Organization 101

Since becoming a parent it seems that I have always been striving to find ways to be organized. With four kids relatively close in age, life can get a bit crazy...and on the days when I feel unorganized I tend to get stressed and when I get stressed I get "stress cramps" and when I have "stress cramps" I become unmotivated and when I get unmotivated things get more out of control and the pattern continues until I'm downright grumpy....and lets face it, thats not good for anyone. With a generally crazy lifestyle I have found that trying to keep things organized is the key to keeping my own sanity...that, and writing in this blog of course.

I don't claim to be the most organized person...but at the same time I know I'm not the least organized person either. I'm thinking of Last Comic Standing here. Picturing myself inside the "organized booth" claiming "I know I'm more organized than...". No really. I don't do that. I'm kidding. Anyway..

It has taken me 7 years (my years of parenthood) to get to the level of organization that I am at now...and I will likely have it all figured out just in time for my kids to go college. Its ok though..because I think this type of thing is always changing anyway depending on needs and stages.

I sometimes laugh at my tactics of organizing though. For some reason I think that putting all of the wooden puzzles (we have MANY) inside a tote that none of the kids can open and hiding that tote in a place where the kids can't find it is "organizing". There is nothing worse than 4 kids digging into a box of puzzles when I'm not aware.

Another one of my tactics is throwing things out. We have three rubbermaid bin type things that have three drawers each for all the small toys. Ideally these bins are sorted in the following categories...plastic cars (usually bigger ones), matchbox cars, superheroes and transformers, legos, Justice League guys, sharks/dinosaurs, misc. action figures, misc. toys and Nintendo 64 stuff. I go through these bins fairly regularly and I literally throw toys out. When they start to get too full I get rid of stuff.

Stuff like Mc. D's toys tend to pile up..and most often its three of the same exact toy (since they all get they same one in their kids meal). I let them play for a while and more often than not I will throw them out. Sometimes we get decent toys from Mc. D's..stuff thats worth keeping, but its more common to get some sort of hard plastic junk that does nothing but makes obnoxious noises. They don't even notice when these toys disappear.

These bins are the only place where small toys (the ones that make the most mess) are found and I try to keep the amount of these types of toys confined to the amount of bins that I have.

I then have a bucket for balls. Yes, we are a family that actually encourages playing with balls in the house. We have a large tote FULL of all kinds of balls and this is probably one of the most played with bunch of toys that we have. Its easy to clean up because it becomes a shooting practice for me while I shoot balls back into the tote. Its actually fun:)

All of the above items are kept in the computer room/kids playroom. We have one small box type thing that we keep in the living room...along with some books because Owen loves to read books with us in there. The rest of the books are on a bookshelf upstairs in our reading corner for reading books before bed...next to a chest full of dress up stuff that typically stays upstairs as well.

We have a cool cabinet thing in the dining room that conceals games. Unfortunately, its not quite big enough for all of our games so there is a very unorganized pile of games on top of my computer desk. (next post..."areas that are NOT organized in my life" ha ha). Most of the games are in this cabinet though...along with a drawer for art supplies and craft supplies.

The boys don't have a great deal of toys in their room. There are some trucks (the big kind) and they each get a small basket of small toys beside their beds for little toys they can play with in their while they are trying to fall asleep. Otherwise there simply isn't room for anything because its wall to wall beds, dressers, crib and changing table!

So what is it that brought me to this post you ask?? One of the areas of serious disorganization in my house has been the area of shoes. I had yet to find a good way for us to contain all of our shoes because we don't have a 'mudroom' or anything like that. There just really isn't a good place for shoes and we tend to have a ton of them. In the past we have just lined them up...stacked really.. along the wall as you enter the house. Everyone has at least one pair of sneakers and one pair of sandals..and then there is Jessalyn who has a different pair of shoes for each outfit. She actually has a tote under her bed full of shoes and we try to keep most of them in there...but they tend to migrate downstairs and reside in the shoe pile most of the time.

This weekend while Josh was cleaning and organizing the garage (I was so happy with this project..its so nice to have a husband again!) we found a storage rack thing that my friend Melody gave to us a few years ago. Josh had the wonderful suggestion to use it for shoes! (He's so smart:) ) Jessalyn's project this morning was to organize this and so far the kids are all excited to have their own bins for their own stuff! I am aware that this novelty will wear off...but for now its working! The primary colors aren't necessarily my favorite (for the space that they are in) but it isn't a big enough deal for me to paint them all either!





This along with something I did at the beginning of the spring (and of course my mitten tree in the winter!) will make our entries and exits from the house a much more pleasant experience...

Our hat hooks. Four identical hats wasn't really the smartest choice I ever made...Josh, Ethan, Luke and Owen have identical Red Sox hats and Jessalyn has a very similar one although the "B" on her hat is pink. Fortunately my hat is bright pink..and it says San Diego on it...makes my life easy.





These are my strides towards ultimate organization. Do you have any interesting ways of organizing your life??