Today is the last day of this challenge…hooray!  I am tired of organizing (and making trips to Goodwill), but I am so glad to have a clutter-free house!

This last task was definitely the easiest for me, probably because I feel like I have a pretty good system in place already so it only included some minor adjustments.

Here is today’s task:

Go through your craft supplies.  Get rid of the supplies you don’t need and organize the rest. 

Let me assure you:  You do not need the 72 paper towel rolls you’ve been hanging onto.  Toss them (most of them, anyway…you might want to hang onto a few just in case).  Also, here is my absolute favorite tool for organizing craft and school supplies:

A shoe organizer!  I put this on our pantry door almost two years ago and it has been AWESOME.  The above picture is actually my “before” picture, but there wasn’t much difference after I did some clearing out because it is already pretty organized.  You can find them here or at most local improvement stores .

I dug out all the markers and tested each one…

and tossed the dried-up ones.

I also picked out all the broken crayons.  And since I had already done that, I decided I would just “quickly” pop the pieces in a silicone mold and make some Christmas gifts (yes, I know…it’s April).  :)

I underestimated how long it took to peel the labels off the crayons.

But I forged on and we now have 15 cute little snowflake crayons ready for Christmas.  Woo-hoo!

Despite how amazingly awesome the shoe organizer is for storing our craft supplies, there isn’t room for everything.  I have a shelf in our cleaning closet for the rest of our stuff.  Thankfully I had recently reorganized all of this when we created our mudroom, so there wasn’t much I had to reorganize. I found these cute little baskets at Target a long time ago for under a dollar.

Phew.  That’s it!  Almost all of your child’s stuff should now be pared down and organized!  Give yourself a special treat this weekend for working so hard.  :)

Joining us a little late?  No problem!  Go here for each day’s challenge:

::  Day One:  Clothing and Closets

::  Day Two:  Toys

::  Day Three:  Books

::  Day Four:  Craft Supplies

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It’s Day Three of our Spring Cleaning:  Kid’s Edition Challenge (be sure to check out Day 1 and Day 2 if you missed them).  I am already feeling sooooo much better about the clutter in my house!

Here is today’s challenge:

Go through all your children’s books.  Donate the ones you no longer want and organize the ones you keep.

We have tons of books in our house, partly because I had boxes of them from when I taught and partly because I have a habit of buying way too many of them now.  Here is just a very small sampling of our books that I sorted:

I managed to get a couple grocery bags full to donate, mainly books that my boys have outgrown or ones that they weren’t crazy about in the first place.  I sorted the rest according to season.

I also bought some magazine holders from Target (for about $2.50 each) to sort them according to season/category.  I’ve always wanted to organize my books better in this way, but have never gotten around to it.  Now when it is winter and want to read a book about snow, I’ll know exactly where to go!

 The books are now organized!  Stay tuned for tomorrow’s task…it’s the last one!  :)

Joining us a little late?  No problem!  Go here for each day’s challenge:

::  Day One:  Clothing and Closets

::  Day Two:  Toys

::  Day Three:  Books

::  Day Four:  Craft Supplies

It’s Day Two of our Spring Cleaning:  Kid’s Edition Challenge!  How did yesterday go?  I shared on my Facebook page yesterday afternoon that I was already procrastinating with today’s challenge.  But I scrounged up all the self-motivation I could muster and forged on.

Here is your task for Day Two:

Go through all the toys in your home.  Get rid of the ones your child doesn’t play with and organize the rest!  

I am a strong believer that children’s rooms should be primarily for sleeping, so we don’t keep very many toys in the boy’s rooms.  Big Brother has some toys, cars, and learning manipulatives in his drawers for quiet time (since he doesn’t nap anymore) and Little Brother has some special stuffed animals…but beyond that, we don’t have many toys in their rooms.  We don’t have many toys on our main floor anymore either, so almost all the toys are located in our basement “kid’s oasis”.

Here is a look of the before and after:

Yeah, it was bad…and this was what it looked like “picked up” (you should have seen it last week).  The toys at the bottom of that heaping pile probably haven’t been played with in months.

Instead of putting all the toys back in the baskets, I decided to split them up and put them into two separate plastic tubs.  One tub will stay out in the playroom to be played with and another will be put up in storage.  Every few months, I’ll change the tubs so that the boys can having something “new to them” to play with.

