My Great Clean Out!

Today I'm joining in on a little clean up / organization blog party that Anne-Marie of 10 Rooms has put together! 

When Anne-Marie emailed me about taking part in "The Great Clean Out", I just knew I had to say yes... what better motivation to get my butt in gear and start cleaning and organizing? I also knew right away what room I would be tackling... My Craft Room / Office / Laundry Room...

Yeah - it was looking pretty rough. Left over Christmas pieces were stuffed in boxes in here. Construction materials had been placed here to stay out of the main basement living area. Basically, it had been a giant catch all for anything that didn't have a proper home.

With me back to classes as of last Monday (I'm soooo excited about my class this term!), I knew I needed to whip this space into shape so that I would have somewhere to escape to and get my work done. My first step was just to get EVERYTHING out... which meant relocating it all (with the help of B) into our living area. My #1 rule was that anything that didn't belong, was not to go back in! I knew that by keeping it out in the open in our living space, I would be more motivated to find a proper place for everything. After running the vaccum around quickly, I got to work organizing.

With the help of B, we moved my brand new IKEA "As-Is" dresser into the spot that was previously occupied by our big, ol' ugly filing cabinet (which we no longer needed).

There was a lot of stuff to sort out and organize. Old school projects, paper (LOTS OF PAPER!), crafty items, fabric and other samples... and pretty much any other thing you can possibly think of. 

It kept me busy for quite some time, and I definitely did not complete this in a couple of nights, it was an on going process. Items were moved, and moved again. At this point it is by no means "perfect", but it's exactly what I set out to accomplish for now. It has more storage, and it's a lot more functional than it was before - take a look at the before and after...

I can actually get INTO the room again... and with all that new drawer space, everything has a home!

The top left drawer contains ribbons, my blog cards and some other crafty items (and yes, it could still use some organization... I'll be working on that). The drawer on the right is looking a little better with a utensil organizer keeping all of my pens, pencils, markers, etc. nice and organized. This will make looking for a pen and other writing utensils a lot easier!

The next drawer down is home to all of my paper. The far left is craft and painting papers, the middle is blank and lined paper with some smaller pads down at the bottom. The right side is all notebooks - yeah, there are a lot of those around here.

The third drawer down I have dedicated to "gift wrapping/giving materials"... kind of. You see blank note cards, some tissue paper and a LOT of tape... that could also use a little extra organization.

This drawer holds a lot of my old writing stuff. I used to be big into writing poems and short stories, and they are all housed here. I am hoping to condense everything so I can free this drawer up... I have a feeling my bottom drawer contents will only continue to expand in the future...

My fabric drawer doesn't look very exciting right now, but they are all organized by colour, and my neutrals ended up at the top. 

My cleaning also got B motivated, and last weekend while I was back home spending some time with my family, he made some more progress on finishing up my desk. He finished painting it white, got the final trim attached, put up my cork board and attached my pistons... check it out in action...

I have a bunch of stuff that I stumbled across that needs to be added to my inspiration board up there, but I think that it is so perfect! What a lucky girl I am to have B make me such a fabulous desk! 

So, that's everything that went back in... what came out? Well, of course the old desk and filing cabinet - both of which are waiting to be relocated to my parents house. All of the Christmas stuff that had ended up in there was packed up when we did a proper clean up after the holidays, and then this...

Quite a lot to toss and recycle, as well as quite a few things that we will donate / add to our garage sale pile (we are determined to make a little bit of cash off all of the extra / unused stuff we have laying around).

Organizing, cleaning and purging our home of things always calms me down and makes me feel good, so thank you to Anne-Marie for lighting the fire under me, and getting me going on cleaning up this room! I'm already dreaming of all of the great projects I'll work on in here and all of the great blog posts I can write from my nice clean desk! Make sure you head over to Anne-Marie's blog to see her Great Clean Out and find out who else participated!

Have you taken on a major cleaning / organization project recently, or do you have one coming up? I would love to hear some of your best organizational tips!