Organized Schmorganized!

I love organization. I firmly believe that there should be a place for everything and everything in its place, and my main floor looks pretty good if I do say so myself, but my basement is another story. While adoring the "Pottery Barn" look, I am entirely too cheap to go out and buy a plethora of beautifully matched bins or containers, where everything can be perfectly placed and stacked neatly together. And even if I wasn't so cheap, there's always the odd shaped item that doesn't fit neatly in the containers, thereby sticking out like a sore thumb and ruining an otherwise aesthetically pleasing living space.

Today I tackled the girls' play room. A couple of years ago I did buy a dozen or so shoe box sized, see-through Sterilite containers with matching lids. They worked pretty well for a while, and even though I'm still using them, they're not exactly in the same shape they were when I bought them. It's tough to get my children to understand that the boxes are not chairs, step stools, or weapons. Needless to say, the boxes are cracked, but still functional! So once again I put toys of like items in the boxes, labeled them with my trusty label maker and set them together on the shelves.

There's still the peculiar little items like the Rubik's cube from a yard sale last summer, badminton rackets, the ever endearing, fast-food meal toy, and the boxes of games with MOST of the pieces, that don't quite fit neatly into an organizational plan, but at least they're stored in an orderly manner.

So, one room down and a couple more to go. My storage room is next on the agenda, but Martha Stewart I'm not, so as long as it's fairly tidy and I can actually find things, I figure I'm one step ahead of the game!