Organization Friday: Art Corner

While it's been a while since I did an organizational post it doesn't mean it's been that long since I was organizing! Honestly, I feel like I do it every day - there's always clutter somewhere that could be tackled.

My first instinct is to get overwhelmed and walk away because the house will never be ***perfect***. You know what? That's true! In this life nothing is perfect. Our lives are full of chaos from the inside out not to mention the fact that I have 5 little ones who have ideas and goals of their own to clutter my house.

But rather than walk away completely and find myself one day at that show Hoarders: Buried Alive or any other number of reality shows with a similar day I take a deep breath and find a spot to dig in. I can't say ever really want to get moving on the project but I am always pleased with the result and thankful the Lord gives us our homes for a respite from the chaos of this world!

This week I tackled a corner of the dining room. I'm working on the whole room slowly (it's almost done) and I have to post about the living room redo. Baby steps. Right now we're knee deep in swapping kids rooms - talk about an organizational nightmare!!

That being said, this week I just worked on the corner. Why? Well, it looked like this:





For some reason this one corner had become the dumping ground for all things art and all things school. You know the little projects at school that you want to keep but aren't exactly sure where to store?

I'll insert here that I am not a hugely emotional person who needs to hang on to every little thing but some things I want to keep and remember and pull out to look at some day and to be honest a digital photo just won't do. I know a lot of people like this idea but I have pictures (tons of them!), I'd rather see and hold what they did not just look at another picture of it - no offense to those who do but this is how I "work". Mind you I don't keep everything - I DON'T need one million worksheets from Kindergarten but I do keep a few of the nicer things.

What to do with them?

The best solution I've found is to get the Priority Mail boxes from the post office (or some other similar box) - write the child's name on it and the year and start packing some things away. If it fits, it stays otherwise it goes and I'll always have a record of those handprints or famous drawings, stories or poems.



Once the papers were sorted it was a pretty easy to task to put the corner back together:



I did also remove school supplies from the original pile and place them in a basket all their own. Since I have a ton more to buy I had to find a good place to store them before it got out of control :)

I hope you had a chance to organize this week! And don't forget to visit OrgJunkie for more tips and trips to organizing.