A Niche to Find by Handkerchief Gal: Organizing

Showing posts with label Organizing. Show all posts

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Posting like there’s no tomorrow!

Well, when I decided to get back into EBay sales after my time off I jumped in with both feet!

I posted around 25 items tomorrow and today reorganized my storage system. We live in a 1400 square foot home, 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths and no place for EBay stuff!

This might be a good thing because it keeps me in check…sort of. Kinda. Not really at all.

Our spare room is our catch all for…well, everything. It is my husband’s office/ spare room/ coat closet and the-room-with-the-closet-I-keep-my-vacuum in.

My office is in the master bedroom where I keep the whole room in a natural disaster state. But I’m trying to figure out a way to fix that.

Here’s what I did. I went dumpster diving.

Ok, I didn’t QUITE look like that but I needed boxes. Boxes that were uniform size. And free. Definitely free. Did you know that behind many stores they have these dumpsters for ONLY cardboard. I guess they recycle them. I HOPE they recycle them. Because that would mean I’m pulling them out of the dumpster to use them for what they were put in the dumpster for in the first place! I think.

I found a bunch of boxes all the same size. And after filling up a couple of them with unsellable junk I started organizing the sellable stuff. First I have a 18 gallon tote for the stuff not listed. That is in my office. In our spare room/ office/vacuum/coat closet room I have this behind the multipurpose closet door:

Then I put the rest in these:

First off: I’ve never been in Ulta. But I have been in their cardboard dumpster several times.

Now, I know you are probably thinking, Uk! I wouldn’t want that in my house! Well, This is better than having them strewn all over or shoved in a closet like they were. Now when something sells I can just pull out which box it is in and stick it in the crate on top. (Who wants to bet the next thing that sells is pants? All the way on the bottom. Yea, haven’t figured out everything yet!)

Now I still don’t know what to do with the stuff that doesn’t sell. I guess I need to have a box for the its-just-not-selling-and-needs-to-get-out-of-my-house stuff. I’ll work on that. Maybe it will just all sell and I don’t have to worry about it.

Also I have a rubber tote of all the summer stuff I need to probably put in boxes til it is in season. But I’m pretty much out of boxes right now. I didn’t set my sites high enough I guess.

On another note I can’t decide if this looks like I sell a lot or very little on Ebay. I guess it depends on how full those boxes are. Hmmm…

If you have a way to organize your Ebay stuff or anything you sell online let me know! I’d love ideas so if this doesn’t work out I have a back up plan!

I’d love to have an EBAY ROOM like Kelly with My Dear Trash.

Maybe someday!!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

$ Baskets or Free Boxes?

I see all these cute post where they use baskets and turn a closet of terror into a a true beauty. And organized system but yet one where you can still toss things in when you are in a jam. The baskets just make it look awesome!

The problem is many of those basket easily run $10 each. Now I’m not sure about many things in life, but I do know that if I looked in my closet and saw $80 worth of baskets, that would far out way the organization! So…what I needed to do was fake it!

I have a great linen closet, actually it is the only closet I have that isn’t in a room. I don’t have a coat closet but we make due. I found some boxes a while back and after covering them I tried this cute idea with the clothes pins. I thought it would be great cuz I could move the signs if I ever changed my mind or wanted them somewhere else.

Great idea, not constructed for my house. Within an hour 1 clothes pin was in half and the sign was lost. This one above held up but I knew it’s death was eminent!

So I needed a new idea. While searching for donation boxes, (Did you know that they have cardboard dumpsters? Just boxes! Fabulous) I found some boxes that were the perfect size for my closet so I figured I’d try again!

I forgot a key is to use very little glue or modge podge as I was doing here. So my paper wrinkled. Live and learn. I’ll fix it later…maybe when I don’t have 3 kids under the age of four!

I used these brackets to fasten the 3x5 cards I printed onto cardstock.

I was happy with the outcome!

For these I just folded the top part of the box inside. Seems to work just fine but I suppose you could cut it off. I was just worried about rough edges.

I still have some tweaking to do but thought I would post this and then get out of my PJ first! LOL!

Thursday, September 15, 2011

While I was sleeping…

This is how I woke up feeling on Wednesday morning…around 2am nonetheless.

So the next day my hubby, for the FIRST TIME EVER! Took the day off to stay home and take care of the kids. Well he did far more than just that!

To start he put me to bed then set up his saw.

Then he took some of these from our attic:

And this space behind the door to the kids room":

And used these kind of tools:

And turned it into this!!!

Amazing huh?

This is what our kid’s books looked like before! Needless to say we don’t have a ton of space in our house so behind the door was the perfect bookshelf!

Now, there are a few things I believe we would do different next time. The shelves are perfect in size but they really need a 1x3 or 1x4 as the front part so they don’t fall off the shelf easily. Every time my daughter grabs a book from the back the all fall off. But the kids are learning and have started looking at all their books now that they don’t have to dig though that bin to get to them! Yay!

Thank you hubby! For this and for feeding the kids and I and making me sleep and for the prayers and all the clean up of everything! You are so awesome!

Monday, June 13, 2011

Update! The finished kid’s bunk beds!

