Room rescue continues

After getting the school room looking pretty good, the rest of the converted garage looked horrible. I started today by organizing the toy shelves. What a job! I remember now why I only sort toys when the kids are NOT home. It took a lot of work, but we finally finished just in time to go to my parents for lunch with my grandparents. It was a wonderful break from working on the house.

Unfortunately, we couldn't eat forever, so I had to start cleaning again. I discovered that I don't even notice the tops of bookshelves anymore. There were entire dust zoos living on the tops of the shelves. NOTE TO SELF: Add cleaning high surfaces to rotation. I had some supplemental curriculum on the top of the toy shelves that needed to be moved into the library/music room. (That sounds much more grand than it is. We took 1/4 of a converted 2-car garage and lined the room with bookshelves and guitar hangers.) When I walked in the library, I was reminded that E was the last one to clean it, and he does not have the same standard of clean that I do. 

Time to start the overhaul on the library. We re-shelved books,   picked up puzzle pieces, found hidden junk boxes from the last several cleaning times, swept up large quantities of dust and dog hair, etc. Now I have a large laundry basket full of books to add to Library Thing and label. ( I love Library Thing. All of our books are entered in the system and labeled using the Dewey Decimal system. It is such a time-saver when I am looking for a specific book.) Since I wanted to move that box into the office, I had to start the whole cleaning process in the office. 

Before

I wish I could say that I had added a lot to the office while I was cleaning the other rooms, but I can't. There were a few things that belonged in the office, but not many. I am not sure exactly when it got this awful. No wonder I wasn't getting much accomplished. Because of D's birthday party here tomorrow, I cleaned surfaceshome only. I did not sort through my desk drawers, even though they really need it.

After

A definite improvement! I still have to sort the drawers and probably cover the shelves. After seeing how much better the schoolroom looks with covers, I want to add them to all open shelving in my house. A big bonus: I found several hundred dollars that had been missing for more than six months. YEAH! I had given up hope that we would ever find it.

I am completely worn out, but very happy with all the progress we have made this week. I'm looking forward to having more time to sew next week.

I finally conquered the mess in the school room!

The school room in our house gets almost constant use. The kids use it for crafts and school, and I use it for sewing and crafts. There is so much stuff packed in there that I just couldn't stand it anymore. I wish I had thought to take a picture before we started, but I didn't. Here is one after I asked E to start taking things off the shelves and sorting them.

He only heard the "take things off the shelves." Sorting never occurred to him. He was so kind as to leave me the honor of throwing away gum wrappers, scratch paper and used tissues. I don't know how I ever be able to repay him!  The big pile of stuff on the floor was dropped off by my mom. She was cleaning out closets and knew I could refashion their discards into something adorable. I was so excited (Until I realized that I had to have somewhere to store it all!).

After sorting and putting things up for several hours, I got things usable but not pretty. 

The open shelves were still driving me crazy. We built them several years ago to use in another room. They work great for storage, but they always look cluttered. I decided that they had to have covers ASAP.

To go along with my "spend no money unless there is no other possibility" plan for this year, I made the curtain rods and holders out of PVC pipe and fittings. (Since my dh does irrigation repair work, we always have spare PVC at the house.) I was so surprised at how easy it was to work with PVC. It cuts easily and is very light weight. No power tools required - a real plus since my helpers were 1, 3, 5, and 7 years old. My mom gave me an old sheet set that had almost enough fabric for curtains. I found an old duvet cover in my stash and used it for the contrast. I severely underestimated how long it would take to make the curtains. It was all easy sewing, but there was a lot of it.

Total cost - $0
Time - way more than expected
Satisfaction level - Very high!

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I stashed my stash tonight

I pick up a huge black trash bag full of fabric from my stash at my parents' house on Tuesday so I could start working on quilts and D's birthday gifts. (Yes. I really can't store all of my fabric at my house. Thank goodness my parents have a big garage!) When I got home, I realized that there was no room to store any of it on my shelves. YIKES! I started cutting Tuesday night, but still had a lot of fabric that could not stay in the bag on the schoolroom/craftroom floor. Tonight I pulled all 8 baskets of fabric off my shelves and resorted, folded, and crammed them back into the baskets. Everything is now organized and fits on the shelves except for the pieces I have already cut and 4 pillowcases and 2 men's shirts to turn into dresses for the girls. I even stopped and sewed a quick fleece pillowcase for M out of the scraps from a blanked I made him over 2 years ago. He was so excited! I am really hoping to start piecing my first string quilt tomorrow. I think everything I need is cut and ready to go.

Board game art with storage

I absolutely adore this board game solution posted on Infarrantly Creative. Now all I need to do is find the wall space for our games!

Thread organizer

I have to make several of these thread organizers from Instructables. I am so sick of having to search in several places to find the thread I need and then search somewhere else for the bobbin.