Organization
/For the first two years of our married life, we lived in a one level 3-bedroom apartment with very little storage space. We used one bedroom as an actual bedroom, one was my sewing room – as that is what I did to contribute to our finances, and the third was used as a storage room. We lived there for six months after Stephanie was born, while we built our new little dream home for the staggering price of $63,000 including the less than a quarter acre lot! We were thrilled when the interest rate on our loan dropped to 10% just prior to closing on our loan! Boy have times changed right?!!!!!!
When Ron and I were blessed to built and move into that first tiny home in 1986 here in Kaysville, Stephanie was only six months old, and we felt we had more room than we would ever need in that tiny 1,682 square foot home! But it was ours, we had worked hard to achieve the goal of getting into a home, and we knew our kids would have the opportunity to go to some of the best schools in the state. This was a bit of a sacrifice due to the higher cost of lots in Kaysville compared to those in the surrounding towns. We could have built a much bigger home outside of Kaysville, but looking back it was worth it for the type of education they received.
In our 37 plus years of marriage, we have only lived in three places, our first apartment in Layton, our first home in Kaysville, and our dream home we are blessed to have now. I guess you could say we are homebodies and like to stay put once we get established.
With my creative brain whirring 24/7, I seem to have numerous projects in the works at any given time. Depending on the time of year, and season, sometimes those projects spill out of my sewing room and office into the other living parts of our home. Ron has always been such a good sport, and continues to encourage me to fly and let my creativity flow regarding my many projects. There may be clutter, but I do try to keep things clean. I am a bit of a germ-a-phoebe remember. So, there may be some clutter at times, but it’s clean clutter and easily cleaned up and put back in its place. One thing I refuse to do is smash things into a closet or drawer and shut it just to get things out of sight. You will not find any clutter in my closets, cupboards, or drawers. I worked too hard to get them organized, so if I don’t have time to put something away properly in its place, I will wait until I can.
One of my favorite things to do is organize storage spaces. Learning to do this has been an evolving hobby from the time we were crammed into our first apartment, especially after our fist daughter Steph was born. In fact, we knew we would be moving in just a few short months, and so instead of cleaning out the spare bedroom/storage room in the apartment, we moved the kitchen table and put her next to it for six months! When we moved into our little two-bedroom home, we were cozy and comfortable for four and a half years.
In 1991 it didn’t appear we would be able to have any more children of our own, and so we decided to adopt from Romania. We felt there were two more children to make our family complete and so we did our paperwork to adopt two Romanian children. We prepared for nine months to adopt these children. Two weeks before I left to go to Romania, I had not been feeling well, and went to the Dr. This is when I found out I was pregnant, which we had been told was next to impossible! So, after bringing Errin, our middle daughter home from Romania, Tyler was born 7 months later. The opportunity to bring two children home didn’t transpire, but in the end, we were blessed with the three children we knew would make our family complete. All I can say is the Lord has an interesting sense of humor at times! Going to Romania while pregnant and so extremely sick with morning sickness was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever experienced in my life! But that is a story for another time . . .
You may be wondering what any of this has to do with home organization? Trust me, I’ll bring this full circle, and it will all make sense! Suddenly we found ourselves with two more babies, seven months apart, and nowhere to put them. Once again, the only spot available was next to the kitchen table each in their own crib! We went from a family of three in a comfortable two-bedroom home, with one small bathroom and half of an unfinished basement, to a family of five in a very tiny home! I had no choice but to learn how to organize and utilize every square inch of available storage.
It didn’t take long to realize in order to save our sanity with two babies trying to nap and sleep in the center of our home activity, that we had to do whatever it took to get two very tiny bedrooms finished in the basement as soon as possible. We began working on that, but because we did all the work ourselves it took months to finish. The first two years of Errin and Ty’s lives were some of my most difficult as a mother. That too is a story for another day . . .
This was also during the years before we had computers, the internet, and Pinterest! So I had to get creative! Since we all shared one small bathroom, I hung canvas shoe storage organizers with clear pockets on the back of every door we had. However, they were not filled with shoes. Whatever each person needed to get ready for the day went into these pockets. In Steph’s room her’s were filled with hair elastics, a brush, comb, hairspray, hair detangler, lotion, and other toiletry items in addition to anything else that would fit nicely in a pocket. Errin and Ty were still babies when we finally got them into rooms of their own, and so all the baby toiletry items that had previously been in a basket under their cribs, soon had a home in the shoe pockets on the back of their bedroom doors. I also hung one on the inside of our ridiculously small linen closet. Things like Band-Aids, first aid supplies, extra deodorant, toothpaste and things like that filled those pockets. This allowed me to keep the shelves clean and organized for sheets, towels, and blankets. We lived this way for 21 years! Steph married and moved away when she was 19, and cried when we sold her childhood home in 2007. The kids loved that little home!
After Steph moved out, we were finally able to get a sink/vanity and toilet installed down the basement in the same room as the washer and dryer. Soon after, we were able to finish the rest of the downstairs bathroom/laundry room and were able to add a small corner shower. It was miraculous how much easier it was to have a bathroom downstairs for Errin and Ty to share, and Ron and I were able to have a bathroom to ourselves upstairs. Isn’t that just how it seems to go? You finish your home just the way you dreamed it to be just in time to move and start over all again?!!! We all still used the shoe pockets on the back of our doors though, even in our new bigger, more comfortable home.
