Shortly before we moved to the Inland Northwest, my best friend had an idea.
Knowing my apparent inability to keep things in the household clean and organized, she suggested that I take pictures once a month of my progress and send them to her.
I did not do that. Irrational beliefs concerning well, a lot of things, kept me from doing so.
However, I must admit she had a point.
So I'm going to take her idea, and make it BIGGER.
Thus, Today's Challenge is born. I will take photos of one area of the house I want to complete clean out, redo, etc and post them.
I will include why it's a challenge, and what I intend to do about the challenge.
Later, I will follow up with my progress and what I learned.
So today we're doing the master bedroom and bathroom:
Storage by door
Closet
Corner (note short wall)
Part of floor
Internet equipment
Shoes
Chris's side with To Read pile
Master bathroom
Master bathroom
The issues:
- Two adults with ADHD, one space. Any organizational system must be simple, memorable by both, and extremely visual.
- Too much stuff, too little space, no organization.
- Too many hats; we've used the master bedroom for SO many things, including Chris's office when he was working from home AND a music space. We need to reduce the number of things we use the master bedroom for.
- Odd room design; as you can see the master bedroom is the loft in a chalet style home. The walls are short. The closet is short in height, but extends back to the short wall leaving a bunch of semi-useless space.
- The master bath only has room for one person to get ready at a time. In the morning that can be an issue.
- The useful part of the closet that we can reach (i.e. where the clothes are hanging) is full of clothes and there are more clean clothes to put away.
- My shoe collection is large and haphazard at the moment.
- I don't have anywhere but the bathroom to put on my makeup, there's no room in the bathroom FOR my makeup, and I want to put on my makeup while Chris is getting ready in the morning.
- Chris's "To Read" pile is sky high, as is the pile of magazines he hasn't read yet.
- There is no good established way to deal with dirty laundry.
- The internet connection equipment is stored in the master bedroom for good reason, and cannot be moved to another room.
The good:
- There's plenty of space if used properly.
- There's some blank wall space.
What I've done before this point:
- Shoe rack for the door. I'm not happy with it as a permanent solution.
- Organized both sides of the closet, complete with labels. Chris's clothing runs professional to casual from left to right, making getting dressed for work very easy. His socks and underwear are in the hanging shoe organizer, tshirts shorts and jeans in the sweater organizer. We've run out of room on his side, despite removing items that don't fit. My side runs from dresses to tops and lingerie, with panties and bras in shoe organizers. I've also run out of room.
My plan:
- Take out anything that doesn't belong. All papers, all office equipment except internet connection equipment. Bedroom is for sleeping (and other related activities), clothing, and getting ready in the morning. Chris's laptop must stay because, well, it must.
- Set up a makeup vanity where the internet equipment is now, with allowances for the equipment. Move all makeup to drawer cart stored under vanity.
- Take out the black wire shelves by the door and replace with a 9 cube cubby shelving unit for the extra clothing. Mount curtain rods above the shelving for my shoes.
- Take excess clothing out of closet so everything is easier to reach. Clean out back of closet which is currently unused. Turn back of closet into world's most soundproof meditation space (seriously).
- Pare Chris's To Read pile and move excess to eventual home of all books, aka Basement Hall Storage Area.
- Set up permanent clothes hamper for dirty clothes.
- Clean out bathroom; remove all unnecessary duplicates and empty containers. Organize medicine cabinet and drawers in a useful fashion.
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