You can see the toy tub in the picture below.  I also put the tubs of Legos and blocks WAY up high.  The boys are welcome to play with these whenever they want to, but sometimes they end up being dumped out (especially when friends come over) and then end up getting thrown across the room.  Boys.

As far as the upstairs goes, we have one basket of toys (and books):

And I also use our leather storage ottoman to keep puzzles and other learning toys:

We even managed to take a trash bag full of toys to Goodwill!  

Toys are pared down and organized…now onto tomorrow’s task!  Check back in the morning for your next assignment.  :)

Joining us a little late?  No problem!  Go here for each day’s challenge:

::  Day One:  Clothing and Closets

::  Day Two:  Toys

::  Day Three:  Books

::  Day Four:  Craft Supplies

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming so that Jenae can get her house her kid’s stuff in order.  Perhaps you’d like to join us?  Because nothing says “spring” like nicely organized closets, bookshelves, and playrooms!

I don’t know about you, but I can pretty much stay on top of my house when it is just my stuff I have to worry about.  My husband does a great job of hanging up his clothes and helping out with things here and there, so I can’t complain about his stuff either.  But my kids…oh my kids…dealing with their “stuff” day in and day out is enough to give me anxiety.

To keep the clutter in check, we typically purge and reorganize about twice per year:  Once right before Christmas before we prepare to bring more toys into our house and once in the spring when I have had enough!

Well, I’ve had enough…so it’s time to start purging and organizing!  And I have issues following through with things, so I figured if I asked you to join me perhaps I would be more accountable!  :)

Want to Join the Spring Cleaning:  Kid’s Edition Challenge?  It’s not so much “cleaning” as it is purging and organizing.

We’re going to break the organizing/purging into 4 days with a different focus for each day.

I’m going to try to work a day ahead so that I can have posts ready for you each morning.  :)

Are you ready to join us?

Today’s Assignment:  Clean out your children’s closets and drawers.  Pack away clothing that is too small or out of season.  Get rid of clothing you no longer want. 

I know, I know…it’s a lot!  If you have multiple children, you may want to do one child’s closet/drawers per day.  Since this is a task I couldn’t do while the boys napped/had quiet time, they watched way more than their daily quota of television.  It’s okay…it’s just one day.  :)

Many wonderful parents involve their children when they want to give things away, giving them an opportunity to exhibit generosity.  I don’t…even though I have attempted it in the past.  The reason being that my kids won’t play with a particular item for months (sometimes even years) but as soon as I say “Let’s give this away” they get about as possessive as Gollum in Lord of the Rings.  I’m chalking it up to a developmental stage and not worrying about their lack of generosity quite yet.  Needless to say, it is WAY EASIER (and way less drama) if I happily find another home for the items while the children are blissfully unaware of my shenanigans.  Ninety-five percent of the time they don’t even ask about the items that have been given away!

Here are the before and afters at our house:

Big Brother’s Closet

Big Brother’s Dresser:

Chest of drawers (forgot to take a before picture):

Little Brother’s Closet:

Little Brother’s drawer (no before pictures, just imagine it looking 100 times worse than this!):

Little Brother’s dresser…no before picture, but there was all sorts of stuff on the top of it.  And yes, those are newborn pictures on the wall.  The child is almost 3 1/2 years old…think it’s time for some new pictures?!?!  Maybe next week…  ;)

The nicely-made bed…I wonder how long it will stay that way!

Since we hand down Big Brother’s clothes to Little Brother, I store them in these Ziploc Flexible Totes.  They are easy to store and keep the clothes protected!

For the clothes that I want to get rid of, I record the items on a spreadsheet with the following information:  Date, Description, Estimated Retail Value, and where the item was donated to.  We then take this off our taxes at the end of the year.  I don’t do garage sales.  I could give you a million reasons why, but it mainly boils down to the fact that this works best for us.

The closets and dressers are done!  Now onto the next task tomorrow…stay tuned!  :)

Joining us a little late?  No problem!  Go here for each day’s challenge:

::  Day One:  Clothing and Closets

::  Day Two:  Toys

::  Day Three:  Books

::  Day Four:  Craft Supplies