Lego Organization

What to do when your son or daughter suddenly has a lot of Legos (thank you, Christmas) and they are ALL OVER THE PLACE?  Well, if you're anything like me, you find an organized solution ASAP.  I checked Google and Pinterest for ideas and decided that the best solution for us would be to organize Legos by color.  While organizing by set is ideal for some, it just wouldn't work for us, as pieces from the different sets were all mixed together almost as soon as the packages were opened.  There was no way to know which piece belonged to which set until they would actually start building something.  It's proved to be much easier to find pieces by color.  

I also wanted to dedicate a space in my son's room for Legos.  Somewhere that he could build and store them would be perfect.  We needed a desk.  Off to Target I went.  I picked up a small desk with two drawers.  Luckily for us, it fit perfectly next to the bunk beds!  I also added an IKEA shelf that was sitting in the basement waiting to be used after it got the boot from my daughters' room.  I brought up a lonely chair from the basement as well and voila, a perfect little spot for Legos!  

The shelf above his desk holds a few things.  I put instruction booklets in three of the bins.  This is working fine until I find a better solution for them, possibly in a binder.  Another bin holds his Angry Birds "Legos."  I am keeping them separate because they are not by the Lego brand and have a slightly different look and size to them.  I also put his Angry Birds and the pigs in here as well.  They are not Legos, but he plays with them often.  I labeled the bins with vinyl, which I cut with my Silhouette Cameo.  

I purchased a set of Steralite drawers from Target as well.  This is where I organized the Legos by color.  At this time, the colors that he has the most of, made it into these drawers.  The other colors are in the desk drawers.  I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the letters for the drawer labels and I used Mod Podge to affix them.  I found that I will be able to remove them should I ever want to change out which colors we keep in here.  I also have another set of drawers waiting just in case his collection become much larger and we need more storage.  

Like I said, the remainder of the colors are in the desk drawers.  I used a drawer divider to separate them.  In the other desk drawer is another divider with all of the people, animals, hats, heads, capes, etc.  

We have had this setup for over a month now and it's working perfectly.  My son really enjoys having them organized by color and he can usually be found at his desk.  Works in progress are typically all over the desktop and pieces do end up on the floor or in the wrong color bins, but it's a quick fix when  we want to get everything straightened back up.  It turned out fabulous!

My daughter also has a few sets of Legos.  While she isn't as crazy about them as my son is, I still wanted a way to keep them organized.  We decided to go with some small stackable bins and a few plastic shoe containers.  These are also from Target.  Seriously, do I shop anywhere else?!  We organized them and decided to keep the bins in her closet on her shoe rack.  I didn't opt for labels on these, especially because the top bins have a variety of colors in them.  That's not to say I won't label them in the future.  I love labels.  Anyway, it was a quick and easy solution for her Lego collection and we love it!  

Organized Legos = a happy mommy.  A really, really, really happy mommy!  Yay!

Girls' Bedroom Update

The last time I wrote a post about my daughter's bedroom was over a year ago.  Back then, our oldest had her own room, while the three others shared.  I have since decided to have a girls room and a boys room.  This called for doing a complete redo in each room.  My daughter's room became the boys' room and their room became the girls' room.  My husband wasn't too happy that he had to disassemble and reassemble their furniture.  He handled that while I repainted both rooms.  It was quite a stressful week or two to say the least.  Anyway, I was never totally satisfied with how everything was set up in the girls' room.  The other week, I just decided I had to fix it.  This is what it looked like when I finally couldn't take it anymore.  It needed an overhaul full of rearranging, subtracting some pieces and throwing a lot of junk in a garbage bag.

I switched the placement of every single thing except my older daughter's daybed.  The TV was mounted onto the wall, I added a little craft project and a gallery wall and rearranged the closet.  My older daughter has a lot of little toys and she is a collector of anything and everything.  When she wasn't around, I threw so much stuff away.  Call me a mean mommy, but it had to be done.  I now have a spot for everything that we kept.  The tricky part is getting the girl to put it back.  I know that every few months I will need to purge her stuff again, but for this moment, it's all good.  Take a look around..

I still need some cord covering to hide the TV cords.  I will nag my husband about that ASAP.  

