I'm DONE!!!

I finally finished up the second part of my 30 day Organizational Challenge: Jake's art/craft area. Just to refresh your memory, here are the before pictures.

Once I cleared everything out, Jake and Emma had already repurposed the space for Hide and Seek. Thankfully, I was able to toss/donate enought stuff that one whole cabinet remained empty!

And here is the end result:

Thanks to advice from Laura herself, I got these oversized drawers that were just the right depth to fit into the cabinet. The top drawer has a container for playdoh, a container for playdoh toys, his container of foam stickers, and a bag of lacing cards. The bottom drawer has all of his coloring and activity books and a box for his crayons and markers. The skinny box on the right has 12x12 scrapbooking paper and scraps that I don't use anymore. There are 2 poly envelopes on the left, 1 for stickers and 1 for loose coloring sheets. Finally, the magazine holder has foam sheets, cardboard sheets, blank paper, and old magazines to cut up.

This is the drawer that's directly above the cabinet. It has the stuff that we don't use quite as often so it didn't need to be with the stuff in the main cabinet.

There are a few questions that Laura wanted us to answer to see what we got out of the challenge:

1. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and were you able to overcome it?

For me, the hardest part was falling into my familiar trap of over-organizing. I was trying to hard to come up with labels for ever little thing instead of coming up with categories that things would fit into. Laura helped me out by sending me a great article that made me realize I was making things harder on myself by trying to pigeonhole every last thing.

2. Tell us what kind of changes/habits you have put into place in order for your area/room to maintain its new order?

Everything is labeled now so that whoever goes in there, they will be able to find things easily (and put them back just as easily).

3. What did you do with the "stuff" you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?

There was a whole bunch of stuff that I threw out - dried up playdoh, empty sticker sheets, unusable paper, unfinished projects that I knew would stay that way. I was able to donate playdoh and some toys to a local daycare center that was more than happy to take them off my hands.

4. What was the biggest lesson you learned from this experience?

That there is no reason to keep every scrap of every piece of paper because "someday" it may get used. More than likely, "someday" will never come, so it's easier on EVERYBODY to just get rid of it. If it doesn't serve a purpose (and won't anytime soon), there is absolutely no reason to keep it.

5. Now that you have completed the PROCESS, do you think having and keeping your space organized will make a difference in your life?

Definitely. This is just a stepping stone for teaching the kids about a lot more than organization. By teaching them to pick up after themselves and where things need to go, I really feel like this will help out as far as their independence and respect is concerned. Because everything is labeled, Jake is already realizing that if he wants to color, all he has to do is go get the stuff out himself instead of needing to come get me to help him. He's really starting to take better care of things, because he sees how important it is.