Alone in My House . . . A Staycation Dream

I'm so excited to finally be at a point where I can put this post up. When we sent our girlies to Horse Camp,  I had very lofty goals to completely decrapify and organize the Great Room in our basement. It had gotten so completely out of control, that I couldn't even think straight. When I'm not organized, I don't function at my best, so this project was a very big deal in my world, and sadly, it was at least two years overdue.

Let's start with a before picture, shall we? Everyone loves a good before picture, don't they?

This is the crap end of my basement, and you probably can't tell, since there's so much crap, but I have four crop tables set up in this picture, and they are all covered completely in Things That Need to Be Dealt With. Those words strike fear in my heart. What's even worse, is that there is even more stuff hidden underneath the tables. Like so much that you can't even sit in a chair at those tables.

The good news is that my Guest Room looks awesome. Well, at least when these pictures were taken. Part of the reason why there is so much stuff on and under my tables here is because I had to clean out the Guest Room for Aunt Marcia to sleep in while we were on our cruise. Since I didn't have the time to deal with the crap and make the mentally exhausting decisions about what to do with each and every little thing, I just stuffed it all into every available nook and cranny on and around the tables. I'm such a problem solver.

Enter Horse Camp and my opportunity to complete a thought without constant talking at me by my offspring. Bliss, I tell you.

The very first step actually started before we dropped the girls off in the Hundred Acre Wood, and that step was to sort and purge all the girls' toys. We took a whole van load of stuff to the thrift store, and it felt great.

The plan was to move everything from one end of the basement to the other, paint the walls and clean the carpet, then move back only the things not crap. Then repeat the process for the other end of the basement. That means I had to complete a lot of thoughts and make a lot of decisions. A lot of stuff was taken to the thrift store, and there is still more to be taken. I haven't yet made those decisions, and you'll see about that at the end of this post.

Smashley told me that she feels so much better about herself since I went back to work, because my house isn't perfect. Like it ever was, Smashley. She just always comes over when I know she's coming and I have time to hide the crap.

Here is Stinkerbell helping me unload the stuff on this IKEA Expedit unit. Of the two units I have, one of them became the new home for all the girls' toys, the 18,367 horses and their accompanying paraphernalia. All of it had to be on this unit or it was out of here. I take great joy in motivating my kids.

Here it is, all tidy and organized. I don't love all the barns on top, but there is nowhere else to put them. Besides the trash, I mean.

Here it is with the new paint color, Frosty by Valspar (Lowe's). Peanut Head doesn't like the color, he calls it Caribbean Vomit or some such thing. I don't care though. I told him he doesn't get an opinion because he has no fashion sense. He wears teal and Navy blue together and says they match because they're both blue. Yeah, so you see my point. His opinion matters not when it comes to paint colors. I chose this color because I wanted something to inspire creativity. This one does it for me.

The other color is Scroll Beige by Glidden. I have used this color upstairs in my living room, hallway, and kitchen, paired with my Milk Chocolate and Sunflowery yellow. I have stuck with it because I love it, and because tans are very hard colors to get right. I can't tell you how many times I've had what I thought was a tan color, then gotten it home and found that it looked like I had wiped a poopy diaper across the wall. Tans also tend to be too pink, too purpley, or too red. It's a hard color to get right. This scroll beige color has grey tones in it, and it seems to work.

I chose red and pink as subtle accent colors, so I painted my star birdhouse atop the bookcases in keeping with that idea. It used to be blue.

This is the same quote that I have in my classroom, and it's one of my favorites. I had Janae of Thoughts in Vinyl cut this one for me, and I like her version much better than mine. Seriously, the girl is good at what she does and her prices are great.

I have a lot more things that I need to hang on the walls, but I don't want to stress myself out trying to get it all done now. I like to take months pulling a room together. Months. A year. Whatever.

Part of this redo and decrapification process was to make room for desks for the girls. They had been wanting desks for a long time, so I've been mulling the idea over and looking at desks.

I looked for months, and let me tell you, desks are not cheap. Especially when you are considering buying two desks. I had finally settled on a single long IKEA desk, with a drawer divider thingy to divide it, when Peanut Head and I found these babies at Walmart. They are super simple, super cheapo writing desks, but they are perfect for the girls. Each desk was a whopping $39.95, way cheaper than anything else I could have gotten anywhere.

Peanut Head made these fabulous pegboards for the girls. This is my attempt at keeping their desktops cleared off so they have lots of room to do homework. Or scrapbook, or whatever. We got the bars and bins from IKEA, although I chose to paint the bars.

They were originally a silvery metallic color.

I wanted black.

I moved the large bookcases down on the wall some, and got rid of a lot of the stuff that used to be on them. I had to purge a lot because I wanted to put all my paper in the Sterlite drawers, and that took up six shelves. It was a good move. It's so easy to get to my paper now, and it is up and off the floor.

My new plan is to only keep two tables up when I'm not having a crop. Less surface area means I have less space to mess up, right?

In the space I made from moving the bookcases down, I put my other Expedit unit to create my crafty storage area. Peanut Head thinks it's busy, but again, he doesn't get an opinion. I love being able to see all my stuff and not have to dig for it.

It makes me want to create.

In spite of all the harassment from me, Peanut Head is always there to build stuff for me when I have a new project. This time it was the pegboards, and I think I quite possibly will love him for the rest of my life. I love, love, love, my pegboard. If I weren't already married to Peanut Head, I would marry my pegboard.

By attaching a metal bar and a 12x12 piece of embellished sheet metal, I was even able to get my glitter and all of my doodads out of various bins. I hot glued magnets to the lids of my glitter containers, and I found the large magnetic containers on clearance at Michael's. I love that everything is accessible now, and I can see it and therefore won't forget that I have it.

I found this little IKEA Wanna-be unit at Target, and it makes a perfect throne for my Cricut and my laminator. As a teacher, the $30 Scotch laminator was one of the best purchases I've ever made. I use it for school and for crafty pursuits. I can say the same thing about my Cricut.

All of my Cricut supplies are stored in the bins, as well as all of my stamping supplies.

I still need a window treatment here, but it'll happen when it happens.

The other corner is still home to the desktop. The cable outlet is over here, so there's not much choice about its placement, but it's a good spot for it anyway, so yay.

I'm determined to keep this area tidy. It's one of my favorite places to hang out. Not that you can tell by my frequency of posting. My new obsession is Pinterest. If you haven't checked out Pinterest, you must. Here's a link to my Pin Boards if you want a peek. I spend waaaaaaay too much time on Pinterest. If you decide you want to join, e-mail me and I'll stumble around to try and figure out how to send you an invite. I have to have your e-mail address though, so make sure you e-mail me.

This is my desk. Mostly I pay bills here. I love paying bills. Seriously, I love the feeling of getting my bills paid. I always have.

So, do you remember how I said at the beginning of the post that my guest room was looking pretty awesome when my basement wasn't? Ahem . . .

This is it now. A picture from the door because I can't even get inside.

It's a vicious cycle, I tell you.