Monday, March 12, 2007
Making Do on Monday: A note on organizationIn a post a while back, I shared with you some thoughts on "combining practical with beautiful" in our homes. I think that there some mothers out there who really have a high tolerance for messes and cluttered family homes, for chaos and such. However, there are some of us out there who would go crazy with too much clutter and would be bad mothers because of it. I, for sure, fall into the latter category. Unfortunately, it is a cross at times to be so picky about what I have to look at. There are many ways of which I mentioned one can put touches of beauty into our daily lives. See this post to read more on that.
The reason I am reminded of this today is because on Regina's blog she speaks of her use of baskets in her home. Regina has taken some lovely photos of her basket organization which are worth peeking at. Organization of a home/workspace can become an art in itself. I think that baskets are a perfect example of how to keep a home organized as well as cozy and lovely. When I organize my pantry shelves or my medicine cabinets, I find myself putting all ugly miscellaneous bits into baskets, large and small.Another wonderful type of container for organizing in the bathroom and kitchen is the jar. Jars can be big or small, fancy or plain. When we lived in an apartment, we didn't have any cupboard space for our pantry items. We had a large open set of wooden shelves... a perfect place for the items such as rice, beans, lentils, oats, cornmeal, bulk herbs and such. So I filled up these shelves with our more beautiful dishes and lots of filled jars. Another place where jars come in handy is in the bathroom. Anything that didn't have a sturdy container to live in, ie a plastic bag full of cotton balls or a box of bandaids (which always end up getting bumped and beat-up), I transferred to a jar or one of my own peices of pottery.
Jars and baskets can both be found in abundance at the goodwill or local city rescue missions. Also keep in mind that often those pasta sauces and jam you buy off he shelves in the store are fantastic jars and look great after a soaking and scrubbing. Last year my mother gave me two larger sized jars (harder to find!) from the Dollar General or Dollar Store.Also, for knick-knack storage, such as little things like thumb-tacks, glue sticks and other office/crafty supplies (which are in abundance in our home!!) we like to put them into any type of fun container that is a pleasure to look at. -Old cigar boxes, old wooden boxes of any kind, wooden tea boxes, my pottery and such. These can give a sort of funky, colorful touch to the shelves or storage area.
Then there are those fabulous huge popcorn tins for the larger toy clutter which Regina mentioned in both the posts I've linked to. There are a few other mothers-- including my own, who put these excellent storage tins into use. Regina writes, "...But the best baby-proof container I've found are large round tins that holiday popcorn often comes in. I have a row of these in my kitchen storing lots of odd things I don't want my kids getting into. Babies and most toddlers can't open these without resorting to (loud) violent striking with blunt instruments or throwing them downstairs..."
Happy organizing...
-Sia, Vancouver, WA
Labels: useful ideas
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