New Year, New Attitude ~ Getting Organized

In January many of us make new year resolutions. One of the things on my list this year is to get better organized and simplify my life. When I say "Organized", that included many things. My house all the nooks and carnies, but also my schedule too. When I think about it, it is a bit over whelming, but I decided to start small and keep working at it. This is one of the small(and CHEAP!) organization project that I started a while ago, but made such a difference for me, so I will share it with you today.

I like finding inexpensive cute earrings. Not only do I take good care of things, I don't lose them and also I thought I could always give them to my daughter when she is older, I kept them and my collection grew and grew... If you are like me, one of the challenges to collecting things is to find the best way to organize them. I tried a couple different methods, but they didn't really work out for me. They look kind of organized, but it is still hard to find the ones that I want to wear for the day.

I still need to look for the other matching earring!

For this project, I bought several foam sheets. 33 cents a sheet at Walmart! Cut them to strips. I cut mine for various widths. 1" for smaller earrings and 1 3/4" to 2" for bigger earrings.

Then, made holes with an awl. It is so easy to put an awl through the foam and you can just make an indent. You could easily push the earrings through the foam, but this step will create more even placement for the holes and it looks much more organized and pretty when it's all set and done.

For the smaller earrings, I organized them like: gold, silver, rose gold, pearls and unique. This allowed me to find the earrings I want to wear for that day much faster.

For the bigger earrings, I had fun categorizing and grouping them by theme and color. I store those strips in the shallow drawers.

I used three sheets of foam which is around a dollar. This is the best way that I have organized my earrings and I love it so much! I hope you will give it a try!

Call it good

After the open house I have been enjoying some wiggle room and freedom. I usually set my goals like what needs to be done by when and try to follow that. As of right now I don't have a project that I HAVE TO DO by tomorrow or by the end of this week, so, I hemed my boy's pants and tomorrow I am going to make a bag using Dragon print fabric for him to put in his sparring gear. Yes...dragon... it is totally not my style, but that will make him extremely happy.

Also I started organizing my sewing area. It has been a mess for quite a while. I know, once it is clean and organized I will be much more productive and love the space better.

As I was going through the stuff, I came across this quilt.



I peiced it about nine years ago. I alway have several project going on at the same time, I finally finished quilting it last year (it is all hand quilted) then I thought I will do Trapunto, a method to put stuffing in to some quilted areas to make it pop out more, and was tucked away.

I looked at it and thought "What was I thinking!? This quilt is done!" Although I love modern style, I also love traditional style quilts. I think I can call it good and move on to the next unquilted quilt tops. Because I have many that are waiting for thier turn....

I am busy in a good way

My children have been on spring break since last Friday. My husband is really busy at work right now, we couldn't plan a trip or anything. I thought it was going to be a chaotic week for me with three very energetic children. To my surprise, it has been very nice! We are just enjoying being together and doing little fun stuff here and there.

Since I don't have to drive around so much I have been using my time to clean and reorganize my house. I am in the process of reorganize my closet in our room and I'm almost done. I took everything out, vacuumed, and wiped the walls. After that I went through my clothes piece by piece to consider if I needed it or not. I take good care of my clothes and I don't buy over the top "in style" items, so I can wear them for a while. Some of the clothes I wear go back to when I was in high school!!(Let's not go into how long ago it was and stuff, leave out those details please).
It feels sooo good to see clean and organized space. I am loving my closet again! The next area I am going to work on is in our office.

I mentioned that some of my clothes are from my high school years. Well, I was reorganizing the kitchen cabinet and found this.



Here is one of my quirks. I keep tiny pencils. Some of you may be thinking "Why?", well, when I design, I use pencils and colored pencils. Those are my favorite things to use. When they are so small that I can't sharpen them anymore, I can't just toss them away. I feel like they worked so hard for me. Besides, I think they are so pretty in the jar. Wouldn't you agree?

I know every one has at least one quirk. It would be fun to read some of yours'. Would like to share?

Also, I have been working on my daughter's dress and my clothes. I will post about them next time. See you then!