Organization: Baby Steps!

I am so tired of all the clutter around here! I feel like I say this every single day but it is really overwhelming to try to organize everything and try to interact with Brianna as much as I think I should! I have done pretty well at organizing in baby steps though, like I blogged about here. Last night I was thinking about how to go about organizing the house and decluttering at the same time, and I thought, the easiest way is just to start in one room. Finish that one room and then move on to another section. That way it's not so overwhelming. So my goal today was our dining room. Our dining room really doesn't have the appearance of being cluttered but I have things hidden in our drawers that are not at all organized and don't need to be taking up space in the dining room!

Our buffet/server has become overloaded! You can visibly see all the photo albums:

and inside is an ugly secret - records, copy paper for the computer, picture frames and random coupons!

The drawers contain miscellaneous electronics, magazines, and more coupons!

The first thing I did was go through the picture albums. The empty ones that I'll never use are going to a friend who can use them to help with speech therapy clients. The hard copies of pictures are going in our fireproof safe.

I next tackled the records. I separated them into two piles - keep and give away. Whichever ones I can't give away I will sell at our next yard sale, or give them away there if I can't sell them!

I only kept the best of the best - Beatles, CCR, and select Eagles, Bad Company, etc. I grew up listening to these types of records thanks to mom and dad, and I would love for our kids to grow up jammin' to these classics! I then made an inventory of the records we have, took a picture, and put the list and the picture in our safe for fire and robbery reasons.

The magazines have been read and are going to make their way to mom's house this afternoon.

Next up: The bags of stuff next to the buffet:


The white bags (courtesy of Leila) are going to FBF this afternoon. The other bags are going in the hall closet until I can take them to Fifi's to try to sell them. Finished buffet table: (Yes, the puzzle is still in progress.)




Next up: The hutch. Drawer #1 contained a cookie jar, 16 cookbooks and several loose-leaf recipes. The cookie jar is going to the attic (I do want to eventually use it when our kids are older, but we have no need for it now), 8 cookbooks and some loose-leaf recipes are going to the yard sale pile, and all the cookbooks which don't fit on these shelves are going to my other cookbook location which is taller. The rest of the loose-leaf recipes went into my binder of recipes.

Drawer #1:

Drawer #2 contained 32 cookbooks, a lazy susan, and approximately 100 recipes on index cards. Whew! I actually only discarded one cookbook out of all of these, but they all fit in the other drawer with my other cookbooks. The lazy susan is on the dining room table where she belongs, and the index card recipes were sorted alphabetically and filed or thrown away. Unfortunately, my camera messed up when formatting this picture and it was deleted. Trust me, drawer #2 was much worse than anything you could imagine.

Completed drawer #1:

On to the middle three drawers: Disaster!! Drawer #1 contained another twelve cookbooks and bubble wrap for my eBay items. Bubble wrap was moved to my mailing supplies drawer. Five cookbooks will go to the yard sale pile and the rest will go to side drawer #2.


Drawer #2 contained more coupons, paper bags meant for FBF, and 8 cookbooks. The couple of coupons that hadn't expired will be clipped and put away. I actually kept all the cookbooks, and I'll take the paper bags to the FBF tomorrow night.


Drawer #3 is my eBay drawer. I'm going to keep everything in here, but it definitely needed to be tidied up! Actually, I moved all the items to the middle drawer and I will move them down to the third drawer as I list them. That way neither drawer will be cluttered.

Completed middle drawers:

Last but not least, the room is swept, chairs pushed in, Brianna's bibs put back in their rightful place (she loves to drag those out!).

And my dining room is ORGANIZED!!!

(P.S. Next time I will not try to do an entire room in one day! It took me several hours during today to complete this room!! But it is a relief to have gotten so much done.)