Welcome back down the stairs:

I got a lot of work done on this and it feels pretty good. First of all, the guest bed and laundry folding and ironing area. Here’s the bed with a dust ruffle I got from the St. Louis Freecycle List. Let me take this quick moment to say that the floor of our basement is not level and it slopes down from the walls. This means there’s about a 2′ strip between the wall and any furniture. I created a sub-wall of sorts and use that sloped 2′ for storage that doesn’t need to be level, like out of season clothes and seasonal decorations. You can see these boxes of storage poking up around the furniture from time to time. That’s just the way it has to go here. Also – I got rid of a LOT of stuff down here. Maybe 8 or 9 big things (bags/boxes) went to the seminary free store over the course of the month and I’ve got about 2 or 3 more from today ready to go. I also had about 3 large trash bags full of stuff to simply pitch. Feels good.

I fixed my laundry problem by moving the ironing board over by the bed and moved the hanging rack to the wall side of the area. Now, folded laundry gets placed in stacks on the bed, hung laundry gets hung and sorted immediately, and things that need to be ironed either get ironed on the spot or put in that basket on the hanging rack to be ironed next time.

Here’s that whole area altogether:

Moving on now. This area used to have a plethora of the girls’ crafty stuff and as such was constantly bombarded by a mess of crazy craftiness. This area is now no longer allowed to be crafted in. They can do puzzles, play with manipulatives, read books, play games, or stuff like that. No crafts!! I finally got our maps and alphabet hung up on the wall. Only took four months…

Schoolish area to the left:

Schoolish area to the right:

The whole schoolish area:

The games are purged and organized and my already made candles are now placed in an easy-to-get-to place:

Continuing on toward the right – this is the area where we lost a shelf. Some things have been purged, the rest reorganized and labeled:

Here’s my scrapbook table and other crafty supplies a bit closer. I keep the photos I’m working from and the paper cutter on this table. The white drawer box underneath holds the colored paper:

And now, if you turn directly around, the actual scrapbook is on the backside of the craft table (which I haven’t shown a picture of just yet):

Moving on toward the right again, here’s my sewing machine and fabric stash and patterns shelf. This is pretty picked up for this area – it gets a lot of attention from many hands looking for fabric for precious crafts…

The washing machine area got cleaned up – the boxes of miscellaneous got put in their proper places and they got dusted off and swept around. The shelf with laundry detergent got emptied when I donated several containers of non-HE detergent to a shelter.

You can’t really tell what I did here, but it also got reorganized – my candle making supplies got better arranged and many things left the shelf for either donation or trash. This allowed me to get several bins that I actually needed off the floor and onto the shelf.

And now, for the very best part of all. My parents brought my sewing table with them this week. I set it up in the middle of the room and created the ultimate craft area for the girls. THIS is where they can craft from now on and we made that pretty clear to them tonight. They are happy with it, so hopefully they will be content with leaving their crafting genius right here:

A closer look at the supplies:

And under the table:

And the table in the context of the rest of the basement:

WHEW! That project feels really good to have crossed off my list. It may not win any awards, but it was definitely worth the effort. This whole thing got started with the 30 Day Organizational Challenge hosted by I’m an Organizing Junkie. Thanks for the motivation, Laura!

Rest assured, I’m not normally the type to think Build-a-Bear is a highlight when it means being pulled away from the actual game, but we had an experience last night that was super fun and it was indeed a highlight, both for the girls and for me.

We went to find the Build-a-Bear just after the end of the third inning. After choosing the appropriate over-priced stuffed Cardinal memorabilia, we proceeded to the stuffing station. Just as we approached the machine, Fredbird appeared and grabbed Katie’s bear and began a stuffing display unlike any I’ve ever seen. He was hamming it up in the Build-a-Bear, pretty much just for our benefit. He stuffed (with the girls, of course) all four of their bears/birds, made a mess with the stuffing machine, and posed for pictures with all of us.

After he left, we were informed by the Build-a-Bear staff that he doesn’t do that very often and it was the first time this season that he had, so it was extra special last night. The girls talked about it quite a bit for the remainder of the night, and I think they’ll remember that for a long time.
And oh, yes – we did also watch the game. Cards won. Yippee!

I stayed home this morning because I woke up with a pretty major cold and sore throat and am super tired. My goal was to rest. But no, what do I do? As soon as everyone is gone and I’m here alone I feel this compulsion to weed out their rooms, so I’ve been sorting, purging, slight rearranging, and general cleaning and organizing.

And now I’m coughing on top of my major cold and sore throat and am super duper tired.

I never learn.