The Play Area

 And here is the grand reveal of the play area! (Sorry for the dark pictures, it is in the lower level and there are no windows.) This has always been a bit of a catch-all area. It helped when we got the EXPEDIT shelf from IKEA, but I still just needed to organize and purge to make it work. (You can see some of my inspiration here.)

 Now, it is a happy area, that the girls enjoy playing in and I enjoy looking at. This is saying a lot. Check out this awful before picture! (Now you know that I am perfectly honest with you in my blogging. I am airing our dirty laundry house with you all. Consider yourself loved!)

Ahh, that's better! I think it is partly due to organization, but also due to the fact that I finally cleaned it and you better believe I am keeping on the girls to keep it that way!!

(Do you see the photo bombers up above??) I mostly used items that we had already. I did buy the MAMMUT stools at IKEA. The rug under the table is from Walmart. I purchased the easel at a second hand store earlier this summer. And we have had the table downstairs since Peachy was little. It is actually an end table similar to the one in this bundle also from Walmart.

The cork boards are made from spray painted frames to which I added cork panels. (I have had good luck finding frames on clearance at Hobby Lobby and Michaels. You just have to imagine how good they will look with some spray paint.) The chalk board frame is made with chalk board paint. You can read about it here.

As long as I was doing work in the lower level, I added a collage above where I do my ironing. The print is from this great Etsy seller whom I had the privilege of meeting a sale we did together. Again the frame is a spray painted one that I added some extra color to. The other frames I picked up at Kohls at the beginning of the summer. (It looks like the exact frames I got are no longer available, but there are some other ones here.)

I also finally got some pictures of Cream up in their bedroom and her name on the wall. I guess you have to be a member of the family for two years before you get those honors.

Hope you like what I have done. What plans do you have to beautify an area in your home?

The H.O.H. Project: Organizing Part 1: the Kitchen

You can read more of my Making Our House Our Home Series here:
Introduction: Love Your Home
Part One: Making a Plan
Part Two: De-Cluttering Part 1
Part Three: De-Cluttering Part 2 (Digital)
In the next few House Our Home posts I am going to share organization ideas with each post focusing in a different area of the house. Some of these are ideas that we use to organize our home and some are good ideas that I found online and wanted to share. I would love, love, love for you to share any ideas that you have!

1) This is a small cupboard next to the microwave in our kitchen. Since it is so narrow it makes it hard to keep bigger items in, but is perfect for spices and other small kitchen necessities. The bottom shelf has a tiered storage system like this one:

Source

The next shelf up has a basket that I purchased from Target to hold small miscellaneous items. Like my immersion blender and its parts, my bench scrapper, and my pastry blender. The basket keeps it all contained and allows me to pull it out when I need it.
Since the top shelf is hard to reach, I keep large spice bottles and other items I don't need regularly.

2) We have a large lazy susan in the corner of our counter. I love it as it can hold lots and lots. However, lazy susans can easily become disorganized and a mess. (Believe me, I know.) A few years ago I purchased these great handled baskets at Wal-Mart. The fit perfectly in our lazy susan tray. I keep like items in each of the baskets. One is for our K-cups, one for baking items, one for grain items, and one for things like nuts and chocolate chips. Not only do they serve the purpose of holding items, they also work as dividers for the tray. I try to keep each section in between with other like items.

3) After moving into our home, I quickly realized that it didn't have the cupboard space that I thought it did. So, we had to figure out ways to store our kitchen items outside of the cupboards. I found these large glass jars with lids at Wal-Mart and Target to keep my flours and sugars in. I have been meaning to label them since I got them, but haven't yet. There are some great ideas out there. I received the hinged glass jar as a gift and decided to use it to keep my cupcake liners in.

4) These two additions were made also due to lack of cupboard space. We bought an inexpensive shelf to keep our small appliances in. It isn't the most asthetic item in our house, but it does its job.
The sippy and bottle rack is also a Wal-Mart purchase. The fact that the unit is made out of bamboo makes me feel a little better about having it out on the counter.

Here are some great kitchen organization ideas that I would like to use some day.

Source

1) I love this idea. I currently keep these items in a drawer. If I had this I would be able to free that drawer up!

Source

2) I love how organized this pantry is. The baskets and various shelf heights are awesome.

Source

3) This is a great post all about organizing the little things like spices and decorating items in the kitchen. Would love to have a house this organized some day!

How about you? How do you orgnaize in your kitchen?