The closet is going to be a work in progress for a little while as far as clothing is concerned.  I have been wanting to start hanging more of the kids' clothing, so this is the start.  My younger daughter's clothing is all still in the changing table dresser drawers which is in the boys' room.  Once she is potty trained, I will move her stuff into this room, but for now it makes sense to keep it in the changing table.  

The top bins store a variety of items.  From the left, they contain clothing for my younger daughter in the next size up, young girl's makeup and jewelry that I don't prefer either of them to have without my help, and arts and crafts kits.  I used some Target Dollar Spot chalkboard labels to label them.  The pink basket has some drawstring backpacks and other little bags in it.  The purple container houses the Rainbow Loom. 

The Closetmaid cubes on the bottom contain my daughter's collection of goody bag toys (you know, all that junk from birthday parties), headbands/hair accessories, purses, dress up clothing and accessories and doll clothing.

The small bookshelf just outside of the closet is where we are keeping some of her little art projects, books, legos, doll house toys and a variety of other little creatures, aka McDonald's toys.  Ahh.  That string of lights is looking awfully fluorescent in this photograph, but I can assure you that they are a pretty pink color and give off subtle light.  

My daughter's daybed is from the Hemnes line at IKEA.  I love that it has 3 large drawers underneath.  In these drawers are barbies and accessories, pajamas and extra sheets and blankets.  

I moved the desk over to the corner under the window and got rid of the little cubbies that we had over it before.  The cubbies just didn't work in the space anymore.  I am sure that I will find a new home for them soon.  On the desk, I just have two boxes to keep paper, pencils, crayons, notebooks, etc.  My older daughter doesn't use this for homework, but she likes to sit at her little desk and do art projects here and there.  A broken jewelry box somehow made its way from the garbage back to their room.  Until I can pull a ninja move and sneak it back out, it has also found a home on the desk.  Trinkets galore in there.  

I got this cute latch box from the children's decor section at Target.  I love it.  

I whipped up a little tassel garland to hang over the crib.  Truth be told, I first hung up my gallery wall over the crib and THEN thought about glass picture frames falling on my toddler.  These tissue paper tassels are out of her reach, so I feel much better about this than the gallery wall.  This was super easy to make and you can find tutorials all over Pinterest and YouTube.  I made mine using an HGTV tutorial here.

The gallery wall could very well be my favorite part.  Some of the frames I had in their room already and the rest took a few clearance frames from Target and some shopping through my own home.  The small dog canvases are from Target.  My younger daughter LOVES dogs, so when I saw these, there was no way they weren't coming home with me.  The colorful frame in the lower left is from one of my daughter's arts and crafts kits she got for her birthday.  She chose the picture of her sister to put in it.  I don't remember where I got the Ariel sign or wall stickers.  The silhouette of Ariel was an Etsy purchase, but I am not sure of the shop.  It came with immediate downloads of most of the Disney princesses.  Neither of my daughters has a favorite princess at this point, but my favorite princess is Ariel.  They don't seem to mind.  :)

I love this "magazine cover" with Ariel on the front.  All of the story titles are adorable!

And that's about it for the room update!  So far, so good.  I like it much better than what we had going on before.  Stay tuned for some more room updates as I have recently done mini makeovers in our living room and master bedroom.  Have you been doing any room updates lately?

Organized Coat Closet

I don't know about your neck of the woods, but where I am from, we are definitely in the dead of winter.  I am talking snow and freezing temperatures.  There isn't a better time than now to show you how I organize our coat closet.  It's the first door in our hallway right off of the front door.  We have lived in this house for over 2 years now and still haven't gotten around to painting inside this closet or changing out the shelving.  I really would like to do both at some point.  Regardless, this closet does it's job.

The best thing I ever put in our coat closet was an over-the-door 24-pocket shoe organizer.  It's where we keep our most often used gloves and hats.  Prior to buying this, our outerwear was, well, out of control.  

All of our scarves and most of my husband's winter hats are in bins on the top shelf of the closet.  I labeled the bins with Martha Stewart chalkboard labels.  On the floor, there are two shoe organizers.  We don't keep any shoes in here, so I usually just store excess toilet paper there.  I keep our two diaper bags in here as well.  

It's very rare that this closet gets messy.  I love those spaces that stay organized no matter what.  There are very few of them in our house, but this is definitely one of them!  I never have to worry about things falling out when I open the door and we haven't had a hard time finding gloves and hats since I bought that shoe organizer.  Love love love!  Stay warm, my friends!

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