Stay @ Home Update #15

Each Sunday (at 5:00 AM) I'm sharing how the week's 10-minute stay@home organizational challenge went. If you don't have an idea what that means and you're curious, you can learn more in my original Stay @ Home Update blog post - found HERE.

Now here's the disclaimer: Some of these daily stay@home challenges are taking more than 10 minutes, but who's counting, right? 

Here's what I've accomplished this week...

Day 1 - SUN, July 12
This plastic tub was sitting on an upper shelf in my storage closet. Truthfully, I hadn't even looked in it for quite some time, so I wasn't sure what I'd find when I took it down. Come to find out it was an assortment of kits - some from classes I'd taken at Expos a decade or more ago (those went in the donate pile) and a couple of kits from companies (My Favorite Things and Simon Says) which I put in a more convenient location. That bin is now empty and not taking up shelf space.

Day 2 - MON, July 13
I found two more of the small bins of handmade cards that I needed to go through. Most of them were moved to the Donate box... that box is getting full. I'm going to need to get them ready to mail to Cards for Kindness soon. I might have enough to send a box to Cards for Soldiers as well.

Day 3 - TUES, July 14
I organized the items in these bins and created labels for them today. As is seen in the photo, there's one empty bin. Hmmmm.... I wonder what I'll find to put inside that bin?

Day 4 - WED, July 15
I need to start by saying I didn't spend just 10 minutes on today's project (truthfully most days it's more like 20-30 minutes). Today I spend 4 hours doing this chore. The shelf to the right is deeper than it looks and it was full of boxes and bins of photos. Some were organized - the three photo boxes in the picture as well as the four photo boxes directly behind them. The other items were a mess.

This picture is after today's effort. It may not be the best system, but for now I've organized the photos into files, one for each of our three children, one for our family of five, one for each of our extended families, etc. Sometime in the future I need to figure out what I want to do with the photos - I'm not a scrapbooker, so please don't suggest that. Truthfully, I'm kind of leaning toward more photo boxes with the pictures organized within them. If not that, then I'll need to look into getting photo albums.

Day 5 - THUR, July 16
I don't know if I've ever mentioned it on my blog before, but my Play Room is a wonderful room filled with toys but it also has my books and "study" types of things in it. Now don't fret, they really take up a very minimal part of the space, but they were becoming unsightly and disorganized. Today I tackled this small shelf as well as a shelf twice that size that was filled with Bibles and a few study books (I forgot to take a picture of that shelf). Who needs that many Bibles, right? 

I put several Bibles and some books in my donate pile and moved the books from that small shelf. Now all of my Bibles (except my journaling ones) are on that small shelf. It sits directly behind my "study" desk (not my stamp desk) so they are close at hand when I'm studying.

Day 6 - FRI, July 17
I actually continued where I left off yesterday. I moved books off of the shelf so I could put Bibles there yesterday and today I moved books off of the Library Cart that sits on the other end of my Play Room. It was getting over-run with books. 

I purged the books I no longer wanted to keep - some will go to our Associational Office's Resource Library and some to the donate pile. I moved the books I'm keeping to the book shelf inside my storage closet - you likely remember seeing it before. It's the shelf that has my rolled ribbon storage on top of it.

The top shelf of books are all related to women/ministry and Bible Studies for women. The middle shelf is Ministry Wives books on the left and Leadership Development on the right. The bottom shelf is a variety of books. Yes, I know the box of books on the bottom is unsightly - why not just put those books on the shelf? It is tall enough to accommodate them. However, then I have to practically stand on my head to see what is there. This way I can take the box off the shelf and move it to a more reasonable viewing position. And the shelf is in the closet - so no one  but me sees it.

The shelf that I took my Bibles from now holds the kits that were on this book shelf - Stampin' UP! Paper Pumpkin, Tonic Kits, and a few other ones, too. I've not yet determined how I'll organize them on their new shelf. For now they are in bins to hold them in place.

My Library Cart now has some free space on the top shelf - I'll figure out something to go there, I'm sure. On the left of that shelf are my Embossing Folders. The bottom two shelves of the Library Cart are my Bible Journaling resources and kits. The white basket on the very bottom is the only exception to that. It holds Birthday cards - so I'm ready to mail cards for the SCS Birthday RAK each month.

Day 7 - SAT, July 18
My Unity stamp collection is in six of these pink bins (yes, six) and I seem to be running nearly out of space. Yikes! There are two bins of large sets, one bin of medium size, one of small size, one that has a mixture of sizes and then there is this one that is filled with stamps from Unity Grab Bags and freebies. I decided to change the way I store this bin of individual stamps.

I also own a few Unity KOTM sets and I have them stored in thin plastic cases. I have extras of those cases, which is perfect for these individual stamps. I sorted them into 5 groups - one to get rid of, and then the following: Sentiments, Images, Christmas, Other Holidays. I added the stamps and created an inventory sheet to place in the plastic case with the stamps.

This is the shelf of Unity stamps - the six bins are on the top two shelves. The plastic cases stand on the right side of the third shelf (not all of those cases are full but for now I'm keeping the empty ones on the shelf, too).

The white bins are also currently empty. I'm not sure what I'll use them for. Once I get my Play Room organization completed I'll likely remove any storage pieces not being used.


Okay, that's it for this week. Stay tuned to see what I accomplish in the coming week.