Organization Tips - The Idea Room

Organize Garage Clutter

As you might know, I have partnered with Lowes as a member of their Creative Ideas Team. Each month we are given a gift card and a challenge to complete. I LOVE being a part of this team because it challenges me to tackle some bigger projects that I tend to put off. In the past I have been able to do some fun LowesCreator projects. Here are just a few of them:

Front Porch Curb Appeal

Laundry Room Shelves

Bathroom Towel Rack

Wood Plank Kitchen Ceiling

But for the month of April I finally tackled an area in my home that needed some serious attention. With all of the projects Mr. Idea Room and I have been working on over the past year in the remodel of our kitchen and main living area, the garage has become a complete disaster. It is where we do the majority of our work. Especially in the winter due to the frigid cold and snow we can get here in Utah. Add five children involved in a lot of various sporting activities who are coming and going constantly, we had a problem finding what was needed in a timely matter…*ahem*!

So with the theme of Outdoor Storage, I knew it was finally time to tackle a portion of our garage. The mess was so large scale that we have broken this operation down into phases. And today I am happy to share with you the first phase of Operation Organize Garage.

This area next to the interior door to the house was a particular problem and where most of the kids sporting equipment was being thrown after use. It made it difficult to locate shin guards, cleats, baseball gloves, lacrosse sticks and bike helmets. Especially because I have not been able to train my children (yet) about putting items back in their place after use. The problem is that we didn’t have a WELL DEFINED place for everything…hence the problem.

Well, we have now solved that problem and defined a spot for all of the kids equipment.

We purchased this white storage cabinet from Lowes and put it together and gathered stuff that we had scattered throughout the house and finally got it all into one organized space.

We keep all of the balls and kids helmets and rollerblades out here. It makes it nice to have it all in one spot so when we are headed to a game or practice we know right where everything is.

We even decided to put a bin for the kids soccer and baseball cleats. These seem to be the hardest things for us to find as we are headed out the door. Now I just need to make sure my kids remember to take them off and put them back in the bin.

We picked up these great storage containers from Lowes. The metallic bins on top of the lockers and the grey bins that we put the helmets and rollerblades in are perfect for our space and needs.

Inside the cabinet, we have our pool supplies, sand toys, and sunscreen. We also keep some of our outdoor games, mosquito repellant and sidewalk chalk here.

The metal buckets in the lockers also came from Lowes and are perfect for the loose little items like sidewalk chalk and some jump ropes the girls enjoy using outside. Plus they keep everything nice and neat looking!

I love that everything has its place. And now the kids have no excuse about not knowing where something belongs.

And…of course I had to paint the door black. I love our front door that we painted black and I have been excited to paint this one.

It was getting pretty beat up and showed so much dirt from the kids going in and out of here. We also changed out the door hardware and added a kick plate.

To see how I painted it black, you can see our how to paint a door tutorial here. And lest you think we have everything under control in our garage…let me share with you a picture of the other side…

Yikes! This is where we do most of our project building. It needs some serious work. LOL! That is the next phase of our garage organization. We have our work cut out for us.

But if you look at this one side, it looks great. And…I have plans to paint the other lockers on the right hand side white. I wanted to get to them before I shared this, but ran out of time. So look for an update on them when I can get around to it.

Looking for more creative ideas for your home? S ign up for Lowe’s Creative Ideas Magazine. It actually has a lot of really great and creative ideas that you can and would want to do. Go ahead and check it out!

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*Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. Lowe’s provided me with a gift card to showcase a project this month as part of their Lowe’s Creative ideas Bloggers team. However all opinions and statements are mine.

pantry update

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Summer has hit and I always feel like there is an adjustment period when the kids are home all day again for both moms and the kids. We are trying to set up a good routine that includes chores in the morning followed by fun. Some are more on board with this than others. Does this happen at your house too? Ha!

While we try to get that all figured out over here I thought I would finally share with you our freshly updated pantry. As you know we have been remodeling our kitchen for the last few months along with the office. We still have some projects left but are getting so close. Life and kids activities have slowed us down quite a bit but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Hoping to start sharing more of it here soon.

One thing we did finish up is the pantry. We didn’t do much to it other than wallpaper it with this Allen + Roth paintable wallpaper which we bought from Lowe’s.

This wallpaper went up pretty easily and I had just barely enough to fill my space.

In fact, I had on little strip left on the inside edge of the closet. I was able to piece the last few pieces out of the scraps without having to buy a whole new roll of paper. Phew!

I was planning on painting the wallpaper a nice grey color, but after the paper was up, I loved the original color so much with my new blue kitchen walls, that I decided NOT to paint it. That could still change in the future (if you know me and my propensity for change)!!

I have a love for pretty labels and added some more to go with the few that I already had in the pantry. They make everything feel happy and in place for me. Did I mention that I have some OCD issues?

We then put the closet doors back on, which we had removed during the kitchen renovation when the wood floor was laid. This whole process has been really drawn out which happens when you end up doing most of the work yourself, but it has been fun to see the transformation.

Now I need to go and get the troops moving on their chores and finally clean up my bedroom that looks like a tornado hit! Just trying to keep it real. At least my pantry looks pretty :)!

June 7, 2012 · Filed under: Home Decor, Home Remodeling, Organization Tips Tagged with Home Tour--Kitchen, labels, organization tips, pantry, pantry organization

How to make café shelves

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I hope you all had a great and relaxing Mother’s Day Weekend. We were lucky enough to have my Brother-In-Law and his family stay with us this weekend. Things were a bit crazy considering that there are 11 kids between us ages 14 to 3…!! But we had a great time playing with them. Now it is time to get back to work.

I had a lot of you comment about the café shelves we have in our newly updated Laundry Room. We made them and so can you. The best part is that they are super easy to make. Win Win for sure. So if you would like some in your home keep reading…

How to Make Café Shelves:

1. Find a pair of Shelf Corner Brackets.

I used some from Lowe’s that we found in the molding aisle. We went with the 7 inch size because that is the size that fit the best with the shelf we had chosen. For one shelf you will need 2 brackets. If you are making 2 shelves like we did you will need 4 brackets.

2. Find or make a wall shelf.

We happened to find a nice pre-made shelf at Home Depot. We loved the chunkier style of it and the that it has some nice decorative molding along the edges. It was in the closet and storage aisle.

3. Spray paint your shelves your desired color.

Spray paint was the easiest and fastest option. Plus—I LOVE spray paint. It makes me super happy.

4. Glue your corner brackets on the BOTTOM of your shelf.

Make sure that the back of the bracket is lined up perfectly with the back of your shelf. So that when the shelf is on the wall, there will be no gap between the wall and the bracket. You want them to look like they are holding up the shelf.

We used Gorilla Wood Glue.

5. Be sure to adjust the bracket and place it in from the edge of the shelf.

We measured ours so that it was set in 4 inches from the side end on both ends of the shelf.

6. Let Wood Glue dry completely.

We decided to make our shelves the same size but had debated about making the top shelf a bit smaller than the other one. Ultimately we decided to go with two of the same size shelves. I am really happy with how they turned out and feel like the brackets give the shelf a lot of fun character and interest.

Have any of you made any café shelves or something similar for your home? I would love to see them. I would also love to see if any of you end up making some of these. I always love hearing from you guys out there!

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