Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

This past week it’s been the library that’s been getting the attention, and boy does it need it.  For TiT I’m featuring 3 of the bookshelves we’ve got in there.

Before:

It took a *lot* of purging and sorting - the “containerizing” is actually done by the bookshelves themselves so no containers.

After:

The top 4 shelves on the left actually have books that weren’t even there before; they were stuck in a few big crates that we brought from my parent’s workshop (where we were storing stuff before I got into my purging spree). I got rid of a LOT of books, papers, and folders.

Not only are all of the shelves organized by topic, I’ve started putting little stickers on the spines so that the kids can easily tell where the book goes when they’re putting it away. You can see those on the bottom row of books on the left. Those are all Science; the left side is Science 1 (people, animals, plants), and the right side is Science 2 (technology, weather, machines, space). All Science books get a green sticker, but the sticker either has a 1 or a 2 written on it to show which section it goes in.  There’s also color-coded labels on the shelves themselves that say what each shelf is.  I also moved the TV over to the left onto the media counter. (The computer is there too.)

Yay! It looks so much better.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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I ran across some free mindmapping software tonight - Freemind.
As I was playing with it, I wondered if it could help me get control of this house. And I do need help (I could use about 4 extra pairs of hands!), so I gave it a try. Here’s a snapshot of what I came up with:

(Click on it to make it bigger.)

It’s not done at this point, but you can see that HUGE purple cloud that encompasses everything we’re trying to stuff into the Library. Ack. That’s obviously not going to work. Something’s gotta move somewhere else.

The method I used was naming the map “Get Control of the House”; then I added on a branch for each room in the house (like I said I’m not done, all rooms aren’t there). Then in each room, I tried to list off all of the activities we optimally wanted to use that room for. Then I started to break down each of those activities, listing off what we’d need for that activity. Like under Library -> Reading, you can see that the two main parts of being able to read in there is having the bookcases, and a place to read. I’ve gotta purge and organize the bookcases, and I need to make sure there’s a comfortable place to read with ample light to do so.

This was pretty interesting - you might want to download the software and play with it and see what you come up with. It helped me see that everything we were trying to stuff into the library by turning the family room into Mike’s office was just too much. Now I can move that around.

As for last week’s Disaster Area - I made great progress the first night and following day. Then Mike’s stuff started coming out of the family room and we needed room in the Library to start fitting stuff in, so I started tackling Disaster Area Redux - The Library. All forward progress on the utility room screeched to a standstill as stuff that we decided to permanently move out of the Library got temporarily put into the utility room. We’re going to sell this stuff in a yard sale later this month, so I’m trying to figure out a place to hold it for a few weeks. I’m thinking the back porch (it’s covered) is gonna have to be the spot.

On Sunday and Monday I…

• Retrained my concorde grape vine (I let it grow out of control last summer once it got intertwined with some gourd vines that took over our entire porch)
• Edged our walkway
• Edged part of the sidewalk out front
• Did a HUGE tackle in the Library, that of course isn’t done
• Calculated out how much mulch we’ll need to properly lay down the flowerbeds this year (just tilling and planting doesn’t cut it, especially with wire grass - ugh)
• Got the braces I needed to put up 3 wire shelves in the utility room
• Got some seed starter trays and windowsill trays so I can plant my seeds
• Handled 4 very energetic and attention-hungry boys for an hour during Cub Scouts - they exhausted me more than all the previous work did! LOL!

I hope the mind mapping software is useful for you. Folks apparently use mind mapping for all kinds of things, instead of outlines. Try googling it; maybe you’ll find your own use for it.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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I can’t believe I’m about to do this.
Okay ladies, I want you to be sure you bookmark this post. Sometime in your life you’re going to think that a tornado hit your house and it could not get any messier, and you’ll start to sink into the couch wondering how you’ll ever even begin cleaning it.

That’s when I want you to think of this post, and come back and look at it for some inspiration.
Because I am willing to bet that whatever has you down does not look as bad as this. And there’s your motivation… at least yours doesn’t look this bad, and you’d better get started tackling it before it does.

May I present to you… my disaster area. Once formally known as my utility room.

See, you’re feeling better already, aren’t you?

It didn’t start out this way; it evolved - although it did evolve rather quickly. We have two large sheds in our backyard for hubby’s tools, toolboxes, boxes of cables and wiring and who knows what else. There might be a dead body in there somewhere. If I find one, I’m not tellin’.

Apparently, those two sheds aren’t big enough to hold his stuff. (I’ve told you he’s a packrat!) This isn’t all of it either; his section of the family room that is his office is jammed floor to ceiling with more boxes of his stuff.

Well, we made a deal.
He gets the entire family room as his “office” or “den”, and I get my utility room back. Now, granted, the family does kinda lose out on this as we’re having to shift “family room” activities into the library or front living room; but hey… at least we’ll be able to walk in the utility room again without fear of bodily harm. I’ve also made it clear that that pile of boxes behind his desk has GOT to go, and if the family room ends up looking like that (or even like these pictures), then I’m going in there and cleaning house.

I am a woman on a mission!

Obviously this isn’t going to be finished tonight, but I did want to get it posted in time for Tackle It Tuesday. Whenever it’s finished, and yes that might be quite a while, I’ll come back and post the updated pics.

If you don’t hear from me for two days, send in dogs. BIG dogs. The kind they rescue stranded icy mountain climbers with. They’ll have to be huge to pull me out from under the massive avalanche of tools and boxes that fell on me.

Wish me luck!

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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