For the Love of Baskets

There's a rule in this house. You can never have too many baskets. Nope. Absolutely not. There's always a need for them, especially with a 2 year old running around and 50,000 toys. 50,000 toys that, of course, have to be organized by type, color and purpose because I might be a little OCD... only a little... no way I'll be able to sleep knowing that Batman is sitting in the same bin as the tools.

Surely, I'm not the only multi-tasking mom that has a disaster of a medicine cabinet. If your's is immaculate, I applaud you, I really do; but lets just pretend, it makes me feel a little better. :) I've noticed, this is one of the worst places in our house to get messy so quickly. Mainly because when I'm rummaging for migraine medicine, putting anything back in the right spot is the very last thing I care about. Then something falls and there's a cascade of pill bottles everywhere... that's usually the sign of defeat for the day. 

Finally, I had enough and cleared all this junk out.

Ridiculous isn't it? Any of my OCDers cringing inside?

So what on earth could I use? I turned to my "storage closet" as I call it, probably more accurately called a "junk closet". I found two small canvas baskets I had gotten from Wal-mart a few years ago. So I went through and trashed the expired stuff we obviously wouldn't be using and sorted through it all. I finally got it cleared out and minimized to this.

Any reason to pull out the label maker! Here's a side by side.

This little purge sent me onto another purge, the pantry. It was originally 100x worse, shew! I'll fill you in on that one shortly as well. A little teaser for my fellow organizing freaks... it involves Target and canvas totes :)

Playroom Storage, Pottery Barn Knockoff

If Pottery Barn were a person, we would totally be best friends.

I fell in love with the huge wall storage systems they have on their PB Kids site. The set ups they had were perfect for our bonus room/den where we would make Lucas' play area. The only problem, what I wanted would cost $1300 through Pottery Barn, not including the shipping. Whoa, hold the phone! No way was I going to be able to slide that one by the hubby. I could see it then, that look 'woman, you have got to be crazy' and then saying our then newborn did not need a $1300 storage system for his 5 toys that he had. :) Yes, he was right, but oh men; can't live with them and can't live without him... but someone's got to open the jar lids for me :).

So of course, I was bound and determined to get what I wanted at a much cheaper DIY price even if I had to cut down the tree myself and make it... ok, maybe not that far :). I researched for several months looking at drawers, organizers, cubbies from practically every store measuring out drawings in every kind of configuration I could think of. Nothing was working how I wanted it and my little storage system dream was slowly circling the drain. Finally, the heavens parted and I came across the PERFECT pieces. I found the EXACT parts I wanted, EXACT color with the EXACT measurements to fit each other. I seriously felt like I had won the lottery, felt too good to be true, but it all worked and measured perfectly.

Here are the parts used...

- Drawers are Babyletto and were purchased from Amazon at $100 each

- 16 Cubby System was purchased from Bargain Outfitters for $100

So for $300 instead of $1300, I got the wall storage system I'd been wanting. Hubby gladly put it all together for me and I was one happy wife. It looks great and fills the 10 feet high wall perfectly. Now the real trick, keeping it organized :).

This is the playroom BEFORE...

Playroom AFTER...

Linked up to
Flamingo Toes

Playroom Chalkboard & Numbered Hooks

As if I haven't mentioned it enough already, I love love love Pottery Barn, but not so much their prices. Yikes! While browsing through their playroom ideas, I fell in love with the little chalk boards placed on the walls and noticed they had pails hanging on the side for chalk, crayons, what not... I'm sure ours will be filled with loose toys or who knows what once the baby is up and moving. Here's the picture I fell in love with.

Of course I could have just purchased these from Pottery Barn, but why would I go and do that : ). So... another project was started.

I was determined to find these little pails and after looking at Hobby Lobby and ACMoore, I finally found them at JoAnn Fabrics, I think for maybe $2 each, if that. I intended on doing just number hooks, but while at Michaels one day, I was browsing through their dollar section and came across these perfect little wooden hooks for $1.00.

Of course I didn't just leave them like that. I whipped out the paint, mod podge and Cricut. I painted each block black. Cut numbers out with my Cricut machine and mod podged them onto the blocks.

This project really took me no longer than an hour. The paint dried quickly and the Cricut cut the numbers out in less than 1 minute. I just let them sit out overnight and that allowed the modge podge to completely dry. I couldn't be banging into the walls with nails at 10pm anyway, otherwise we'd be up with a baby the entire night... you know the saying, "if you're the one to wake him up, you're watching him"... not this momma! : )

Here's the finished product.

{5 Minute Cabinet Makeover}

Don't believe me? I promise it's really not that hard. All I did was pick a cabinet, undo the screws and then strategically placed a few things. : )

I've always liked the idea of the open cubies with cute baskets; didn't matter where, the kitchen, office, living room, anywhere. Normally kitchen cabinets are a little too wide for this, but I've got this one weird kitchen cabinet over in the corner that hasn't been used ONCE since the day we've moved in.... wait, that's a lie, I did store stuff in it the day we moved in and it's been there ever since. : )

So here's the picture of the cabinet before...

I don't know about you guys, but we've got a Keurig coffee maker and having thousands of those little K-cups lingering around drives me mad. For Christmas we got a 60 variety pack.... what!? 60!, yes!.... and I don't know what on earth to do with them all. The box just takes up space in my pantry so this new little idea I have is coming quite handy. One cute basket please!

Big box to a cute basket get up... hehe

So I decided instead of having my loose recipe books, cards and print offs scattered around on my countertops or end up getting misplaced somewhere else, my new little cubbies would be peeeeeerfect. I'm pretty pleased with the outcome. Just trying to decide if I should paint the inside of the "cabinet". Here's the after picture, let me know if you like it!

Thanks for visiting!