Sunday, February 12, 2012

Making a Room In Progress a Presentable Room

Today's focus was making the room presentable for the arrival of my in-laws. My mother-in-law sleeps on the air mattress in this room, so it has to be tidy (no hiding things behind a closed door.) The sorting area that was made such an eye sore is right at the top of the stairs and was blocking the path to the restroom, so everything had to be addressed.

My husband had completed his sorting of luggage and bags in the closet. So this was what the room looked like when I started today.
 Notice the pillows and comforter have been left out of the closet for me to make the air mattress.
 
The trash bin looks full here, but there's one in the other room AND I added quite a bit more to this one as the day went on.

Although I didn't feel I had the time to go through the bookshelves this early in the month, I decided a quick pass of each shelf would allow me to dust and do an initial purge. About an hour later (one episode of "House") I was done with the bookshelves for now.

Next I set up the Cricut machine. I decided for now to put all of the Cricut supplies (I don't have many yet) in the right drawer of my desk. The Cricut is now sharing the temporary table with the t.v., but it work for me at this point. I brought back in the wheeled tower cart of paper and placed that in front of the Cricut. When it is not opened it does not block the Cricut. This also puts the tower of paper within reach when I'm scrapping at my desk. I also wheeled in the cart for kid friendly projects and cleaned out those drawers. I had paint tubes that were 12+ years old!

I took a deep breath and started to organize the scrapbooking shelves. Items are pretty much grouped together by like items. I know there is more organizing I want to do but it is now neat and semi-organized.

Then it was time to bring in the items still in the other room and find a home for the items that belong in the scrapbooking room. This was not nearly as hard as I expected now that the room was tidy and organized. I seemed to fly through this step and found myself spinning around in the other room wondering what happened to all of the items. The donation pile had grown too, plus I had a stack of boxes of Creative Memories product that I can sell!

A few months ago, I saw a great idea for ribbon organization on Pinterest. I just happened to have an extra pants hanger, so I ran upstairs with the hanger and put some ribbon on it. Fail! This idea works if your ribbon is all on the small bolts. Mine is not. This was not functional to try to get to the ribbon. Some would spin (and too easily on it's own) and some would not move at all.

I finally pulled out the decor organizing shelf I bought on sale at Michael's a year ago and hung that on the wall. There was just enough room for this ribbon and the few other bolts I found while sorting through the room. My husband came back in to help me hang some items on the wall. I'm a little short, so his added height, plus the second set of eyes and hands was helpful.



Not too bad. I think it looks presentable for my in-laws arrival in four days. It feels like a happy room already and I can't wait to sit down and scrapbook!

Why waste time? We decided since we were up there to set up the air mattress now and call the room "ready" for my mother-in-law.

The closet doesn't need to be accessible when she's staying in here, so I placed one of the nightstands and lamp from the guest room here. Now she has a table within reach for the remote and her water.


Now to post my first progress Link Up on the 29 Day Organizing Challenge page.

2 comments:

  1. Congratulations!

    I hope you don't mind a suggestion: it ould make the room looks less choppy if you could get the three bookcases all lined up on the same wall. Do you have room here the TV is now--and can that be moved to another all, perhaps?

    Just a thought.

    That's quite the impressive donate pile. Well done!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the suggestion! I like that idea! It would actually keep the scrapbooking supplies within arms reach too if I just moved that shelf unit to the right. Unfortunately, the cable outlet is right where the t.v. is, so unless I want a cable running in front of the doorway, I'm limited. I don't NEED a t.v. in there, but I like it and so does my MIL when she visits. I still may have to reassess and measure a bit. Now I'm thinking it would be nicer with the t.v. where the air mattress is and the air mattress where the 2 bookshelves are. I do like that my desk is in the nook by one of the windows, but if I just shifted left and put that shelf to the right I could accomplish both. You have me thinking! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete