Organizing Time

I am starting to think I really need to take a class in time management. I am discovering that all other forms of organizing will not ever be successful until I can successfully manage my time. I may get started on something, but it rarely gets completed, and if it does, it does not stay nice and neat for long.

My husband and I often talk about creating schedules, cleaning schedules, meal schedules, scheduling "my" time, and "his" time. But never have we really stuck to one even if we halfway made one. I don't like rules, and I don't like restrictions. I don't like sticking to schedules because I like being flexible, if tonight is meatloaf night, and the neighbors are outside, I don't want to be stuck inside cooking while everyone else is outside visiting. So I really don't like the idea of a schedule in that way. But I am thinking that some kind of schedule is going to have to be made, and we can be flexible with it when necessary, but we also need to really try to stick to somewhat of a routine.

Right now as it is, I have so many projects I want to do, so much cleaning I need to do, etc....that when I have a some time I am so stretched in all directions, that I don't really accomplish anything. I am so stressed constantly over all the many things that need to be done, I can't focus long enough on just ONE thing to actually finish it...and half the time I can't concentrate enough to even get started!

So I would love tips on how you manage your time, or examples of schedules that work for you (or that you are trying out and tweaking, like I will be for a while I'm sure!).

C25K Drop Out

So I am a Couch to 5k drop out! I haven't jogged since August 18. It is just too hard right now to find a good time to go jogging.

So instead I found something that I really enjoy - ZUMBA! A neighbor introduced me to a place here that has hour long Zumba classes for $5 and childcare for $2/child! So it is affordable and fun! I have gone 3 times so far, and really look forward to going again. I hate working out, and this is a great way to work out, without it being about how long you jog or how many push ups you can do. Being in a class with others also helps me push harder and makes it so that I won't give up in the middle of a workout!

Other than that, I haven't really gotten very far with my organizing. I did get my office floor all picked up so that I can vacuum later (boys are napping right now). And a while back I started reorganizing my file system, so mainly I had to pick up a bunch of folders and papers that came out of my file cabinet that still needs to be gone through, so I have them all stacked on a shelf.

I really wish I could just take everything out of many rooms in my house and completely start over including building shelving, etc that fits my needs. But that is not possible right now, so it is kind of discouraging.

However my hubby got an offer for a new job! We are so excited but he won't be able to start until October 4th, because first he has to accept the offer letter and then wait on drug testing/background check. But at least there is a light at the end of the tunnel! He will have to leave at some point for at least a couple weeks for some training, but will be well worth it. It should be better insurance and will be a bit better income! Hopefully that will give us a little extra to do some house projects I want to do.

Week 1 Update

Well I started the Couch to 5k last Monday. The first day was really hard I actually only managed to do the jog/walk alternating for the first 10 minutes and then walked most of the last 10 minutes with about a minute jog in the middle.

So I did W1D2 on Wednesday and did the whole 20 minutes. Was supposed to do it again Friday, but we went out to dinner and had big meals too late to go jogging at night on Friday and Saturday. So I did W1D3 on Sunday. Went the whole 20 minutes and got a faster pace, but still wasn't ready to move on to Week 2. So tonight I did what I am going to call W1D4. I haven't decided whether I will do another day of Week 1 or move onto Week 2.

I also have an update on DH's job situation. He did not get into the police academy. He applied today at another job where a friend of his works, and hoping to hear back something soon. It would not be nearly as big of increase in pay, but hopefully enough to take a little stress off of us.

As far as organizing goes, I haven't gotten a lot accomplished there, but I did get my first Christmas present made! I really hope to make all Christmas presents, and so I am starting early and hope that I don't have to do any last minute gifts this year!

Couch to 5k

Ok, so part of this getting organized, also needs to be about time management, and about me getting in better shape in every way, not just getting my house in shape, but my body too.

I really wanted to be back at my pre-preg weight before getting pregnant again, and I still have 10 pounds to go. But what bothers me more than that, is the extra inches that are on my thighs/hips.

I just attempted to go swim suit shopping and it is AWFUL!

We are also planning to maybe try for baby number 2 in the winter, so I really need to get in better shape before that, so that I will be in good enough shape to try to keep from gaining 50lb like last time.

So I have decided to join Jolene's Couch to 5k challenge over on http://nthnbutmoonshine.blogspot.com/

I really hope I can stick with it, I am hoping my DH will do this with me, hoping maybe we can borrow our neighbors jogging stroller and see how it goes. If we like it, we may have to buy one.

I also got out my old pedometer today, because I want to try to start walking more and making sure I get in more steps. Today I am going to just kind of see what an average day is for me and then I will add to it for a daily goal.

Hopefully I will also start doing elliptical or my Jillian Michaels video on off days from running. But right now I am just going to try to start out slow with the walking and the couch to 5k program.

Laundry Room Solution

I am finally back, and working on organizing. I am currently working on organizing my office/craft room, yet again. The February organizing obviously did not last very long.

But today I am going to share a solution for our small laundry room we did a while back, that has helped a lot. We have a very small laundry area that is basically a walk-through to our garage with a washer on one side and dryer on the other. They do have cabinets above each, but no where to put laundry. I always ended up with dirty dish rags and towels stacked on the washer or dryer while waiting to add up enough for a load.

So I found some wire baskets (the stackable kind you find in the pantry shelf isle at Walmart). They came in sets of 2. First I only bought one set, but liked it so much I had to search all over until I finally found another set for the other side.

So now I have hanging baskets underneath my cabinets. My sister liked the idea so much, she got some and hung them in her own laundry room!

Above my washer I have a baskets for dirty bibs, rags, towels, and one for my husbands work rags.
Above my dryer I have baskets for my son's clean bibs and one where I store my place mats, cloth napkins, and tablecloth.
First I tried to hang bibs inside a cabinet, but he has so many that they didn't really fit well on one hook, so I like this a lot better.

Half a year almost gone...

I can't believe it is almost the halfway mark for 2010, and I am not even close to being halfway organized.

I am working a little each day though boxing up things for the garage sale and sending them on over to my sister's house where we will be having the sale. It is at least making me feel somewhat productive.

My husband takes his entrance exams on Saturday for the Police Academy! I am so nervous and anxious, and I hate wishing the summer away, but I NEED to know if he gets accepted. At least Saturday we will know if he even has a chance at getting in. If he passes the tests I think I will be able to take a short breath before holding it in again while we wait for background checks and interviews and such to be done.

In the meantime I became a ChaCha guide to try to make a little extra cash. I got to start yesterday and I have only earned $7. It is a bit disappointing with the amount of time I have spent answering questions. I don't expect to get rich, but I would like to make more than $2 an hour. I really would like to earn some extra money sewing, or even baking, but I don't think that is going to happen. With as little money as I am making on ChaCha, I feel like I should be cleaning or organizing instead, but now that I started I feel like I at least need to make enough to make it worth cashing out, they charge $2 for the "pay me now" option and in order to get a "monthly" payment you have to have made at least $100!

I don't currently have any organizing pictures; however, I will share the cake I made for my son's 1st birthday:

Leaving Azeroth

My husband and I have been playing World of Warcraft for nearly 3 years now. It is now official that we have both canceled our subscriptions. We are hoping that my husband will be accepted to the police academy and then with the increase in income we can get everything caught up and hopefully get our subscriptions back. Right now though, it was just money that we really didn't have to be spending on it, and it took time that we really should have spent doing other things. We never sit down and watch movies together anymore because we always spent that time playing WoW. And we have a stack of borrowed movies, so it will be nice to sit down and watch movies together again. It will also help me get done more on my crafting or cleaning, because I won't be able to sit down and play during naptime.

The thought of not being able to play is much worse than actually not playing. I haven't even logged on in a couple weeks because I have been busy with other things, and I hate paying for something I am not using a lot, but it's hard to think that Saturday night we won't be able to log on and run some heroics with the guild.

We will be back however, I most definitely will not want to miss out on the new expansion, but I am going to try to enjoy my summer away from video games!

Update

We have been pretty busy around here lately, and spending a lot of time outside enjoying the warmer weather, so I apologize for abandoning this blog, yet again. I am also trying to get my craft blog going, but haven't had a lot of time for that either.

As far as organizing goes, I haven't gotten a ton done, but I did go through my clothes drawers, and now have 2 empty drawers, so my husband can now have some space to put his clothes! I have a big stack of clothes that will be going into a garage sale, and I'm not completely done going through clothes yet!

I am trying to work out more. I got Jillian Michael's 30-day shred, but have only done it 3 times in 2 weeks, which isn't great, but things keep coming up, like the weekend after I got it we were going to the zoo, and boy was I sore after the first time, so I decided I should skip a few days because I didn't want to be miserable hobbling around the zoo! Then of course holiday weekend, so I didn't work out. Now we will be out of town this weekend, so hopefully I will workout again tomorrow (I worked out today, YAY), then hopefully maybe just do some walking/jogging while we are out of town. We may be going to another zoo, so at least that will be a lot of walking.

And a big update is that my husband is going to try to get into the police academy. It is something that he has wanted to do for a while, and it will be a big increase in pay and much better benefits. He has to take the written and physical test in about 2 weeks, and then they start the background checks, etc. This would be a great opportunity for him and help us as a family.

After we get back from our trip I will be spending the next couple weeks clearing out as much as I can for a garage sale, so hopefully I will have something to blog about then!

Craft Blog Update

So I couldn't really get used to wordpress, so I ended up moving my craft blog to blogger. The new address for my craft blog is:

http://livelovedreamcreate.blogspot.com/

Hope you like it!

I have a couple small organizing things to post about soon and need to upload pictures from my son's 1st birthday party, but I may be posting those over on the craft blog, since it involves a few crafty things I did.

Sorry I haven't kept up with this much, I am really hoping to get into the swing over organizing and decluttering this summer. We are planning a garage sale for June, so I definitely need to get to work!

Yay for Spring

Our utilities are split into our electric/water/city all on one bill, and our gas (heating/water heater) are on another bill.

In the winter our gas bill has been over $100/month. This past month I have tried to keep our heating/ac off. I was quite proud of myself for making it through a 90 degree day and I still didn't turn on the ac. Having central air has definitely spoiled me as I grew up in a house with only a swamp cooler. So I am going to try to go for windows/fan/being outside before I go for turning on the air. There have also been some cooler nights, but I like it to be cool at night, so we have just been turning on a little heater in M's room at night instead of heating the whole house.

So I got our gas bill yesterday and it was only 23.32! I am so happy as I was trying to over budget and had entered 100 for that for our budget this month! This will definitely help us catch up.

Now if we can just get our electric/water bill down!

Craft Blog

This post is probably going to turn into a long rambling introduction into my new craft blog, so in case you don't want to read it, I'll start with the link:

http://lovedreamcreate.wordpress.com/

I'll start off by saying it is a wordpress blog because neither lovedreamcreate nor love-dream-create were available on blogger, although I have checked both, and one has never had a post and the other it says doesn't exist. Oh well I guess I will give wordpress a try.

The reason why I had to switch blog sites is because I have spent a long time trying to come up with a name for a craft blog and a logo to go with it, because it's just not the same if I don't have some cute little logo to go on the top of my blog...you can tell how great I am at that right? :) So today I finally came up with this and what I think will be a cute logo, I just have to figure out how to make it digital. I drew up a sketch, not well, but it gets the idea across, just need to play around with photoshop to see if I can make it, or find someone who can! So you see if I stuck with blogger, it would be another 6 months before I got a craft blog going, because it would take me that long to come up with another name, and then I still might not be so lucky for that name to be available!

If you haven't been able to tell already, I am a fairly pessimistic person, who also gets discouraged easily. I spend a lot of time thinking about what other people can do or what they have or how they are, and think how I want all of those things. I don't really ever sit back and think about things that I CAN actually do, and mostly I am afraid to do things, because, yes, I'm afraid of failing, or I'm afraid no one will like me and so on. I am also a perfectionist, and never see anything I do as good enough, and I really need to quit being so hard on myself and start being proud of the things that I do. So this craft blog is about me attempting to step out of my shell and actually start doing things instead of just thinking about them.

I don't really know much about using wordpress, so it may take a while for me to get the layout set up, but I do have an intro blog up, and will hopefully be posting some project pictures tomorrow. I am a little sad that I can't find a "followers" thing on wordpress, but interested to learn about the features it has.

I hope to see you over there!

Some Organizing At Last

So I started this blog to post my progress in organizing, but have been stuck in a rut for the past couple months.

It's actually amazing how little time it would take, if I could just find the motivation to do these things.

Yesterday, I decided it was time I finally clean the shelves in the living room that have been piled with stuff for months.

I actually took these before pictures on March 11, and it has taken me til May 2nd to actually do anything about it!

The top of our entertainment center:
Before:
After:

Top of my DVD shelf:
Before:
After:

Bookshelf:
Before:
After:

Sorry the boxes are blocking the bottom shelf, it still looks kind of bad, but I'm not exactly sure what to do with the bottom shelf to make it look great, but the books aren't leaning like they are in the before pic.

Getting these little things done has definitely motivated to try to do more little things, because they really don't take all that long, and it makes me feel good to have accomplished something.

New Month, New Start

So I have decided that I am going to start looking at each month as a new start. A time to evaluate the past month, and make adjustments to start moving in the right direction, with finances, time, organizing, etc.

A few things going on this month...our neighborhood is going to have it's first block party! We are so glad to have great neighbors.

Our 2 year wedding anniversary is on May 17, and our baby boy turns 1 on the 18th! We are having his birthday party on the 22nd, which is also my sister's b-day.

I can't believe my baby is already going to turn 1, but I am excited about his party, and am loving planning for it! I think I have discovered a new love in party planning!

So yesterday was National Scrapbooking Day, and while I didn't exactly work on my scrapbooks, I used my awesome Animal Crackers paper stack from DCWV to create an awesome birthday banner, for my little man's jungle themed birthday party.

I am thinking of other ideas for decorations and such too, and look forward to showing you all after his party!

I will also have pictures soon of some organizing I have done today! Got lots to do to get ready for having all the company over for M's party!

I also have decided we need to somewhat start over financially. I use Quicken to track our finances, and have made a new file starting May 1st. We are going to start tracking better and trying to stick more to a budget. We are not going to eat out unless it is socially, when family is here, or we go out with friends.

Well the family is heading outside to enjoy the evening, so I will go join them! Hope everyone's having a great weekend!

Seriously Slacking

So here I am again, apologizing, for seriously slacking on my blog.

I haven't really been able to get out of my slump that I have been in, and was just dragged down more last night when I realized, we barely have enough money in our checking account to cover our first of the month mortgage payment (though pay day is Sat) I need to pay the bill in the next couple days. So we are having to dip into our cash stash to keep our bank account afloat.

We have been talking about cutting back, but have been so busy we haven't put a lot of effort in, that maybe we needed this wake up call.

I also went to the dentist last week, and we discussed taking out my wisdom teeth in June, but with the way the money thing is going right now, I don't feel comfortable taking $1500 out of savings to pay for it, so I believe it will be put on hold until next spring. Hubby needs his removed too, but says mine are of priority, since my family has invested a lot in my teeth, having had braces and all.

Other than that, I haven't really accomplished many other projects, I have started many but not completed anything. I have a ton of things to accomplish before my baby boy's first birthday party in May! His invitations are being mailed out today, so at least that is accomplished. But I have a ton of house keeping/organizing to do and need to get his birthday banner and decorations made.

Hubby and I are trying to work out a schedule so that I can have more time sewing, so that I can try to get some more items up on our Etsy, and in a local shop where we have some items for sell, so that hopefully we can somewhat get that up and going to bring in some extra money.

We are planning a garage sale for June also, so hopefully I can get rid of some clutter and make a little extra cash.

I haven't had many tutoring gigs lately, but tutored an hour this weekend, and am tutoring half an hour this evening, and right now every little bit helps.

I am also waiting on 2 $5 amazon cards from swagbucks, and I have enough points to get another $5 card.

I know it will all get worked out, but my stomach is still in knots for even letting it get this far. But if it gets my husband more on board for putting effort into cutting back and saving money, then hopefully it will be worth it!

Some sewing projects

Sorry I haven't posted recently yet again.

I still haven't accomplished a lot and haven't felt like I have had much to post about.

I have been trying to start sewing more, and today I thought I would show you some of my projects:

This is the first project I did a couple years ago:


I also made a 2nd one that I gave to my sister. I use mine for carrying books, my sister uses hers to take books and stuff to church for my nephew.

After that I had frustrations with my machine and quit sewing for a while. I got a new machine recently and started sewing again.

What I have been doing lately is sewing a bunch of burp cloths.

Here are a couple sets:




Some coasters I made, I want to make some potholders to match, I am in love with this fabric and the one that matches on the burp cloths:



And a crayon roll I made yesterday:

New (old) light

Changing a light fixture is an easy fix, that can make a huge difference in the way a room looks. We have put in new ceiling fans in all bedrooms and the living room, and we just finally got our dining room and entry way lights changed (pictures of those will come with the big kitchen reveal).

So our hall light is pretty hideous...or at least I think so...you can judge for yourself:
I can't stand the shiny yellow gold (also why we changed our dining and entry way light fixtures). I much prefer the oil-bronzed finish or a pewter finish.

However I didn't want to buy a new light just to hang in the hallway. So I took one of the lights we took down from the dining/entry way and modified it.

Before:
After some oil-bronze spray paint:
And some glass frosting (which is so much fun I want to find something else to do this too!)

Ta-da....new hall light...which still needs to be hung :)

Feeling blah...

I am really sorry that I have not posted recently. I have been feeling really blah lately and haven't done much at all.

I am so sick of the cold spells every couple days. Which means that most of the nice days in between can't be spent outside either unless you want to breath dirt, which is what it is like today. I need fresh air and I need sunshine and blue skies, desperately, yet today is brown skies and tomorrow is calling for gray skies, AND more blowing dust.

I also got a new sewing machine, because I was getting frustrated with my old used one getting stuck every 5 minutes, only to have problem because I absolutely cannot get my stitches right to sew together a piece of cotton and flannel! Is there some magical trick to get it to sew cotton and flannel together? It worked just fine when I did cotton with terry cloth. So I have been down about that, too.

My kitchen is still incomplete.

Bills and ads and receipts have once again taken over my desk.

I have no energy, so have not done much cleaning or cooking or exercising.

I haven't really posted because since I haven't done much, I haven't really had much to post about.

I am finally breaking down and we are going to purchase a new washer and dryer this weekend. I dread spending the money, but we have been searching for a good used pair that fits our needs for a couple weeks with no luck. And I don't want to risk buying used ones only to end up in this same situation 6 months from now.

I have felt terrible because we have been spending lots of money, after I was so sure I was going to start tracking and quit spending so much.

So all in all, the past few weeks have just been...well...blah... I really need something to get me out of this rut, but I don't know what it is. At this point I believe I would be willing to pay to have someone come in and organize and give me a fresh start...

Birthday Invite

I am not very experienced with digital scrapbooking. Actually I have only ever made 1 digital scrapbooking layout before, but I decided I wanted to make photo invites for Mason's first birthday party.

His first birthday is May 18, and I am also planning on making a birthday banner and maybe a few other things, so I decided I better get started.

So I bought this kit to work on the invitations:
You can find it here: Kay Miller Jungle Boogie kit

I love this kit, it is so cute!

The only thing was it doesn't have an alpha, and I had no idea how to make patterned letters how I wanted. So thanks to the help of the ladies over on the scrapbooking board on preg.org, I finally figured it out!

I haven't taken his picture for the invitation yet, because I am waiting for some warmer weather to take him out in, but here is my first digital photo card invite:

Not much going on

Sorry I haven't really posted this week. I haven't really accomplished much this week. I have been really lazy.

I did get a new sewing machine this week. I have sewn a couple burp cloths. I need to get some pictures of them.

I was just now working on sewing some more burp cloths only I am using flannel on these instead of terry cloth like my others and now I can't get my stitches right, so I gave up for now.

Earlier I was working on making invitations for my son's 1st birthday coming up in May. I am using a digital scrapbooking kit to make photo cards. I am not very experienced with digital scrapbooking though, and my kit didn't come with an alpha. So I don't know how to get the letters the way I want them, so that is on hold til I figure that out!

So all my projects seem to be on hold!

This week I HAVE to go through pictures and get some printed. Some for my Grandma's photo frame that she has been waiting on for a while, and some to give out, and some for me to scrapbook. I have a ton of older pictures printed, but I just don't feel inspired by any. Or I feel like I have all this paper and it doesn't match! And I absolutely have to use up some of my stash before buying more!

Since I haven't been working much on any of my projects or organizing I have spent my spare time play World of Warcraft. Yes, I play WoW. I have a level 80 paladin, and I am working on getting my mage to 80. I have her at 72 right now. My husband does play too, but I am the one that got him started playing. He has a 72 hunter. That is kind of our thing we get to do together, instead of spending a bunch of money on date nights to the movies or wherever.

I really hope that I can gather up so motivation to get some stuff done this weekend. My sister offered to babysit Mason Saturday, so we are planning to take her up on her offer so that we can try to work on the kitchen without interruptions. Now that we got our tax refund in, we are going to buy our microwave and lights so hopefully the kitchen will finally be done this month.

Well the little one just woke up, hopefully I will have some progress on something to post soon!

Menu Plan Monday ~ March 8

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. We had company this weekend and yesterday I wasn't feeling very well, so my menu plan Monday is a day late.

Monday - Leftover Taco burgers
Tuesday - Spaghetti
Wednesday - Leftover Spaghetti
Thursday - Chicken Strips with Mac & Cheese
Friday - Eat out
Saturday - Jambalaya
Sunday - Leftovers

A money saving decision

I didn't really get a chance to work a whole lot on our budgeting last night, but I did look at our bills to try to see where we can cut some costs.

Not too long ago I changed our cell phone plan to a smaller one. We upped it while I was wedding planning because I was always on the phone and going over my minutes, but now we have almost 1,000 rollover minutes, so we obviously didn't need all that. I haven't gotten our first bill with the lower rate yet, but hopefully it will be about $30 less.

Last night though I sat down and discussed with my husband turning off our satellite. We have the smallest package on Dish Network with DVR. It costs us about 55/month. So as soon as our contract is up (we have to call and find out because we don't remember if it got renewed when we accepted the special 10/off a month for 10 months thing) we will be turning off our satellite.

We are both guilty of watching too much TV, and we really need to cut back on our spending. So this is step 2 (cell phone plan being #1).

I would love to hear what you do to cut back costs!

2 months down

Well it is already the 3rd month of the year.

I am thankful to orgjunkie, for hosting the 28 day challenge which really helped me get started organizing my house. It is in a lot better shape than it was in January, and it has motivated me to work on the rest of the house, and work hard to get into habits that keep it that way.

I actually did some scrapbooking yesterday, 2 layouts! One I feel is unfinished, but it may stay that way for a while as I'm not sure what else to do. And I picked some of it up yesterday, and put all the rest away today. I was hoping to do another yesterday which is why some was left out, but couldn't find the inspiration.

So while I feel like I am definitely making progress in the house department, I feel like I am way behind in the money department.

Money stresses me out more than anything. We aren't really BAD off, but we are no where near where we need to be and even further from where I want to be.

I am hoping to get some time today to sit and try to work out a budget and plan for our long and short term goals. Right now though, my little one has woken up from a nap and is in need of an afternoon snack.

28 Day Organization Challenge End

The 28 day challenge has come to end! I think I did pretty well for being as organizationally challenged as I am!

First of all I would like to say a big thanks to my husband for all his hard work in helping me get this accomplished!

Next I will start with the summary questions:

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

I think the hardest part of the challenge and organizing and decluttering for me in general is purging. My husband and I both have a hard time getting rid of things. I think we have made a significant difference in letting things go, but I am sure there is still lots of room for improvement!

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

Now that we have designated spaces for all our items, we can know where to put things away. Before we often didn't have a specific place for items to go, so they just got left wherever they landed. I think now knowing exactly where everything is supposed to go, it will be much easier to get everything put away!

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

A lot of the things we purged went into the trash. And many items went into donate/sell boxes which we will be putting in a garage sale this spring, whatever doesn't sell will go straight to Goodwill.

4. What creative storage solutions were you able to introduce in order to create additional space as well as establish some limits and boundaries?

One of my favorite things was the wire shelves we added in the closet close together to store all my cake pans. Makes it easy to get to them without having them all topple over when trying to dig one out from the bottom. I really planned to do more, but when my husband went back to get more of the wire shelving (it was 12 foot wire shelving that was cut to fit our closet) it had doubled in price! OVERNIGHT. I was mad, but I really hope to add more specific shelving for items if we ever find that shelving cheap enough again.

5. Why do you think you should win this challenge?

This is a hard question for me, because I really never think I deserve to win anything, so I will try to pretend for a moment to have a few ounces of self confidence: I think I have made a dramatic improvement on our office/craft room, and I already feel a big weight lifted off my shoulders, and feel like now I actually can accomplish something in here. I joined this challenge in the hopes that it would hold me accountable to actually getting something done, and it has definitely given me the motivation to conitue organizing all over my house. I think I have turned a room that was barely usable and made me feel so stressed before into a room that will be great for doing all my craft projects, and be more inspiring than holding me back because of all the clutter. And because I have a lot of work to do organizing all over the rest of my house, I would definitely put any prize to good use!

So now to the pictures:
I will start with the closet:
Before:
AFTER:
Left side:

Right Side:
Now into the room:
My desk Before:
Our new desk area, we moved my husband's desk by mine and moved the printer table to where his desk was:
The end of my desk before:
After:


Printer Table Before:

The spot when it was my husbands desk:After:

Workbench Before:
After:
Sink Area before:
After:
Craft Table Before:
Probably the most dramatic difference in the room...After: