Showin' Off My Drawers

BEFORE

AFTER

Nuff said.

What's an "empty drawer"???

I feel the need to prove that I really am doing other stuff besides making classy toilet paper tube crafts.  My quest to organize every piece of paper in the Green House is pretty much done.  Not every single piece of paper has been dealt with, but when I uncover a new piece I've already got a designated place for it to be filed and that was the main goal.  It wasn't so much about dealing with all the random paperwork we had accumulated as much as it was about having a system in place for the daily influx of new paper.

Let's take a look at my desk, which hasn't really functioned as a desk in quite some time.  It was bad.  It's a large antique pedestal desk that used to be in my Grandfather's office.  Jayson hates it because it's a beast to move and it takes up a lot of space.  I love it because it has that ginormous flat surface that I can pile stuff on.  Obviously.

I also love it because it's a beautiful piece of furniture.  All the joints are dovetailed and it has these cool wooden knobs, deep drawers and lots of character.  And when it's cleaned up it's one of the few decent pieces of furniture here at Casa de la Garage Sale.

I forgot to take a "before" picture of the drawers on the left side before I cleaned them out.  I haven't finished cleaning out all the drawers so here's a peek at the right side and the center drawer.













Kinda junky, yeah?  When I was giving them the once over, I found a circa 2003 phone book from a town I haven't lived in for 8 years.  There's also some 3-1/2" floppy disks shoved in the back of one of the drawers.  Come to think of it, there might be a computer in my garage that will take those disks.

Oh.  The garage.  *shudder*

So here's the left side of the desk all cleaned out.  The top drawer has my bill paying stuff: address labels, stamps, letter opener, stapler, envelopes, boxes of extra checks, etc.

The file drawer has my new cleaned out files in it.  I have paid bills, product warranties, misc. household files, etc.  This drawer will house stuff that I need to keep but not forever.  The forever stuff is in my Grab & Go Hurricane Box which will not live inside the desk.
The bottom drawer on the left side is a strange phenomenon that I have not seen before.  I Googled it and discovered that it is known as "an empty drawer".  I've never seen that before!  Apparently, if you have one of these rare gems you can use it at a later date for some unexpected purpose that you weren't expecting.  Or something like that.  It's still new to me and I'll have to do some more research to see how I am supposed to deal with this so called "empty drawer".






Here is the top of the desk all cleaned off.  And I didn't just move the pile to another location like I usually do, I actually put stuff back where it belonged or I got rid of it.  That pitiful little wicker organizer in the corner might have to go but for now it's doing a good job of holding all our notepads.  I have a paper fetish and it's not just confined to pretty papers.  I have lots of blank journals and note pads but I'm keeping them because I do actually use them.  I'm a list maker and even if I don't follow my lists I still feel the need to make them.

Now I feel all naked because I've shown you my drawers (heh) but I'm feeling really good about the changes happening around here!  Today's list includes the right side of the desk and then I think I'll dive into the book shelves since they're paper too.  I really love books and have a hard time getting rid of them so that project will probably be more organizing than purging.  We don't have any bookshelves for the new house so I need to get online and do something about that pretty soon.  I might just send Jayson back to IKEA for those.

The built-in bookshelves we have here also have these little covered cabinets below them where you can stash stuff then pull the door down so that no one can see.  Yeah.  I've stashed stuff alright.  I'm not sure if I have the intestinal fortitude to show you how I've mistreated those areas.  Well, a couple of them aren't so bad, they have some old CDs and VCR home videos in them.  But I'm pretty sure my dead dog is still in one of them.  I put him there because I didn't know what else to do with him and it upset me to see him like that so I just closed the door on that cabinet and left him there.  In his ziploc sammich baggie.  His cremated remains.  Bless his heart.

All work and no play...

I know I'm supposed to be knee deep in cleaning and organizing so that we can get moved out of here before our lease is up at the new house, but you know what they say:  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  And we all know that things ended pretty badly for ol' Jack.

So, in the interest of preserving my sanity and not hacking my family to death with an axe, I took a break and made a lil Valentine bouquet.  No, it's not red or pink and it doesn't have hearts or glitter on it. That doesn't make it any less of a Valentine bouquet.  So there.

I got my inspiration for these flowers when I was taking out the bathroom trash.  I noticed that there were several empty toilet paper tubes in the trash can and I've been seeing a lot of cool potty paper tube crafts lately.  I love crafts that are recycled, upcycled or repurposed as long as they're not too cheesy.  I usually put toilet paper tubes in the same class with yogurt cup lids, pompoms and pipe cleaners.  They're great for kids crafts but I would probably never use them for anything but that.