The quilts are done! Yay! My grandmother whipped them out in like a week!
Here is where the bunk beds came into my possession for a mere $15. (I already had the mattress)
And Here is where they made their first debut a few weeks later.
Below is a picture of them with the dresser I got for free on Craigslist and painted leaving myself enough leftover paint to do the beds when I found them a few months later.

And now here it is all done with the quilts.

Yes! Isn’t it awesome! I love the handkerchief! But that isn’t all!

They are reversible! I know! Custom made and reversible! I’m so blessed!

Check out the way she quilted it. With squiggles! So fun!

Someday I might make pillows for the beds but right now I’m done. Also might make a bed skirt too.

Better yet, my Grandma used mostly scraps for the patriotic side! She made a bunch of “flag” quilts a few years back and had scraps from them. I love it!

Linking up to:

Friday, June 3, 2011

Bunk Beds: Before and After!

Remember those bunk bed I picked up for $15 at a garage sale?

Well, after my daughter helped unload (she did all the planks by herself!)

You know how many trips that was to and from the van?

Here is her little pile! Unorganized but done all by herself. I was one proud mama!

Well after unloading I had to start on the project right away. If you don’t start, it makes it impossible to finish right?

I started by sanding down the pieces. Even with an electric sander this took a while. I decided I should test it to see if I need to sand down every piece or if I could just paint over it.

The paint seemed to do fine over the stain so I went with it. The stain was chipped and needed redone and I figured painting it would be the fastest and easiest ( I already had the paint). It took about 6 days to paint, repaint, and touch up the bed. But was very rewarding.

Here is the bed my son has been sleeping on. It is actually the top of a bunk bed, but this is the only part we have of it. We love this bed. With the side rails on it he went from sleeping in a pack ‘n play to this bed. Since then I added another mattress (that is why it is so high) because I needed somewhere to store it until we got bunk beds put in.

Well, with just a few weeks until the baby comes it was time for this bed to go to storage until our little one can use it.

So after clearing out, sweeping, vacuuming (we haven’t moved the bed in a while) the bed was ready to be installed. My hubby was home this day and boy was I glad!

First off see this piece? For the record these pieces not only fall out but are not sold at your regular hardware store! The bed was missing about 5 of them so off to Lowes we went.

The husband is brilliant! He found these pieces…

And got them to work. And they are permanent…no falling out on these babies!

I don’t have matching quilts yet, but they are going to be awesome when they are done!

See those two railing that connect to the ladder. Those were broken when I bought the bunk beds. They said the ladder was busted but it was just those rails. The ladder was fine. We replaced the rails with slightly larger boards ( 4x1’s instead of 3x1’s) but they blend in nicely.

On of the rails that was busted will work for the bottom bunk, so my two year old doesn’t roll off. Hubby thinks of everything!

I love that the ladder doesn’t stick out into the room. We don’t have a ton of space so this is very nice!

The possibilities for these beds is endless, but I doubt black will be their final color. I might separate them someday and do one white for my daughter’s room, or strip and re-stain them a nicer wood stain.

But right now they match the dresser I refinished here. Remember what it used to look like?

Yikes! But it was free!

So the room is still a work in progress but here is a panorama shot so you can see the dresser and the bed. Amazing how paint can make the two things match!

(See that little kitchen in the corner? A friend of ours had a cabinet shop and when he closed it down he used scrap pieces to make these and gave us one. It has real Formica on the top and a real (not hooked up) faucet. The cabinets that make the fridge and under the stove are actually cabinets that go over your stove top or fridge! Amazing and cute huh? And built to last a lifetime!)
Future plans:

Work on reversible matching quilts
Add side board so bottom bunk is roll-off proof.
Add gutter bookshelves to walls.

Linking up to:

Friday, May 13, 2011

Laundry room Touch up- Stain remover list

I saw this posting from i heart organizing and got inspired by the her stain chart that she got from Martha Stewart and framed to add to her laundry room.

I have a very small laundry room but I thought turning a stain chart into a wall hanging would be a nice touch!
I got rid of all our frames lately so I only had one to use for this. I thought about waiting until garage selling tomorrow and seeing what I could find but, well, the kids were down for a nap and it was good timing. Sometimes waiting means not getting it done.
I first had to find the right background for my frame. I plan on repainting the laundry room in either a orange or yellow or maybe green…not sure yet. But I figured I can change the color of the background paper there. These were some of my options. It is a whole pile of 12x12 paper I found in someone’s trash. Yes. Can you believe it?

I made my selection and printed off the stain chart (which I adapted for my use by removing some cleaning stains that I never deal with). I also used a fun font.

I glued it to the deco paper and then decided that since my frame is rather thin and delicate I should add something. I opened up my ribbons and found a modest yellow.

I just used stick glue to glue the paper as well as the ribbon on to the background.

It needed a touch more so I pulled out my buttons. I got the little jar of these from the above pictures at Michael’s store for $1. Every size green button imaginable!

I used glue spots that I had on hand and added the buttons to the corners.

Ta-da! It actually fit in the frame with the glass, Which I wanted to remain due to the humidity pressures in that room. Maybe someday I will make this and laminate it before adding the buttons.