30 Day Organizational Challenge ...

Well tonight marks the end of the 30 Day Organizational Challenge.

I did manage to organize the space in my basement, but not at all how I wanted it to look and frankly, I am not satisfied with it. But it is better than it was before and I will have to live with it until I can buy furniture for down there that will be suitable to store our items (so yes, please go shop at my store now so I can do that sooner - just kidding readers!)
Anyway the pictures are below ... and if you go to my flicker page, you can see much more detailed description of it all. Anyway, here's the pictures:

Before shots:



the view from the office doors ...

the view from coming down the stairs

standing behind the futon ... you can see part of the office door to the left.
(the door on the right leads to a mini-closet housing a sub-pump)

Also from the back of the futon, but angled more to get the especially
hideously disorganized corner!

Bonus room: the unfinished part of the basement.

After pictures:

When you come down the stairs, this is your first view. My desk now behind the futon. This desk is especially neat because the top actually flips open and so the length is doubled when I work. I should have taken a picture, but alas, I did not.

inside the desk - my scrapbooking supplies

Where the toy baby items are is where we are hoping to move dh's desk to someday and next to it to replace the toy holder and boxes, more bookcases I hope!

View from right behind the futon. I would like to put a big entertainment center along this wall someday (some of the furniture I need to buy) with shelves and all that jazz to put the tv we will eventually buy down here and books around it and if there were some cabinets at the bottom, I would hide toys in there!

Anyway, there it is, in all it's glory. Like I said, not what I wanted, but it will do for now. And it is better down there than it was before. But I really wish that I could grow a money tree in the backyard so that funds were ulimited. For now I will stalk all sale papers and craigslist and hope that something that we can use down there pops up. But I'm guessing that won't happen until fall. We need a few months to recover from all the spending we did when we first moved in!

Questions to answer:

1. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and were you able to overcome it?
The hardest part was not having enough places to put items away. And no, I was not able to overcome it. I really think we need some great shelves and storage units down there. We want the room to look very organized and clean and lose that lots of boxes feeling. Unfortunately we were not able to find anything that met our needs and our budget. It is frustrating, but I have to say again, even though I didn't do all that I wanted to, I am glad for what I did do and it does make a difference!

2. Tell us what kind of changes/habits you have put into place in order for your area/room to maintain its new order?
The kids now know where there toys in the new house go. We had not yet set up places for them prior to this. Also I am now in the habit of each day collecting the basement items on the first floor, taking them down, and then bringing the upstairs items back up! This is something my dh ahs dreamed of me doing for a while now so he is happy with it!
I think for us, just getting places to put things was all we needed and doing this helped us really think about where we wanted things in the new house to go.


3. What did you do with the "stuff" you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?
Anything that was good went to goodwill, anything that was not, was tossed aside. Some clothing items we found were given to friends that we knew who could use them

4. What was the biggest lesson you learned from this experience?
My kids have too many things. I have too many things. We need to purge much more often and really not keep every little thing just in case. We don't have room for it. We don't need it. And even though it is hard to let go of things in that moment, once it's gone, it feels so good to see a nice clean space and know that what you have fits in it!

5. Now that you have completed the PROCESS, do you think having and keeping your space organized will make a difference in your life?
YES! Because my children will learn to do it and it makes the day run better when I am not so frustrated because the house is a mess. If thing have their own spots and the kids know it and I know it then it makes it so much easier to keep the place picked up. I really don't do the whole "uh-oh, it's 5:00 and daddy will be home soon so straighten up really quickly and get all frazzled because the house is a pigsty" anymore. And let me tell you, it makes for much better evenings and much better days overall.