I may be changing my mind about the toilet paper tubes.  I've seen some pretty spectacular stuff being made out of them recently.  These potty paper tube flowers are not spectacular, but they were quick and easy to make and I kinda like them.  I made them with the intention of painting them but then I decided I like the natural look so I left them.  For the centers I used little cardboard numbers and some bottle caps because they were the right size and I could find them without too much effort.

The stems are paper tubes made from magazine pages.  I chose to use those also because they were sort of lying within easy reach.  That's my design criteria.  The best material for a project is the material I can reach without having to get off the couch.  It's also nice to have an ample supply of whatever material I'm working with which is another benefit of the tubes.  Everyone in my house has some form of IBS so we always have a LOT of empty toilet paper tubes on hand. 
 
I saw some stunning coffee filter roses on a blog recently but I didn't want to take the time to paint these so I decided to leave them plain and see what happened.  I think they turned out great.  Jayson has our good camera and these bad cell phone pics don't show the detail very well but they're pretty darn realistic.  I used a dress pattern for the...uuhhh...whatchamacallits.  Calyx?  I think that's right.  And I wrapped the stems with twine just to be different.

The vase is filled with little origami stars.  It actually needs some more but if I do too many in one sitting my hands seize up.  Not because I'm old and arthritic but because I have wrist parts missing due to a surgery made necessary by a birth defect which was probably caused by generations of intermarrying on my mother's side of the family.  That's right, I will admit to a branchless family tree before I admit to arthritis.

The morning brain shouldn't be allowed to speak.

This conversation between me and my 20-year old daughter is yet another example of how the Green Girls are incapable of functioning before noon:

          Me: How do you spell Ouija board?

          Taylor: W E E G E E

          Me: (laughing) That's not right!

          Taylor: (laughing) Oh yeah, it starts with an O.  I was thinking of one of those thing you use to clean your windows.

          Me: (laughing even harder) That's a squeegee!

Taylor really is very intelligent.  She just has the misfortune of being her mother's daughter.

The Big Clean Sweep Continues

So I'm purging and organizing, right?  I'm making fairly good progress and expect to be finished sometime in March...of 2012.  It's slow and tedious but worth it.

I started with paper since it's a huge problem in the Green House and it's compounded by the fact that every time I go to the mailbox more papers arrive that need to be dealt with.  My usual system of dealing with them is piling them all over the house until I'm in the mood to face them, which is never.  Obviously, that wasn't working for us.

I'm not completely finished but almost and here's a peek at what I've got done so far.  This is our grab-and-go hurricane box with all our important stuff in it like insurance policies, car titles, birth certificates, passports, house deed, tax returns, medical records, etc.  The next time we refuse to evacuate for a hurricane, we'll be ready.

I have a really bad habit of keeping not just warranty information but instruction manuals, installation instructions, receipts and notes for just about everything we buy.  I guess this could be a good habit but it had gotten so out of control that it filled almost an entire file drawer in my desk.  I had instruction manuals for some of Taylor's toys that we got rid of 10 years ago.

I found this little warranty folder thing on the clearance rack at Office Depot for $5.00 so I bought it.  About 5 years ago.  Oh those good intentions.  I finally put it to use and it's fabulous.  I cleaned out my files and made sure that we actually still owned the stuff I was saving warranties for, then put everything into my tidy and accurately labeled expanding folder.  It came with several pre-printed labels but I found those didn't quite cover all the categories we needed.  Fortunately it also had a bunch of blanks you can label yourself, which I did for important things like fire arms.


At the same time I bought this folder I bought another one like it (also for $5.00 on the clearance rack) that's designed for bill paying.  It has monthly dividers so you can just drop all your paid bills and receipts for that month into its section then at the end of the year I'll keep only those things we need for our tax return.  Both of these folders came with little record books to help you keep track of stuff but that requires a little more effort than I'm willing to give right now. 

I'll have to take a picture of my bill paying folder when I finish putting it together, but right now here's what the file drawer in my desk looks like.  It's a really deep drawer and was jammed full front to back with all kinds of crap that I didn't need.  Now it will hold my 2 new binders plus maybe 3 or 4 other file folders of stuff that we need to hang on to and that's it.  Naturally, I forgot to take the "before" picture but trust me when I say it was bad.


Before Christmas I bought a paper shredder at Office Depot for around $40 instead of my preferred $5 but it has proven to be worth every penny.  I've shredded 4 huge black garbage sacks full of stuff and my intention is to shred as I go from now on instead of letting it all build up.  That's the plan anyway.  As soon as I get the rest of my desk cleaned up I'll take a picture of it, it really is a cool desk.  It's a gigantic banker's desk that used to be in my grandfather's office and I love it.  Jayson hates it and keeps trying to get me to get rid of it but I just can't.  It's too fabulous.

I spent some time cruising the internet this afternoon searching for some organizing solutions that might work for us.  An excellent source for all things organizing is a blog called Organize With Sandy.  Let me just say, Sandy is a force to be reckoned with.  She shares all kinds of tips on her blog as well as resources, give aways, and product endorsements.  She also sells some little card and purse organizers that are cute.  By the way, when I saw her purse organizer called the Pouchee, that's what triggered my flashback to the Ambassador Bag.

It also triggered several hours of web surfing producing some helpful and some not so helpful ideas.  I spotted a link on Sandy's blog for the Butler Bag and had to look away really fast because of its Ambassador Bag likeness.  Those of you who know me well are probably scratching your head because you know about my huge army surplus bag that I carry around and try to pass off as a purse.  You've seen me dig in it for 15 minutes looking for my keys that ended  up being in my other hand the whole time.  You've watched me pull things from it such as a handful of dead batteries, a pair of socks and a 2 pound bag of Twizzlers.  I appreciate an organized purse but I don't require it.

Thanks to Sandy I also stumbled upon the Bedzak and found myself actually wanting one.  If I ever spend my husband's hard earned money on something so lame, you have my permission to shoot me and put me out of my misery.

Also under the heading of lame but in a different way is Pottery Barn's Daily System.  You're probably thinking to yourself, "But it's Pottery Barn and we like Pottery Barn don't we?"  Yes we do, most of the time.  However, it is my personal opinion that anyone who buys this system should be shot in the head at point blank range.  Why, you ask?  Let me explain.

Just because Pottery Barn sells it, doesn't automatically make it fabulous.  PB touts this as a modular system that can be customized to fit your needs.  Sounds absolutely great.  But it isn't and apparently PB finally figured that out because all of the components are on sale and some are not available anymore.

I have several issues with this system but the main one is easy to identify.  Look at it.  Just look at it.  Does it make you feel calm and organized?  Not me.  To me it looks like organized clutter which is still clutter.  I look at that wall and I feel like it needs to be tidied up.  Fail Pottery Barn.

Another issue I have is the price.  The components can be purchased separately, which is good, but most of the main ones run in the $40-$50 range, making a complete system cost $300 and up.  If you have $300 to spend on a bad organization system just because it's from Pottery Barn, that's fine, but I hope you would also have sense enough not to.  Fail again Pottery Barn.

So now that I've trashed Pottery Barn and insulted everyone whose ever shopped there I guess I should offer an alternative solution, right?  Okay, I don't have a specific solution other than to say it really isn't necessary to hang all your stuff all over the wall even if it's your office wall...unless that's just how you roll.  For office clutter you might try Peter Walsh's In Place System from Office Max.  It's not exactly pretty but it does appear to be functional and I like how his hanging file folders interlock.  Plus, all the components are very affordable.

I have to admit, my creative spaces are somewhat of a paradox.  I like a combination of organization and clutter...organization so I can find what I need and a clutter of inspirational items that might spark a new idea.  Lately my balance of those two has gotten a little skewed and I'm teetering on full-on clutter.  I have 2 closets in my art room that house most of my supplies and stuff.  This is one of the closets.  It has 10 Iris carts full of treasures but unfortunately my treasures have overflowed the carts and are getting piled up all over the place.  This will be one of the last projects I tackle in the big Clean Sweep of 2011 since it will be the most painful.   I have another supply closet that's in worse shape than this one, plus my jewelry making stuff has oozed into the living room.

Speaking of jewelry, I'm always on the lookout for good jewelry organizing ideas.  Did you see that?  Did you see how I did that?  Have you ever seen a smoother segue?  I think not.  Anyway, I've never been able to find a jewelry organization/storage system that I'm happy with.  Part of the problem could be that I have a lot of costume jewelry and most of the cute organizers I find can't accommodate everything I have.  Plus, since I make jewelry I'm adding to my collection all the time.  What's a girl to do?

I found this little organizer that I like a lot but I would need about 6 of them.  I like it because it has room for bracelets, necklaces, earrings AND rings (which you don't see often enough).  And since it mounts on the wall, I wouldn't have to worry about my necklaces being too long.  I'm gonna chew on it for a while but it might be doable.

Another organizing thing I've been looking at is for makeup.  I don't have a lot of makeup and I don't wear a lot of makeup but it still needs to be tidy, right?  Check out this little beaut from Clear Cube.  Apparently it is the official makeup organizer of the Kardashians.  For $300, they can keep it but a less expensive version might be nice. 

Tomorrow I will finish up the paper organizing (except for the stuff in the garage, that's a category all by itself) then move to clothes and closets, I think.  That should be easy since I have no problem weeding out my clothes and hauling them to Goodwill.  That's where they came from in the first place!