Category: storage

2013, bedroom, clothes, husband, organizing, storage

Not so very masterful after all

by casadeberry4 Comments on Not so very masterful after all

You’ve seen them. On Pinterest, magazines, blogs, etc. Those gorgeous master closets with chandeliers and fancy rugs and maybe an ottoman (or a sofa!) in the middle, or if you’re lucky, a whole separate island or vanity area for primping and glamorizing.


source

Well, that’s not going to happen here.

Our master bedroom has a plain old closet with ye olde mirrored sliding doors. We are keeping those because they bounce a great deal of light around and as dark as our house is, we love all the light we can get. