Chalkboard Wall

Remember how we cleaned out a closet a week or so ago and returned a bunch of stuff to Home Depot and Lowe's? Well, we got enough in gift cards to buy a can of magnetic primer and a paint roller. And we already had leftover blackboard paint from when Chris finished M's little desk.

So, over these last two weekend we primed and painted a hallway wall and turned it into a magnetic chalkboard. We really hoped to move M's big magnetic letters from the fridge to this wall, but apparently even 3 coats of magnetic primer weren't strong enough to hold these chunky letters. We'll just have to look for smaller ones.

In the mean time, we use the top part of the wall as a running grocery list and let M draw wherever he can reach. Oh, maybe now we'll get some magnetic poetry.

My (No Longer Messy) Crafts Closet

It sure took me a bit longer than I expected, but my crafts closet in the family room is finally nicely organized. And it was done on a very strict budget (although unlike the bookcases, I did spend a few dollars on this project).

Some history first... Originally this was supposed to be my "office" (when I still had my telecommuting 9-to-5 job). Unfortunately, the door into the family room, when open, blocks half of the closet. Then I thought it'd be my scrapbooking station. Unfortunately, I was getting less and less free time, especially after Mr. M turned 1.

Next, I thought this closet could become a bill-paying station plus overflow toy storage plus "one day I will get back to scrapbooking" storage. Oh, and it was also supposed to store the few DVDs and CDs (mostly Mr. M's) that we had.

That's when things started getting really ugly and stuff was piling up everywhere. I even called in a favor and had a professional organizer work her miracles on this closet. This worked for a little bit, until I corralled extra toys into Mr. M's room, gave up on scrapbooking (for now), and the hubby got into the habit of paying bills in the living room. Left unused, the closet somehow managed to accumulate lots and lots of clutter and I could no longer find anything in it.

Then I had this big "AHA" moment and realized that what I really needed was a crafts and homeschool supplies closet for the stuff we use almost daily.

And this was exactly what I did. I kept the shelving and the desktop and the pegboard (love it). Took out the trash and moved everything that was not crafts-related into the secret-squirrel stashing location (don't worry, it will be reveled at a later date). I then walked around the house collecting all the crayons, stickers, glue sticks, scissors, activities and crafts books, etc and arranging them nicely.

Ta-da! This is the moment of the big reveal...

I think I spent a total of about $15 on this organizing project:

$5 - 5 cute white buckets to store markers, scissors, paint brushes and unexpected little things

$1.50 - 3 white Chinese take-out containers that now store stickers (2 of them) and some mystery items

$5 - 2 clip boards that I spray-painted and decorated - to hold our curriculum notes, etc.

The rest I had on hand already, including various plastic containers, scrap paper, spray paint for the old file cabinet, pictures and frames and even Deka wire and 2 curtains (it's amazing what can be found in dusty boxes in the deep dark closets).

My (No Longer) Messy Built-Ins

BEFORE...

Ok, a couple of days ago I said I would really-really get organized really-really soon. I figure, if I make a promise to myself and let others know of it, I'll be much more likely to get it done. Of course, feel free to cheer me on and otherwise support my committment (not-so-subtle hint - please leave a comment).

My first organizing task was to take care of the very messy built-ins in the family room. BTW, here's a little-known fact - I designed these built-ins myself (I wish I could take credit for building them, alas, 'twas done by an awesome carpenter).

Anyway, the challenge was to create a more organized and more functional space to store books, magazines, clippings, pictures, games, and toys and do it on for under $20.

Well, as far as the budget part goes, I outperformed the goal by 100%. I spent $0.00 on this project! Hooray to me! I might even make a few bucks if I sell some of the nicknacks that used to clutter the shelves.

Of course, I was lucky in that I had plenty of matching baskets (bought them a while ago from Target). I used the baskets for storing some of the books (mostly paperbacks) and for the overflow toys.

I also had some white storage boxes and magazine holders that I bought years ago from IKEA. These are great and very versatile. Easy to label too. I store various clippings (vacation ideas, cartoons and articles I particularly liked) and little mementos in these. Will pick up some more next time I drive by an IKEA.

I kept 2 shelves for Mr. M's stuff, like play doh and books. No doubt these shelves will continue to get messy, but that's ok. Also, notice that one of the shelves is absolutely empty. I keep it reserved for great games for family game nights (and maybe even some jigsaw puzzles).

AFTER!

The hubby is loving it (or so he says) and Mr. M doesn't seem to care at all. Tell me something nice before I dislocate my shoulder from patting myself on the back for the second day in a row.

Simple Placemat

I'm all about teaching Mr. M some self-sufficiency skills. I know a little girl his age who uses a potty all by herself, properly washes (with soap!) and dries her own hands, dresses/undresses by herself, and stays busy with puzzles and little self-directed QUIET games for hours on end. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not comparing Mr. M to her (or to any other kids). I'm just being very envious of the little girl's mom, that's it!

And so, the little thing that I'm trying to teach Mr. M now is to set his table for each meal. To help him out, I wanted to get some kind of placemat with simple graphics showing what goes where - plate, cup, utensils.

I looked for it at a couple of local toystores and at Toys'R'Us, but couldn't find anything (although there are wonderful placemats with shapes, colors, dinosaurs, cars, maps, etc). I would've searched online, but I kept forgetting.

To make the long story short, I simply traced Mr. M's plates, utensils and cups on sheets of construction paper and glued them (the cut-outs, of course) onto a large sheet of white paper. I then drove over to the nearest Kinko's and got the whole thing laminated. Took a total of 30 mins and cost me about $4 for a two-sided placemat.

Mr. M absolutely loved the idea. He not only put the plate, the cup and the fork in the proper places, but asked for a knife and a spoon to "complete the picture". The unexpected benefit was that Mr. M ate at his table (instead of while running around the kitchen) and was much neater than usually - almost no mess. Hooray! Now let's see how long this novelty will last.

The Case for Organizing Everything

A couple of years ago I added Peter Walsh's How to Organize (Just About) Everything to my Amazon Wish List. And sure thing, someone (I think it was my brother) got it for me as a birthday gift.

Now, two years later, I still have the book and a very disorganized house. Now, I'm not a hoarder, except when it comes to books, of course. Nor do we buy much stuff (thanks in part to never being a truly dual-earner household).

But now, sitting in my toys-strewn family room, I'm ready to change things around BIG TIME. The problem so far has been not so much lack of time, as lack of constant effort. There are lots of unfinished and even un-started projects laying around cluttering the space. There's also stuff that we bought or made and ended up not using.

There's also lots of information clutter - books, magazines, bookmarks, starred items in my Google Reader, etc. So I'll be dealing with those as well.

And speaking of Google Reader. Today I went in, unsubscribed from some feeds and re-organized and re-tagged others. And I added my favorite and most inspiring family and arts/crafts blogs to the blogroll (in case you want to check them out).

The Coolest Room for Toddler

Finally, after a month of planning and another month or so of hard work, Drummer Boy's new room is ready! And it turned out totally awesome.

The old room, while also pretty large, had only one west-facing window and, thanks to a large tree right outside, stayed dark even on very sunny afternoons. The new room (our former master bedroom) with three east- and north-facing windows gets plenty of light. That was the main reason for the switch.

Mr. M used to not want to spend a single waking moment in his old room. Now all he wants to do is play in his room. We had a few playdates up in the room and both little ones and their parents had a blast.

Ok, ok, so here are some pictures. I'm going to start with the Art Center:

By now we've accumulated quite a stash of art supplies - chalk, markers, crayons, paints (all washable), play dough and play dough tools, paint brushes and stamps, pipe cleaners, foam stickers, regular stickers, papers, Wikki Stix and other odds and ends. Plus some books for inspiration for me and coloring books for Mr. M.

I sorted all this stuff and placed it on easy-to-reach cubbies. By the way, the cubbies are made out of old dresser drawers - an idea I saw in one of my design-on-a-dime books. A word of caution here - attached the cubbies securely to the wall was a very labor-intensive task that required A LOT of hardware.

Next, the bedroom part of this room:

Ever since he was about 13 months old, Mr. M's been sleeping on a twin-size bed (and before that he was in our bed). At first we simply put a mattress on the floor for him. He loved the arrangement since he could get in and out of bed very easily even before he could walk. Now that he's a toddler, we feel he's ready for a big-boy bed. So I found a used captain-style bed (with storage drawers) on Craigslist for $80 and the hubby painted it beautiful chocolate brown.

We put a moon night light (IKEA) on the wall, glued some glow-in-the-dark stars and hanged a small organizer (also IKEA) to hold Mr. M's bed-time books and providing an easy-to-reach place for his drum sticks, the Monster puppet, and M's glasses.

The wall looks a bit bare at the moment, but the idea is to use the space for hanging a rotating collection of posters that reflect his interests (right now these would be maps and musical instruments). I was also thinking about adding a solar system mobil, but not sure which one to choose.

