Organized Chaos.

I think that I mentioned that I am trying to spruce up our home, one room at a time.  My goal is to work on one room each month, but it turns out that I'm pretty poky, so it may take longer.  (Note:  Yes, mom and dad.  I can hear your opinions regarding the fact that it's been 9 months since I promised to finish painting my dining room and kitchen and it's still not done.  I know that having two-tone walls looks silly.  I recognize that I am slow and perhaps a bit lazy/crazy.  Now pipe down!).  : )

Okay.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  I'm working on one room at a time and I thought that it would be appropriate to start with our dining area because it's smack dab in the middle of our house and it's where I spend most of my time.  Here is a peak of the view when standing in the dining area and looking at our living room:

I took this picture to prove that I did, indeed, complete my 1000 piece Christmas puzzle present!  You can see that our house is pretty cozy (i.e., small).  The kitchen is just to the left of the table and these three areas (the kitchen, dining area, and living room) comprise the entire living area of our home.  I'll show some more pictures of the dining area tomorrow, but what I really want to share today is this:

This is my new organizational system (and the world's oldest working cell phone)!  Please ignore the fact that the white cabinet (A) doesn't work well with any other surface finish in this area; and (B) makes things look very cramped.  I've decided to ignore these facts for now and go with it.  Instead, please notice the fancy wire file thingy, the binder, and the basket.

I saw this idea (from a blog called Lovely Crafty Home) on Pinterest and it inspired my little system.  I really like the container used in the original picture better than mine, but I decided to use what I already had.  I'm cheap that way.  Here is a close-up of my new system:

This has improved the quality of my life exponentially because it provides me a central stuffing location for all of the forms, calendars, reading logs, etc. that Connor brings home from school!  Always before, I would take them into the guest room, toss them towards the desk, and pray that the school paper fairies would come out to deal with them at night.  Now, I don't have to walk those extra steps!  : )  Seriously, though, it's been nice to have a central location for all of the things I need to keep track of.  And even better--it has allowed me to clear off our refrigerator.  Mostly. 

Wire file thingy = Awesomeness.  Who knew?

So what's the other stuff, you wonder?  The binder is for my work papers (class rosters, discussion board feedback forms, reminders, etc.)  I do 99.9% of my work at the kitchen table so it just makes sense for my work materials to have a home nearby.  The little basket is full of pens, pencils, a calculator, and post-it notes.  The little flowered notepad needs to find a new home, but it's currently full of measurements for various projects so I'm keeping it here for now.

And that's it.  I'm completely organized now.  Ha!
Maybe someday I'll be completely organized, but this is one small step...