The H.O.H. Project: De-Cluttering Part 2

You can read more of my Making Our House Our Home Series here:
Introduction: Love Your Home
Part One: Making a Plan
Part Two: De-Cluttering Part 1
So last week I discussed the most obvious of de-cluttering, physical stuff. No doubt about it, the physical stuff in our lives can really cluttering things up. In our homes, cars, and beyond. However, there was more than the physical stuff that I knew was cluttering up my life. I also had loads and loads of digital clutter.
You know when your email in box is full and you end up deleting most of it? That is clutter. We don't always think of it because it isn't sitting right there staring us in the face all day long, but it takes up valuable time. In order to streamline my inbox, I unsubscribed from almost every mailing list I was on. (If you don't know, most mass emails have a link at the bottom that allows you to be removed from the list. In some cases you just click the link and you are taken off and at other times you have to enter your email or click a button that says that you do really want to unsubscribe.) This de-cluttering actual served two purposes, it cleaned out my inbox AND it took away many of the temptations to go and buy more stuff. If I don't have a coupon to shop at a store, I probably won't go to that store and buy things that I don't need. If I don't know what the daily deal sites are selling, I won't go and order it.
I also cut way back on the amount of blogs I read. I love reading blogs. I love the great ideas blogs provide for my life. However, they were taking up too much of my time. If I didn't check my Google reader for a few  days I could have hundreds of blog entries to catch up on. It was just too much. So I now I have only a handful of blogs in my reader. It is much more relaxing this way and takes up less of my time.
We also de-cluttered and organized our computer and its files. We bought an external hard drive and backed up our entire computer. This way we can keep less on our laptop and also not worry about losing files if something would happen to our computer. (Thankfully Mr. Cherry took care of this stuff since he is the computer guru in this house.)

The H.O.H. Project: De-Cluttering Part 1

You can read more of my Making Our House Our Home Series here:
Introduction: Love Your Home
Part One: Making a Plan
Most often when we think of clutter we think of excess stuff. Physical items that take up space. While this is one form of clutter, I have found that there are other types of clutter that can fill our lives. Today I will focus on reining in some of the physical clutter that fills our homes. In future posts, I will talk to the other clutter that can fill our lives.

Organizing to de-clutter: Bins are your friends!

If you want a more organized house, you need to make sure that the amount of stuff you have comfortably fits in your home. The old saying, "A place for everything and everything in its place," couldn't be more true. If you have something that doesn't have a place it is homeless clutter. If it has a home that is clearly labeled and easy to find, it is really an asset. If you have a home with lots of room for storage you probably will be able to save more things than if your home is lacking in storage areas.
In our current home we have lots of great living space, but are lacking in good storage space. While systematically going through each area of our home, I was really ruthless. I knew that we had to limit the amount of things we were storing in our home. At times this meant getting rid of the "we might use this someday" items. At this point in our lives it was more valuable for me to get rid of it then to save it in the chance that we might need it in the future.

The back of the van loaded to head to a children's shop.

When it does come to getting rid of something you will need to decide how you are going to get it out of your home. I used these sources (and in this order) to de-clutter:

1) Craigslist (or other online site): Great for bigger items that are still in great shape. In my experience this is where you will get the most money for your used items. And don't be afraid to re-list your items for a while. Your item may have gotten buried or the future owner just wasn't on that day.
2) Rummage Sale: Great for littler items that are in good condition like toys and clothing. Also great for items that didn't sell online.
3) Resale Store: We have several stores in the area that will buy your items (mostly clothes and children's items) from you to sell in their stores. Just know that these stores are usually picky about the quality of items that they will buy.
4) Donation Store: When you have something that you don't want to go through the hassle of selling or hasn't sold, but you still think someone will be able to use it, donate it. I would much rather have someone use it than no one at all.
5) Garbage: Your final option. When you have something that just isn't worth it to anyone, toss it!
I have been making use of all five methods to get rid of lots of clutter in our home. We decided at the start that any money we made would be put toward the purchase of some furniture/organizational items for our home. It makes it fun to add money to the envelope knowing that each item I sell will bring us closer to our goal.
I still have some areas to work through, but it feels great to have de-cluttered this much already. We had company last weekend and a birthday party here this weekend and it really was so much easier getting ready for both without so much stuff around.

The H.O.H. Project: Making a Plan Part 1

Once I got the idea to really work on making our house the home we want it to be, I knew that I would need two main things before I could actually start. 1) Get Mr. Cherry on board with me. 2) Sit down together and make a plan.
The first wasn't a problem at all. Mr. Cherry isn't a stuff kind of guy. In fact, he is kind of the opposite of a stuff guy. I, however, am a stuff girl. I like stuff and I like to buy stuff. So when I broached the topic of de-cluttering and organizing our home it took him less than a second to not only jump on the bandwagon, but start navigating it. Getting your household on the same page when it comes to reorganizing is important for several reasons. There are going to be some big changes going on. You want to make sure that this doesn't take anyone by surprise. You are going to need some help in instituting your plans. You are going to appreciate having someone there to hold you accountable. If you have older children you will want to bring them into the plan as well.
Once your family is on board, it is time to make a plan. Mr. Cherry and I set aside an evening once the girls were in bed to talk about our goals and get some plans down on paper. We discussed areas of the house that needed work. We made a list of projects that needed to be completed. And we noted items that we could get rid of to create more room in our home. It is important to remember here that your home is more than the four walls that create your house. Your home is also the people who live within these walls. We included on our lists personal goals and family goals to reflect this.
I have been making great progress in the de-cluttering department. I will share more on that in the next few entries.

Making our House our Home: Introduction