Home Organization

OK: I said in my previous post that I had info on home organization.

I'll start with a bit of history - the "back story."

When Katy and I got married, I moved into her house, a 2 bedroom, 1 bath bungalow in south Minneapolis. About 820 sq ft, unfinished basement, detached 1-car garage, fenced back yard. We did a few small improvements and maintenance items (rain gutter, roof repair, ceiling repair, floor varnishing, things like that), then we sold the place and bought a house in Brooklyn Park with more than double the finished square footage, and tons of storage. Over the years, we acquired more furniture and stuff, and when we moved again, we were overwhelmed with the stuff we had to pack and move! But no worries: we were moving into a larger house! Right? WRONG! Though it had more finished square footage, it had tons LESS storage - and we were splitting at the seams.

So, we had to move AGAIN, to a house with more storage and more square footage. But even so, it still had lots LESS storage than our Brooklyn Park property. That's where we are now, and we've been there almost two years - and still haven't unpacked a lot of stuff because there isn't any place to put it.

OK: enter a home organizer we invited over (whose name and company website we're not sharing, because she was extremely confrontational and it was not a pleasant experience), who shared a few high level ideas and dropped the name IKEA.

So we visited the local IKEA store and browsed...and bought. So far in the past month, I'd estimate we've spent close to a grand there, but the storage space it's bought us is...well, Katy half-jokingly said it would "save our marriage." (At least I THINK it was half joking...)

In the sun room we moved games and toys off a Target storage shelf (designed more with the garage in mind) and onto a piece of furniture...with more shelf space. In fact, we purchased a few items where the kids could put their clothes, where we could put our tapes, CDs, DVDs, books, our other books, the rest of our books, and our remaining books.

I posted an "after" photo (sorry; I wasn't thinking far enough ahead to include "before" photo) of the sun room storage (more photos in later posts). Admittedly we have a ways to go - but if you knew where we'd been, you'd congratulate our progress!

What's the point of this post? Jeez: if you're struggling to find stuff, or struggling to find places to put your stuff, or both, turn loose of some dough and make a few storage changes in your house. It's calmer here now. Really!

Good luck, and blessings.