Mommy Got a Mini Vacation - Vegas Style!

Hi all! Sorry about the lack of post this week but I had an opportunity to sneak away with the husband to Vegas! We have not been away, without kids, for almost 5 years so it was way overdue!

I have never been to Vegas! It was wonderful! I loved all the lights at night,and the fountain at the Bellagio! We stayed at the Mandaley Bay Hotel and had a wonderful strip view. It was so nice to have some adult time with my husband. It was also wonderful not to have to cook, clean, care for kids, do laundry, and the other bazillion things I do. As a stay at home mom there are no vacation days unless I get away like this.  It was nice to just relax (something else I am not good at doing and really need to get better at doing).

I am very lucky and blessed to have wonderful family to care for my boys who allowed me to sneak away with my husband. A huge, heartfelt thank you to my mother who ended up taking care of both my boys who came down with the stomach flu while I was in Vegas. I am sure that is was way more than she bargained for but I knew my boys were in good hands as she was the best nurse to me when I was sick! Thank you Mom - I love you! 

Well it's back to the grind stone and I have already been doing laundry and disinfecting my home to make sure the nasty bug is gone from our home! This week we will be getting back to our organizing challenge and organizing the laundry room!

Organizing the Boys Closets - Reveal

I'm so excited to show you how the boys closets turned out! If you saw my before pictures here you know I was working with a mess of items, and in a sea of un-organization! Knowing that I did not have a budget to get my dream organizers for both closets I worked with what I had on hand. I once again used dollar store storage to tidy up both closets.

I created, using some old Ikea wicker baskets I had laying around, a basket for clothes that are too big and one for clothes that are two small.

I love the tags I made. Green for one son and Red for the other! I printed out the paper, and text. Trimmed and inked the edges of the text paper just to make it pop out a bit. Then matted and laminated. Then tied it off with some matching ribbon.

I had some left over dollars on my Office Depot gift card so I picked up two green file bins as I knew they would be the perfect size to house all the boys friends. When do boys out grow stuffed animals? The boys stood their ground about not wanting to give away their friends!

My younger son gets all the hand-me-downs including shoes. 13 is too big for him right now so I keep them in the buckets for when he will fit into them. They were previously in a diaper box and I had no idea what type of shoes or size were in there. Now I can easily see I have a few pairs for him when his feet grow.

Since our house is brand new and we are waiting to paint after our year patching is done by the builder, I created a decor bin. Our younger son continued with his train room theme that he had in his old house, so the items in his bin are ones that will go up after we paint. My older son wants a lego room, so as I find items for his theme I have been placing them in his decor bin. I also put baseball pants, shirts and socks in their hats for an easy grab at game time.

Both boys closets are now color coded which makes it easy for them to pick out a shirt that matches their pants or shorts.

Now when I am hanging up their laundry I am happy to do so. Before I would go into their closets to hang up their laundry and want to quickly shut the door again. Now I can't help but have a smile on my face when I open the door. Silly how the simple things like an organized closet make me happy!!

Organizing the Boys Closet - Preview

This week I am focusing on organizing the kids closets! 

They were a mess and I needed to get them back in control. The boys were just throwing stuff in there, my husband and I were stacking clothes on the top shelf that were either to big or to small. Here is my 5 year old's closet:

 

Let's play a game called what's wrong with this picture. I need to have my boys and my clothes organized by sleeve length and color. For example my closet  runs: no sleeves, short sleeves, 3/4 sleeves and long sleeves and then by the rainbow (red, orange, yellow...). I usually set up the kids the same way. My 5 year old never follows it! Look at the pampers box - ha my kid has been out of diapers for so long. There is a bazillion shoes in there. I also love the swim stuff mixed in with the sweaters - same season right?? 

Hmmmm......animals, shoes and clothes - seems organized to me NOT!! The bin holds clothes that are too small for my son but the bin wasn't big enough to hold all the clothes so the solution: stack it on top so your 5 year old can knock it down! 

I have some work to do in this closet!! Here is my older son who is 7, he carries some of my characteristic in organization - he keep his closet color coded!

Ready for round two of what's wrong with this picture! Basically his whole top self is full of clothes - clothes from summer that never got put away, clothes that are too big, jeans that he has put a hole in the knee (that I swear I am going to fix but by the time I get around to it they are too small for him) and a bunch of socks that my son wore for months and then said they are too big and keep falling down! 

Both boys just chuck stuff on the floor!

Hmmm.....something seems familiar here - animals, shoes, and if we just throw some clothes on the floor it will look just like my 5 year old's closet!

As much as I would love to put up an organization system for them (we had them in our previous house and it worked great for them) we have so many "new home projects" that I have to put that on hold for now. However, if I don't find a way to organize the closet in a functional way for the boys it will continue to end up like this, and only get worse. So off to the Dollar Store I go to find fun, colorful, storage for the boys!

Organizing the Boy Bathroom - Reveal

Wow this week is went by fast but I made great progress in the boys bathroom. You can see my before pictures here. I had a mess to deal with but after sorting out everything and getting rid of items I didn't need, I was ready to start. I found some liner for the boys drawers because my boys are messy. I love the Chevron look right now!

I then added organizers and made tags to help the boys put items back were they belong. 

Under one sink I used a storage drawer and baskets that I picked up at the Dollar Store to organized items.

Under the second sink the boys share some space with me. I have neatly tucked away my curling irons and created a space to store extra toilet paper.

The boys are very into laundry right now so I am riding that wave! I have labeled their linen closet to help them put towels and linens where they belong. I then used zip ties to hold them in place.

At the bottom of the linen closet I added some buckets to hold our suntan lotions and aloe products.

The space is wonderful now and the boys are already putting items back where they belong instead of leaving them on the counter. 

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Organizing the Boys Bathroom - Labeling Project

I have been busy working on the boys bathroom and thought I would give you a quick peek at part of the project that I have been working on. I love to make tags and label. Being that I am a digital scrapbook and I am on a creative team for Bella Gypsy I knew when I saw this kit I wanted to use the colors in the boys bathroom. 

Isn't this a great kit! You can pick it up here. I printed out some of the papers and used Photoshop to create my tags. I trimmed and matted them and then ran them through my laminator to help make them durable. 

Wa-la! Instant, colorful, tags!

Organizing the Boys Bathroom - Preview

My next goal is to organize the boys bathroom!

Here in Chicago we have had some major rain so it was nice to see the sun shine again! The only good thing about the rain is I have been cooped up in the house with lots of time to organize! We are due for some more rain this week so I plan on getting our boys bathroom completely organized. I knew I would need to make it simple for them, label the spaces, and have a space for everything.

Just like my bathroom, I pulled everything out to see what I was dealing with. I sorted it by keep, throw and donate and then planned out what I would need to buy, and what I will need to make to organized this bathroom. Here are my before pictures:

Yep, that's a mess! Look at the curler set I still have! I am pretty sure that is from the 80's!  My boys have to share some of their storage under the sink with me for my curling irons and other hair tools but they don't mind!

This is all the items that my boys have in their drawers and under the sink. Not much but they are boys. If I had a girl I am sure it would have been doubled! 

Really?? Look at all those medicine dispensing tools! My boys are 4 and 7 so any medicine I have to give them they drink from a cup. I will only be keeping a few cups and the rest are going!

I can't wait to revel their finish bathroom later this week! 

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Organizing the Master Bathroom -Reveal

I had a great week of getting my Master Bathroom organized.  I feel great getting my bathroom neat and organized. As I stated in my previous post I accidentally deleted my before pictures so I only have my big reveal pictures only. Sorry about that but lets get to it. 

I have a large bathroom but not large in storage. Our linen closet consists of some wire shelving in our closet and is something I want to work on in the future. So I have to work with what I got which is my vanity drawer, 3 drawer on the cabinet and the other half of the cabinet is open. Function was the key element for me when planning where my things would have a home. I need to have any item required to get beautiful at my finger tips. 

The first thing I do in any organizing project is empty everything out, see what I got and what I can get rid of. I then prioritize items based on needs. I find storage for like items, that serve a purpose, and are functional. 

I LOVE color so when I found this super cute liner I knew it was going in my drawers (Hubby was not interested in having his drawers lined in it - gee I wonder why?).

Now I didn't want to cover up that pretty paper so I found some clear drawer organizers and put my everyday items that I use in them.

Next I lined, and organized the 3 drawers in my cabinet. The first drawer houses my make up and contact, oh and my iphone charger (hehe!)

The second drawer holds my teeth items and some extra supplies like my razor refills, extra toothbrushes and toothpaste.

The last drawer is more of a storage drawer. I do not like lots of items on my counters so I tuck my tissues, travel make-up bags and a few smaller daily items I use.

Under my sink on the other half of the cabinet I have used bins to help me stay organized. A drawer organizer holds all my medicines and vitamins. A bin holds hair product, mouth wash, and contact solution. I thought about lining the bottom of this too but couldn't decide.....I may go back and do it :)

I maximized my height in the cabinet by using stacking bins. Most areas under the sink are hard to maximize the space because of those lovely pipes, but they have to be there so just try to find storage that will adapt to your space limits.

I love to label so as you can see the top bin holds extra hair items like rubber bands, clips, barrets, and headbands. The second bin holds all my smaller/travel size items for when we travel. The last bin holds all items required to paint up and take care of my nails! 

Bins ~ I love them. In my supply bin I keep all larger items that will not fit in my drawers. Keeping items I use on a daily basis close to the front and less frequent items or replacement items towards the back.

Many of these items I used to organized I had already and most came from dollar stores.