The Room Equivalent of the Junk Drawer

I while back, I briefly shared with you the pictures of our 2nd bedroom.  It may have been messy then, but it only got worse from there.  Here's a reminder of how it looked then:

I was too ashamed to take more pictures of the more recent state of the room, but let's just say that you could walk about two steps into the room, and then if you had small feet, hop around the room to find things.  The entire floor was covered in stuff.  Why?  Because it's the room equivalent of a junk drawer.  I think junk drawers are a great thing.  I actually feel that every room needs a box for "stuff you don't know where to put".  At least when for the first few years you live there.  Eventually, you can probably have a place for most things, but we don't have a place for most things yet.

But I digress.  

Any time we had company, I'd frantically run around cleaning.  Anything I didn't know where to put, I'd toss into the yellow room.  Yes, literally toss (unless it was fragile).  No wonder the room was a mess.  I was sick of it.

So, this past Friday, when Chloe came over to help me get ready for the Pretty Pink Princess Party (more on that later this week), I enlisted her help in the yellow room.  I had already spent the entire day scrubbing, sweeping, washing, mopping, dusting (I know, right!), vacuuming, organizing, tidying, and doing lots of other participles involving cleaning.  The truth is, this room only took about a half hour to organize.  I'm not sure why I didn't tackle it before, except that it was a bit intimidating.

We started with a ton of cardboard boxes and plastic totes.  I split up my craft supplies into big categories like yarn (including my knitting needles for now), fabric, supplies for which I have a project, general supplies (random bits of paper, old books to use for crafts, etc.), and tools (writing and coloring utensils, hot glue gun, scissors, etc.).  The room held a bunch of the supplies Caleb and his dad and uncle are using to fix up our home, so two boxes corralled all of that stuff.  We now have a paper recycling box and a "to shred" box.  We have a box of extra boxes.  And we have a box of stuff I don't know where to put.  But it's one box, and it's all in the box.

The room looks so much better now, and I actually like it.  :)  Plus, I now have a system to help keep it from getting catastrophic again!

Love and Housework,

Leah Joy