organization – The Life, Designs & Crafts of Marie Haigh

Baking Station

April 10, 2013April 12, 2013 Marie HaighLeave a comment

We have lived in this house for almost 8 years. For all of those years, my baking ingredients, such as flour and sugar, were scattered across the kitchen. For a time, the sugars were kept on the shelf behind the stove. Never was it convenient to reach over a hot stove to grab a cup of sugar. Yet, I tolerated the annoyance because the sugar canisters looked so pretty sitting on that shelf.

Finally, I could take it no longer. Pretty be damned. I needed orderliness to reign supreme.

It took some shuffling and some paring down, but the baking ingredients are all housed on the open shelves in between my collection of cookbooks.

It has cut down on prep time. It has even increased my baking output. It is all just a little easier now, which is good since more often than not I have a little helper in the kitchen with me.

A Cleaner Basement

March 29, 2013April 2, 2013 Marie Haigh5 Comments

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

The five shop lights were sold.

The paint cans were sorted. So many of the paint cans that had belonged to the original owners of this house had paint in them that was rock hard. With glee, I threw that paint in the trash. Then, I made a huge pile of the old oil-based paints in colors I will never use, pea soup or aluminum anyone?, to drop off at an upcoming household hazardous Montgomery county collection. Finally, I organized all the remaining paints and painting supplies that I wanted to keep.

The best part is all the toxic paints are no longer in Elly’s reach. Thankfully, she has never been a child to try to drink unknown liquids but it still makes me sleep better at night.

Anything metal that was of no use to me went to my scrap metal gal. In exchange, Elly got 3 bottles of bubbles. It was a fair trade in her eyes.

The bakers rack was moved to the oil room where it now stores all my kitchen gadgets that I use only a few times a year or less. This little move not only cleared out my laundry area where the rack was but it also cleared out the closet under the basement stairs where all my kitchen gadgets had been housed. I am eyeing the empty closet shelves for my craft supplies.

Dan’s tools were for the very first time organized. I didn’t go overboard here because Dan prefers a certain amount of chaos, but I did group all of his tool boxes together and all of his accessories together.

This was a cheap transformation. The only supplies I purchased were a new metal organizer for Dan and a fistful of paint hardener packs to get rid of the old paints that had only dried out halfway.

It took me a full month to clean this space out working just a few minutes here and there.

Thank you to Laura and her 31 day organizational challenge for providing me the motivation and the encouragement to follow through.

Updated with questionnaire:

1. What space did you decide to organize and why?
Basement

2. What steps did you take to ensure you completed the space within the 31 day timeline?
I tried to set aside time each week to tackle another section of the basement. I even dedicated my only child-free time to it.

3. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and how did you overcome it?
The hardest part was figuring out what to do with all the hazardous materials that we had stashed in the basement, such as the dehumidifiers that had Freon in them, the oil-based paints and the materials used in staining furniture.

4. What did you do with the “stuff” you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?
Anything metal was given to my local scrap metal lady. Anything hazardous was put in a pile to take to the next county clean-up day. All unwanted latex paint was thrown in the trash. Some items that Dan objected to my donating were sold on eBay.

5. Tell me one of your proudest moments during this challenge?
Selling the shop lights that had sat in our basement for 8 years. It cleared up so much space.

6. Explain any organizing “tools” you used to help you create additional space and to establish some limits and boundaries?
I just used the honesty tool. If I hadn’t used the paint or the tool in the past 5 years, I had to be honest with myself and admit that I was never going to use it.

7. What is ONE piece of organizing advice you’ve learned on this journey that you could encourage someone else with?
Your motto. A lot of organizing can be accomplished in 15 minutes. There is no need to set aside hours to tackle one big project. Tackle the project little by little.

Cleaning Out and Cleaning Up a Basement

March 11, 2013March 8, 2013 Marie Haigh1 Comment

The pictures say it all.

The alcove

The tool bench

The back of the laundry room

It’s a hot mess down in our basement.

In my defense, when we bought this house 8 years ago, it came with its own collection of old paints, old electronics and an array of wood and metal. For some odd reason, we have hung onto it all these years. Being stored in the basement, it was easy to ignore. Then, the pile started to grow. And grow. And grow.

I am not a pack rat. I keep a box in our basement for Purple Heart, the donation service we prefer, and add to it periodically. Each month, I set up a pick-up with Purple Heart and get rid of it all.

Dan, on the other hand, would have our house piled from floor to ceiling with stuff if I let him. He operates under the “we might be able to use it someday” belief. Case in point, check out our bins of old keyboards, mice and odd cables. I’ll eat my hat if we ever use anything from those bins.

I love my husband, but this little quirk of his drives me batty sometimes.

To be fair, the basement is not all his fault. I have a bad habit of operating under the “out of sight, out of mind” method. The other well-loved method of mine is to store an item in the basement for 6 months to a year with the idea if it doesn’t get used, then it will get donated. Years later, the item is still in the basement because I have forgotten about it.

Enter Org Junkie’s 31 day Organizational Challenge.

Laura’s challenge has motivated me to tackle the basement. My goal is to get all the paint and toxic chemicals out of the reach or our growing daughter, purge the junk and organize the rest of the tools and paint in such a way that I can actually find everything without a several minute search. Wish me luck!

Shrinking our Furniture

December 13, 2012December 14, 2012 Marie HaighLeave a comment

Living in a small house has taught me a few things. It has forced me to keep a tight fist on the number of our possessions lest we not have space to sit down. I keep a donation box in my basement and at least once a month, I schedule a pick up from Purple Heart.

Living in a small house with small rooms has also taught me that tall furniture is akin to a brooding giant standing in a corner; they both make me feel cramped and nervous.

Thus, the 6-foot-tall bookcase in our living room had to go. Yet, we desperately needed the storage for Elly’s bedtime books, toys, our games and etc. Enter the wooden cubes at Just Cabinets. Since they are perfectly square, they look the same standing up as they do lying down. I plan to lay them on their side and build a pyramid. Cute, short and functional.

The only downside to the cubes is that they come unfinished. At first, I wasn’t concerned, but I had only forgotten how much work goes into staining and sealing furniture. It has to be cleaned, conditioned, stained, sealed, sanded and sealed again. It took me a week to complete one bookcase.

True, the pile of books looks worse than a brooding giant, but I was too impatient to wait another week or two while I stained and sealed the next 3 cube sections.

Because I couldn’t resist, here is the latest cute picture of Elly.

I love how the balloon keeps her modest.

Organizing Christmas Presents

September 25, 2012September 26, 2012 Marie HaighLeave a comment

Before Elly, I would just stack all the Christmas presents on the floor in our guest bedroom.
Last year, I had to hide all the toys in the china cabinet and the guest bedroom closet to keep Elly from playing with them.
This year, I needed to hide all the Christmas presents because Elly is remarkably curious and wants to play with anything new whether it’s a toy or not.
With the china cabinet stuffed to the gills with sewing notions and fabric, there was no room to stash presents. The closet was quickly filled and more presents were arriving weekly. Oh how I love to shop for Christmas!
Something had to be done.
Noticing that the oil room was underutilized with just canned produce and mountains of empty boxes, I set about to claim the space for storage.

A little sweeping here plus a few boxes broken down there and I was left with enough room to install metal shelves.

It is out of sight to Elly. Thus, most people should receive their gifts without little tears in the packaging and without any Elly artwork.
Although this shelving unit is helpful to let me see at a glance what gifts I have already purchased, I rely on an app, the Gift List Manager, to keep me on budget and on target. It sure beats the excel spreadsheet system I had before.