The bedding is another thing we're working on. I wanted to find something really cool that would work with the room and with M's interests. So, after a lot of searching, I found this awesome set over at The Land of Nods. It'll have to wait a bit though since it's kind of pricey.

Judging by the reaction from some of our little playmates, what comes next is the coolest parts of the room - the monkey gym:

For now, all we have are the rings and a 7-rung rope ladder. Both are from IKEA (we actually had to buy 2 rope ladders and combine into one since a single rope ladder only has 4 rungs). What we hope to add later on are rock-climbing holds on one wall and a wooden vertical ladder on the other one.

Also, the way the ladder and the rings are attached to the ceiling makes them easy to remove and swap for something new. We'll be taking the ladder down shortly (Mr. M is still too young for hit) and replacing with a IKEA swing. Also, after combining two rope ladders into one, we had 2 ropes and 1 rung left which we might convert into a trapeze. We're also looking into buying our own Rody (the green inflatable creature in the picture, currently on loan from a friend) and possibly a small trampoline.

Some might think it's kind of an overkill. But ever since Drummer Boy was diagnozed with low muscle tone, we've been on a lookout to add fun challenging toys to his daily surroundings that would build his gross motor skills.

Next stop is the reading corner.

The truth is, Mr. M's books are all over the house. Nor does he sit in any particular spot when he wants to read. We both read to him a lot throughout the day, usually on a couch or in bed, but many times simply on the floor.

But this shelve is a nice way to keep books organized. And it was such an awesome flea-market find - only $10! Of course, the hubby had to fix it and paint it and now it looks very posh (hopefully). It also allows me to separate English-language and Russian-language books and keep two sets of letter blocks. The top of the shelf is a great display area (right now it houses a little dinosaur diorama that I put together a couple of months ago). I'm also going to add some language-themed artwork to the wall above as soon as I get around to it.

Across from the reading center and right next to the art center, we have the math, science and general play center.

Right now I keep string bids, simple math toys, puzzles, shape sorters, and little toy animals here. The shelves do not provide a lot of storage, which is fine with me since it reminds me to rotate toys regularly. Our budding collection of Mr. PotatoHead is on display here.

I thought about adding a train table, but decided against it as it would take too much space. Plus it's not very versatile, in my opinion. A simple rug (from IKEA) serves the purpose. Plus Mr. M prefers floor-level play space.

Right now Mr. M is into trains (yes, again). Only this time he can actually connect the tracks and help build the huge tower-tunnel. The blue bins that sit on top of a white shoe-organizer shelf (and that I got at a flea market for $1 each) store extra train tracks and building blocks.

The blue peg board is empty right now. I originally intended to use it only for artwork display and storage for some of the toys (such as little hand-tools and odds and ends that can fit in small buckets). But then I realized that it can be incorporated into many math and science toys (but that's for a different post).

Art displays

We created 2 areas for displaying Drummer Boy's artwork. One is a simple DEKA wire (from IKEA, again) that can hold a lot of stuff. This is more of a movable exhibit and is set up to be changed very often. It is also handy for drying the artwork.

The second area is of a more permanent kind. I got a bunch of cheap frames (you can probably guess where - IKEA). Right now we only have 6 of these frames up. But as Mr. M creates more master pieces, we plan on taking up the entire wall and even the space over both doors. Oh, some Mega Blocks in wheeled carts (these ones are from Target) found a home underneath the art display.

And now, the mystery door to the left of the Mega Blocks... It's actually a walk-in closet.

Wow! - some say - a walk-in closet for a 2-year old, isn't it a bit too much? Not at all! Especially considering a very odd configuration that basically allows to use only 1 short wall for shelves. But we're making the most of this little space. It also helps that Drummer Boy doesn't have too many clothes.

There's actually room for off-season storage (on the top clothes rail and in the baskets on the shelves). The in-season clothes are within M's easy reach - on the bottom rail and in the drawers.

We also use this space to store extra toys that we periodically rotate. And of course, there's a peg board for extra storage in the future). Mr. M doesn't care much for shoes. Most of the times he gets by with just one pair that he wears to shreds at which point we get him another pair. So we re-purposed a shoe organizer as an overflow art supplies and odds and ends storage.

So the room is mostly finished. I'd love to add some art work and a few finishing touches. A monkey gym will be expanded in the nearest future. But I'm not in a big hurry to get a finished product here. After all, this room is meant to grow and change along with its owner.