HTCI Overview

After going through and organizing our entire house, I ended up with quite the pile of things to get rid of.

Not long after I finished my organizing, my neighbor stopped by to invite me to join the thrift sale she was going to have the last weekend in May.  Awesome!  It turned out to be the best thrift sale experience of my life.  I priced all of my stuff.  There were a few bigger items, but most things were marked around the $0.25 - .50 range.  I brought all my stuff over to her house a couple of days before the sale.  All I did was drop my boxes off and she set everything up.  She's really particular about how her sale is run, so she wanted to do it all herself.  Fine with me.  I went over the first morning of the sale to help run things.  I stayed for about 2 hours and didn't feel like much of a help as I had both girls with me, but we had fun.  And that's all I did.  I went back the day after the sale and collected my unsold items.  We dropped off two pickup beds full of stuff and brought home one big box plus a few other items.  We made $130.00 too.  So I got paid to get rid of my junk and hardly had to do anything.  It feels so good to have all of that stuff gone. The only problem is that I have another pile started already. 

At any rate, it feels so great to have my entire house organized.  If I need to quickly pick up the house for an occasion, I know where everything goes.  If Kevin asks me where something is, I usually know right where to find it.  Of course the organizer in me is constantly looking for areas that need improvement, but for the most part, my home is functioning smoothly because of all the organizing I did.

Area #25: Office & Storage Cupboards

 You know the saying, "Saving the best for last."  Well, I saved the worst for last.  I knew from the beginning that the office and storage cupboards would take the most time to organize.  It's been fun going through everything, it has just taken a lot longer than I even anticipated.  This was another area where things just got stashed when we moved in and never gotten back to. I'll go through each little area and do before and after pictures.  I'll start with the storage shelves that are also in our office.  The nice part about these shelves is that they have doors that close, so it doesn't seem to clutter up the office even though there's a bunch of things stored here that aren't even remotely office related.  The first set of shelves transformation:

I organized the paints into three groups: primers, paints, and stains.  This way it's super easy to look for the type of paint you need. All of the spray paint is in a box, drywall supplies in a box, and anything tile related (installing, cleaning, grout etc.) is together too. 

To the right of these shelves, is an open shelf area that I use for extra office supplies storage.  Before:

And After:

The last section of shelving to the right of this shelf also have doors on them.  I have Christmas decor up top (since I don't need to access it very often).  Paper and office supplies in the middle, and gun cases on the bottom.  Here's a look before.

I implemented a paper storage thing got at a thrift sale for $1 to separate some of the miscellaneous types of paper that we keep around, and limited this area to paper, envelopes, mailing labels, and hanging file supplies. This helps the area not to clutter up with other items that don't belong.

The next area is on top of our filing cabinets.  This section of horizontal space is my primo dumping spot for things coming in and out of the office.  Things that need to get filed, things that need to be entered into the computer, outgoing mail, bills, you name it.  Here's what my dumping spot had become:

I sorted, and filed, and ordered everything up.  I got another plastic paper sorting thing at another thrift sale for $0.50 and it is going to be awesome.  The top is for anything that needs to leave the office and go upstairs.  When I'm done in the office I can just grab everything in that slot and take it with me.  The middle section is for things to be filed in the business filing cabinet (lateral file), and the bottom section is for things to be filed in our personal filing cabinet.  Here's a look at it now:

 The last and most challenging area for me was the desk.  It's actually not even a desk.  It's my brother's old dining room table with all the leaves taken out.  There aren't any drawers for office supplies, so the table top tends to get cluttered very easily.  My paper recycling box was overflowing, and many random boxes had found their way under the table. 

After lots of throwing away, and sorting through papers and stacks of things, my 'desk' area is now a usable work station.  It's not perfect, and hopefully we can get a real desk someday soon, but until then it'll work for what we need.

It's hard to believe that my entire house is now finished.  I'll post my overall thoughts another time as this is getting long enough.  Now I can work on maintaining what I have set up.  I hope that by sharing my organizing adventure with you, I've spurred you on even a tiny bit to do some of the same in your own house. 

Area #23: Guest Bedroom/Storage

Our basement has a lot of unfinished area.  Until we get our third upstairs bedroom fixed up, we have a make-shift guest bedroom in the basement.  Basically it has a bed and a nightstand with a lamp, and that's it.  But, it works for people who need a place to stay for a night or two.  This room also has some very nice built in shelves.  I organized these shelves when we first moved in, and all they needed was a little straightening. Here are my shelves.  I think my favorite part about them is that totes fit perfectly along the bottom.  That helps make for neat and orderly storage.

And here's our "guest room".  Nothing fancy, but if you are ever in the area and need a place to stay, just drop on by.  Notice that I tucked the extra set of sheets right on the night stand so it's quick and easy to switch the sheets.

Area #24: Furnace Room

The furnace room is a 13.5' x 24.5' unfinished room that holds a lot more than just the furnace. There were two main spots that needed attention.  The rest of the room holds a bunch of cherry boards that are drying, and our freezer.  My first area is my food storage shelf.  This shelf holds canning jars (both full and empty), extra non-perishables, disposable plates/cups/silverware, and a few other random items.  Here it is before.

After we completely cleared out our garage at our old house, I found another shelf to this shelf.  I added that to better arrange things instead of stacking and stacking.  I also recently discovered that banana boxes are an awesome way to store empty canning jars.  20 jars fit snugly in each box.  The handles make it very easy to pull the box down or bring up a whole bunch for canning.  If you are interested in getting your hands on some of these awesome boxes, just let me know.  I usually end up with 2-3 each month from trips to the Bent and Dent.  Here's my shelf now.

My other area is directly across from this shelf.  It has been a dumping spot for everything from other rooms of the house that I didn't know where to put.  Here's what had collected so far:

I had been waiting for our set of 3 lockers to be brought down here from the garage to store winter clothes, hunting clothes, boots etc. in.  My wonderful husband and brother helped bring it down last week, which helped greatly in getting everything put in its place.  I didn't get a picture of the lockers, but now my corner looks like this:

I have a feeling that this little corner is going to continue to be susceptible to becoming a dumping spot.  I am going to try to fight the urge to dump things here and give them a home right away.  Easier said than done, but having a neat looking area is so nice I might be able to do it.

Area #21: Basement Bathroom

This bathroom has taken quite a bit of time and effort to clean up.  Just a few weeks ago I pulled on my rainboots and took some heavy duty cleaner to the shower, getting all the mildew washed off the walls and floor.  There are still a lot of hard water stains, but it is now clean and useable.

The main thing that this bathroom needs is, well, everything.  It has the cleaning spray I used, and one roll of toilet paper on the roll.  It needs backup supplies, cleaning supplies, towels, shower items, etc.  I did find a plunger to tuck in the corner, but the rest is on my 'to find' list.  The shelf on the wall above the toilet will be perfect to hold all of these items, I just need to buy them.  I'm hoping once again that thrift sales will pull through for me and provide the things we need.

Here's a look at this little basement bathroom.

 It's a cute little bathroom, and there's not a lot to it, but I'm excited for the day that we redo it and make it nice and new. 

Area #20: Craft Area

My craft area has been a disaster since the day we moved in.  I had boxes and totes full of craft supplies with no where to put them.  A couple months ago we got another shelf for our basement, so I was able to swap one we already had to start storing craft supplies.  So, my craft area was on it's way, but still needed a lot of help.  Here's my area before:

Because we are anti-microwave people, we keep our microwave in the basement.  That might not make much sense, but we only use it to soften butter and thaw out meat if I forget to plan ahead.  This happens maybe once a week so instead of cluttering up counter space, we keep it in the basement.  It used to sit on the floor which made it even more difficult to use.  Just last weekend I was at a thrift sale and found this perfect little table for only $2.  I had seen actual microwave carts at a sale too and they wanted $5 for a particle board stand.  This one is solid wood! It fits perfectly in the spot and is perfectly functional too. 

After some organizing and swapping of containers, my craft area now looks like this:

I'm still in the process of finding the right organizational tools for this area.  I know I need several different things, but I'm just waiting to find them (hopefully at thrift sales this summer).  I love how God provides for the needs of our family through thrift sales.  As I was taking these pictures, I was thinking about how I need to get another tote to store fabric in because the one I have the lid can barely shut.  The very next day I went to an Estate Sale and found an orange tote for $2 that will work perfectly.  It made me think of this verse:

Philippians 4:19 (KJV)

 "But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus."

Area #19: Family Room

The other side of the room from the toy area is our family room.  We don't use it a lot mainly because it's colder down there than the rest of the house.  It's where our tv is, so we use it for watching movies and I'm sure we'll be down there a lot more during the hot days of summer.  When we first moved in, I set up all of our books on the huge built in book shelves.  The main counter area has been a collecting spot for lots of things that I finally cleared out and gave a home. 

When it came to organizing my shelves, I thought of many ideas I have seen over the years.

The horizontal stacks:

 The rainbow:

The style I liked the best was like this:

A combination of vertical and horizontal stacks with misc. art, pictures, objects filling in the spaces.  At our old house I had all of the books arranged by author's last name with fiction and non-fiction separated.  Here I decided to spread things out and arrange them by subject.  Marriage, children, Bible reading aids, evangelism, gardening, and others are how I divided the books.  I also kept the shelf right above the tv open for our movies.  That shelf is also 'home' for the remote so that we don't waste time looking for it when we need it. 

Here are our shelves, and yes, Evelyn was watching Veggietales while I was doing my organizing...

I want to find more decorative things to put on the shelves as either bookends or to fill up the empty spaces.  That's one of the things on my thrift sale list. 

Area #18: Crawl Space

I had this brilliant idea to use our crawl space as an indoor play space over the winter.  The ceiling is just the right height for Evelyn sized kids to run around and play in there.  I brought in all of her outside toys and balls and set up the area for play.  I think we used it maybe a handful of times, but the kids loved it each time.  Now that it's warmer out, I've moved all of the outside toys back outside.  The crawl space is now holding the baby swing waiting to go to my sis-in-law, and Elsie's big red sled.

Our house has more storage than we can fill up right now, so this area is staying relatively open which is fine with me.  I love having areas of the house that are uncluttered.  It will also be nice come next winter when I can put the outside toys back down here and I won't have much stuff to move out.

Area #17: Closet Under the Stairs

I use the closet under our stairs in the basement for box storage.  Kevin's brother's family recently moved and I was able to give them almost all of our larger boxes.  I always debate between which boxes to keep and which to throw out.  You just never know when a certain sized box will come in handy for mailing something, or a gift, or transporting things, or when you need cardboard for a project etc.  I'm sure I still have many more boxes than we need even after sorting through them and getting rid of a bunch.  Here's a shot of my box stash.

The awesome blue and white papered box is huge and perfect for holding and containing miscellaneous smaller boxes. 

Area #16: Basement Toy Area

The toy area in the basement used to be an eye sore for me.  Now it makes me smile every time I go through the room.  A while back I moved almost all of our toys into the basement.  It's been nice because I don't have to worry about keeping them cleaned up because if someone stops in they won't see them, and it's not something that I'm stepping over or even seeing every day.  My basement toy area used to look like this:

Elsie hasn't played with the play mat or sat in the swing or the exersaucer (not pictured) for months, yet they have been sitting down here cluttering up the room.   Both the play mat and the exersaucer were borrowed from others, so I just cleaned them up and got them ready to return to their owners.  The swing is now being stored away waiting for my next little niece or nephew to arrive so they can borrow it.  I've discovered that it is a wonderful thing to borrow large baby items.  You use them for such a short time that it doesn't pay to buy them.  And then when the kids are done using it, you just give it back.  It's wonderful.

After getting rid of the unused baby items, adding nails to hang cowboy items, and getting a box to keep the baby doll items, my toy area now looks like this:

You might think it just looks like I picked up the room.  While I did do that, the simple other things that I did are helping to keep this room clean.  I moved the puzzles where Elsie can't reach them so that she doesn't dump them on the floor every time we're down there.  The doll box was huge because those items haven't had a spot yet and always ended up scattered.  Now it's so simple to toss them all in the box and it's something that Evelyn can do.  I have really noticed my toy area 'cleaning itself' and I love walking through the room now and seeing everything still looking neat.

Area #3: Entry Room

I'll just put the before pictures up first so you can see what I was up against.  This was supposed to be the third area I completed, and it has taken quite some time to finish up.

Our entry room has always been a constant battle for me to keep clean.  When I originally analyzed our house I realized that even though we have a coat closet right on the other side of the wall, we don't use it.  When we come in, we take off our shoes and drop our coats on the floor.  I brought this to Kevin's attention, and he decided to make some coat hooks to put in the room so that we can just hang our coats right where we take our shoes off instead of dropping them on the floor.  The wall transformed from this:

To this:

One big thing that she stressed in her book was to have a 'going out' system.  I've been really bad at this until now.  I would stack some things on the counter, some things on the floor in this room, some things in the car, somethings in the garage.  And then when we were going to the place I needed to bring the stuff, I forgot it.  I decided to turn the built in bookshelf into my out going station.  It doesn't really matter if it looks a little messy because nothing really stays there for long.  Plus when you first come into the house from the garage or the front door, you don't see this wall at all so the visual appearance is neat.  Now when I need to get something back to someone, I can just scan the shelves as I'm putting my shoes on and grab whatever I need to bring.

The other thing that this room needed was some furniture.  We just recently inherited a shelf type thing with drawers.  I am so pumped to have this in our entry room.  I can put the girls' shoes in one drawer, winter hats/gloves/scarves in one for winter time, canvas shopping bags in another one, and the last one I still have to decide on.  Kevin also brought up a chair from our basement and put it out there.  That has been awesome.

Kevin had plans to build a small corner shelf to be the drop spot for his wallet and sunglasses.  He has wasted more time looking for those items than we could probably count, so a nice little spot by the door will be perfect.  His brother recently moved out of state and asked if we wanted the two shelf corner shelf that he had made.  Um, yes please!  The wood was unfinished so we were able to stain it to match the coat rack, and it's been awesome already. 

We have plans to refinish the little drawer table - probably once the weather takes a permanent turn for the nicer.

Eventually we're planning to remodel this room into a mudroom and add a first floor laundry onto the bathroom.  That will give this room a unique shape, but will also be more adequately suited to be an entryway for a family with small children.

Area #15: Girls' Closet

I've already put a couple of systems into place in their closet to help keep things organized.  The first is the small clear containers on the top shelf.  One holds cloth diapers that I use as swim diapers in the summer.  One holds books that are longer than Evelyn's attention span.  I'm saving them for when she gets a little older and will actually sit still for the whole book.  Another holds baby bottles and feeding items, and the last holds toys that are currently out of circulation.  Most had multiple small pieces that just ended up everywhere and were hard to keep picked up.  Maybe I'll rotate out some different ones and put these back into circulation, or maybe I'll just get rid of them. I haven't decided yet.

Closet After

Closet Before

The other system that I just recently perfected is to keep clothes that they've outgrown or have yet to grow into in order.  I set up 4 totes and labeled them on the top: "Too big for Elsie", "Too small for Elsie", "Too big for Evelyn", and "Too small for Evelyn".  Now when either girl outgrows something, I just toss it into the appropriately labeled tote. When that tote gets full, I neatly fold everything in it, label the sizes and store it in the basement replacing it with a new empty tote.  When I empty out the tote labeled, "Too big for Elsie", I go downstairs and get the next bigger size and bring it up to add to her dresser.  I've been doing this since shortly after we moved to our new house, and it has saved me tons of time and kept things much more orderly than piles of clothes everywhere, or diaper boxes packed with miscellaneous sizes.

Area #14 & 14.5: Girls' Bedroom and End-of-Hall Closet

I was going to add an extra area for the closet I forgot to number, but I decided I like having an even 25 areas.  So I just joined it up with the girls' bedroom.  I have tried to keep their bedroom free of toys because between clothes, shoes, blankets, and stuffed animals, their room becomes a mess all to quickly without toys.  I keep a small basket of toys for Elsie and some books upstairs, and all the rest in the basement. (coming up in area #16)

The biggest thing that has helped me to keep their room in order is this shelf that I designed and Kevin built before Evelyn was born.  I have it mounted right above Elsie's dresser which is also the changing table.  The best part is that the girls can't reach it, so it stays organized.