Now this is where I get back to the main focus for this blog – organization. A few years before we moved from this little home, I started purchasing large clear Sterilite bins with lids that clipped to the bin to keep our storage items in. I use primarily 4 different sizes of these bins. My goal was to get rid of all the cardboard boxes before we moved. Cardboard invites spiders and rodents to live inside your home with you. By taking away their “habitat” they go somewhere else more inviting. We’ve never had mice issues, but we did have plenty of spiders as is the case in so many homes. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like either one!!! With the expense of the plastic bins, the items put in them had to be “worthy” to justify the use of a nice heavy duty plastic bin. We did have the benefit of a fairly large crawl space in that little home. And when I say “crawl” space, you literally had to crawl!!! It was only about 3 ½ feet tall! We laid a piece of gently used carpet down on top of the cement floor inside and lined the edges with shelving. We were also able to put two rows of shelving down the center. This is where I stored all our Christmas and holiday decorations, as well as many of my crafting supplies. Due to the small quarters, the only way to maneuver in the crawl space was if everything was organized and had its own space when not being used.
We also had plastic bins for storage under our beds. This helped everyone keep things nice and tidy as well.
We used our coat closet for our 72-Hour Kits which was perfect as it was right inside the front door and easily accessible. Ron had cupboards built in two small nooks that were extremely helpful. One was on the ledge next to the short set of stairs going down to the basement. We kept our VHS and Beta tapes, as well as our music cassettes and CD’s in there. Yes, this dates us, we ARE old!!! The VHS and Beta tapes have all been replaced with DVD’s, and now those are being replaced with having them available on our phones, iPads, and Computers. The same holds true with the music.
The other cupboard was strategically placed downstairs in a nook in the tiny hallway. It went from floor to ceiling and held all our food storage and small library of books.
When we took the leap of faith to build a new home just west of our old home here in Kaysville in 2007, I had accomplished my goal of having everything in our storage in plastic bins! If it didn’t go in a bin, it went to the D.I. or to the dump. The years of planning, purging, and organizing paid off, and made the move so much easier. We didn’t have to label the bins because we could see exactly what was in them. We bought rolling stainless steel shelving from Costco that fit perfectly in the basement of our new home. The shelves can be adjusted to any height, and the plastic bins fit perfectly on the shelves. This too did not happen overnight. I bought my last one just a few months ago, and we have now lived in this home over thirteen years! I love how you can roll them away from the wall to sweep and vacuum, and then just push them back into place.
I chose to do cupboards instead of a pantry in my new kitchen, and have not regretted that. It gave us more usable kitchen space, and I don’t have to keep a dark pantry floor clean. Cupboards are so much easier to organize and keep clean! In addition to the Sterilite bins without lids in my cupboards, I keep my flour, sugar and rice in storage bins with air-tight Gamma-Seal screw-on lids. These are the same lids I use for my 72-Hour-Food Kits – but I use either a two- or three-gallon bucket instead of the six gallon one I use for my emergency kits – I get these smaller buckets at Kitchen Kneads in Ogden, Utah, and I remove the handles so they fit better in my cupboard. I even cut some fun “flour”, “sugar”, and “rice” labels from vinyl on my Cameo Silhouette to put on them! I actually re-fill the smaller ones in my upstairs cupboards with the flour, sugar, and rice that I keep in the six- gallon buckets in my cold storage room.
I purchased nice white plastic Lazy Susan’s from Target for some of my kitchen cabinets to hold spices and vitamins and over the counter medications.
I also put drawer organizers in every drawer. Target or Amazon has these as well. They make a huge difference, and you will know where everything is. If you have a junk drawer of kitchen gadgets, go through it and as hard as it is, discard everything that you don’t use, and replace anything that is broken. If you have 12 old, cracked, stained wooden spoons, do you REALLY need that many?
In my sewing room and office, I love the Sterilite plastic drawer sets that have 3 drawers per set, also from Target or Amazon. They are perfect for 12” x 12” square scrapbook paper as well as thread, craft, office and sewing supplies. I have a set of these under each sink in the bathroom. No more wasted space under there amongst all the pipes! One of these fits perfectly under each of our bathroom sinks. Spare deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrushes, make-up, extra cotton-balls, Q-tips, etc. store well in them.
2020 gave me the opportunity to go through my cupboards again and straighten things up. I started in the kitchen and worked on closets and bathrooms after that. I love to use Sterilite brand bins of all sizes. In the past I have picked these up at The Container Store (This place is an addiction! There is one at Fashion Place Mall in Murray, Utah – or you can also order online), Walmart or Target, but during the Covid Pandemic, I discovered you can get just about anything on Amazon! The shoe holders for the backs of the doors are inexpensive. I prefer the ones with the canvas backing and the clear pockets. I still use these even in our new home that has a lot more space in every way.
As you look at the pictures in this post, please remember, this has taken me almost 38 years to accomplish. It did not happen overnight, and I learned a lot along the way. Some things work, and some things don’t. The key to organization is to start small. Purchase one or two bins at a time, and make sure what you put in them is worthy of a spot in an expensive plastic bin! I always wipe everything off before placing it in the bin, that way whatever it is, is clean and ready to use when I open the bin again. I haven’t taken any professional classes, what I’ve learned is from trial and error, and this is what works for us. Make the organization in your own home what works best for you, but most of all, make it fun by tackling it a little at a time. I promise as you begin to see the fruits of your labors, your life will not only be lighter, but it will also be “LIGHTER”!!!! Happy Organizing!!!
Love Ya Lots, Les