently, filled with all the things I love to have around me when I am being crafty. I love the time I spend in my organized craft niche.


~ Chelsea ~