The closet at the end of the hall is still a work in progress.  I'd like to add more shelves and convert it into more of a linen/storage closet than a coat closet.  Until then, I'll keep utilizing it as it is and look for ways to make it more usable.

Area #13: Main Bathroom

The bathroom was a rewarding area to tackle.  The main spots were the linen closet and behind the mirror.  Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of behind the mirror, but I got plenty of the closet.  My biggest trouble area in this closet is with extra stuff.  You know, the bottles of shampoo, soap, rubbing alcohol, deodorant, toothpaste etc. for when the one you're using runs out.  I moved a lot of them behind the mirror.  We have shelves the full length of the sink and up to the ceiling behind the mirror, so there's a lot of space to utilize (and keep organized).  Here are the before and afters from each shelf in the closet from top to bottom.

Before

 Top Shelf:

 The big glass jar was Evelyn's potty reward jar.  It was a lot fuller when we started, but definitely needed to be downsized.  I've been wanting to start making Kombucha again anyway so I need my jar back.

After

 Moving the Kleenex boxes to another shelf opened up space for the treats to tuck in the corner leaving the rags accessible.


 I think I have too many rags.  I need to go through them and throw away the really bad ones and the ones that are really the wrong material to be rags, and maybe donate some to the garage rag tub.

Second Shelf:

Before

After

The second shelf holds a lot  of extras.  Feminine care items, soap, epsom salts.  A lot of them are things that don't get used on a regular basis.  I tried to tuck them as far back and out of the way as possible.

Before I had some soaps here and some soaps behind the mirror, and some soaps on the next shelf.  They all got relocated to the corner of this shelf.  Now all of the soap is together.

The bottom container with the green handle holds all of our first aid items.  It was hard to get at it with the hair cutting supplies tub sitting right on top of it, so I moved it and keep that area clear.

Speaking of first aid supplies, I reused some plastic zippered bags I had found in our bedroom and use them to hold bandaids.  I've been getting tired of opening the box with the picture of the bandaid you're hoping to use only to find that that box is out of that size.  This way I can see exactly where each bandaid size/type is and grab the one I need on the first try.  I also tucked in a tube of antibacterial ointment so that it's handy for those cuts and scrapes too.

Third shelf:

Before

After

This shelf holds things that I use most often.  Some things daily.  It also holds a lot of 'extras'.  I ordered up many of those extras into categories, and put all of the smaller and most frequently used extra items in the blue covered tote.  It now holds toothpaste, contact cases, toothbrushes, q-tips and floss.  The white plastic pull out drawer container holds all of our natural remedy items.  Essential oils, salves, herbs etc.

Last but not least are my hair items.  When they were stored right in front of the drawer to the natural items, it was always a pain to move them in order to open the drawer.  I cleared the area to the right and tucked the hair items in there.  Now I can open all drawers and containers without too much shuffling around.


Fourth Shelf:

Before

This shelf experienced the least transformation in this closet.  It was and still is the towel shelf.  The only thing I did was remove any things that aren't towels or washcloths.

After

I did see an idea after I took these pictures to roll the towels instead of fold them and I might try that.  It would just look a lot cooler to have them rolled and then stacked.

Before

Bottom Shelf:

After

I'm not really sure why I was storing sheets in the bathroom.  In our old house the linen closet wasn't in the bathroom and all these things were in there.  I just tossed everything in the same closet like I had before. I moved the sheets into the bedroom containing the size of bed for each set of sheets.

I decided to reserve this bottom shelf for extra toilet paper and kleenex boxes.  As you can see in my after picture we're almost out of tp.  Having everything organized like this makes it very clear when we're almost out of something.

Having the tp on the bottom will also come in handy for those times when you're using the facilities and realize that the tp is out.  Evelyn can very easily reach them here. :D

It has been very nice to have the bathroom in order.  Even though we have 4 bathrooms in our house, this is the one we use 99% of the time.  Once we have moved into the master bedroom we will use that bathroom more, but until then we've got everything crammed in this one.  Hope that might give you some ideas for your bathroom closets.