04 Oct

ISO: Organization Inspiration

Posted by: Lizzie

I have a problem. And it lives in my kitchen. No, it’s not the 5-year-old ganking snacks from the pantry. My problem is this little area of my kitchen called The Bill Table. There has never been a chair here for anyone to really sit down to pay bills. In fact, I can’t remember the last time we even paid a bill by mail. So I think we should rename this area of the kitchen The Desk of Random Shit.

Mail only graces The Desk when we’re tired of looking at it on the kitchen island, fish tank, or if it is found on the floor. Even then, it is usually unopened and about six months old. We have about three or four desk organizers on The Desk. Can you tell?

In the cabinets, I have an old school label maker, piles of greeting cards, and half of my recipe collection (the other half is in another cabinet that looks eerily similar to this one). There are also a couple binders that I think were supposed to organize household finances, but now hide months of bill statements that we probably don’t need anymore.

So what am I going to do with this? I DON’T KNOW!!! I decided to tackle this project after adding the “Homemaking” category to my Stumbleupon Toolbar. I was taken to a cute blog called I’m an Organizing Junkie. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am absolutely, without a doubt, NOT an organizer. I have all good intentions of organizing and keeping things clutter-free, but I get bored with my systems or they fall apart, and then The Desk (and the rest of my house) looks like crap again.

I think my first project, though small, will be to make some boxes for all the school papers that the boys bring home. I forgot how much stuff comes home from Kindergarten! The sentimentalist in me wants to keep everything that Aiden has done, but the realist in me knows that I should not hang on to each worksheet.

My favorite idea so far is using cereal boxes for magazine holders. I might go crazy overboard with this, but for now, I just want to make a couple for Aiden’s Kindergarten stuff, some of my knitting booklets, and whatever else I can find to organize just for an excuse to make another box. I love this idea because it is free and if I feel like it, I can cover the boxes in cute fabric to make them pretty.

What are your favorite organization sites/blogs? Where do you find inspiration for cleaning and decluttering your home/office/craft space?

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2 Responses to “ISO: Organization Inspiration”

  1. Dewey Says:
    October 6th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Ha ha, as a naturally organized Virgo type, there’s no way I’d need a magazine cereal box, because magazines are CLUTTER and I recycle them the second I finish reading them.

    Maybe the TOUCH ONLY ONCE rule of mail would help you with the desk of random shit. Here’s the rule: each piece of mail you get needs to be thrown away, filed or dealt with/paid. You file things that you might need again if a problem comes up, like account statements. If it needs to be dealt with/paid, you do it immediately, because you touch all mail ONLY ONCE.

    It’s sort of fun, that rule, because it’s like a challenging game every time you get the mail. You have this mail in your hand and you’re like Ok, how do I never touch this again? The only exception for us is Netflix, because obviously that has to be touched again to send it back after watching.

  2. Suzy Q Homemaker » Blog Archive Says:
    July 15th, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    [...] had accumulated and you can almost see the organizers again.  What I didn’t show you in the before pictures was the lower cabinet.  It’s full of framed pictures that we still haven’t put back up [...]

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