Thursday, September 29, 2011

I Need A System!!!! And FAST!

I normally take great pride in keeping my house clutter free and about 90% organized!



I said 90% because, as my sister can attest to, I am great at the company dash and stash!! I hate having my house look messy when someone walks through the door! So, I dash around, stash the unsightly items in my closets...light a candle or two, and when the company walks through the door my house looks pulled together. So the extra 10%...the closets, they are always a work in progress!





This being said, I really do LOVE creating systems and organization throughout my house and life. I love a drawer organizer, adore hooks, have an obsessive amount of sticky notes, use lots of baskets and totes, and swoon over a system that WORKS. I love these things so much, my husband and I use to go on dates to Office Depot or Office Max. He would hand me a $20.00 and say, "Have Fun!" I loved choosing new office supplies or creating a new system...you know, for that one drawer that was really bugging me!!! One day, during finals, He even surprised me with the NEW, extra large, bonus color, pack of Sharpies!!! I was thrilled! : ) So I am easy to please, what can I say!





This being said, you can only imagine how bothered I am by the mountains of papers currently sitting on my counter, table, desk, and even in a bag already stashed in my closet!!! Where are all these papers coming from, you ask? One word, KINDERGARTEN!!!!! And Pre-School isn't helping the matter either. I am literally drowning in cute, colored, wobbly lettered, crookedly cut and pasted papers. I love them, they are so cute, they completely represent where he is developmentally, and HE is so proud of them. I can't throw them away, at least not yet!





Ladies, I need help...try as I might, I can't seem to come up with a system that is working for me. I have tried a box/basket that they all go in, and every month we go through and pick his favorites to save. This is so time consuming! I have tried a binder, one for each kid...they are never big enough! I don't want stacks or trays where the general public can see...I am stuck! I need your help, I know you have or are currently walking through this yourselves, so...what is your solution? What kind of system do you have for sorting and filing all the lovelies from school? I NEED your help!!!



Remember I am drowning, so don't hesitate to put your two bits in!! : )

5 comments:

Amelia said...

I hate the paper tornado too! I try to sort through the onslaught of worksheets and colorings. I pull out only a select couple of things that I think will be fun to see a few years from now and stash them in a tote for school work. I only pick the things that are really unique and show their creativity and genius! Report cards also go in the same stash. The rest is recycled! No guilt! A great idea to get rid of the paper all together is to scan them into the computer and save them forever like that! They can each have their own file and it would be a great resource for scrapbooking in the future.
Good Luck

Nikki said...

There has only been a month of school and the piles are Out. Of. Control. I totally agree. One idea I have heard of is to take pictures and put the pictures into an album. (But then you miss the textures, so I don't know. Let me know what you come up with.

24 Corners said...

You know I can be no help at all to you in this catagory...but, I do know that you have it in you to figure it out, and when you do...it will be the best system ever!
Happy organizing!
xo J~

Farmgirl Paints said...

I wish I could help you. I'm an organized closet clutter person. It may look nice and neat, but I don't have any idea where anything is most of the time. All the pics you showed looked like great inspiration. Good luck:)

The Strongs said...

I currently have one of those deep fabric lined baskets on the shelf of my trestle desk. It almost completely out of sight. I am keeping all of his Kindergarten stuff so I can copy the lessons if we home-school boy #2. In our basement I have one of those tension line picture hangers going down the whole wall. It is an art gallery of sorts for all my favs and the big projects that don't fit in a basket. Everything from pre-school has been sorted and stored in a Rubbermaid bin. I am sure the system will change as the boys get older and I will purge. Most of the drawings and projects we do at home get photoed/scanned and then tossed.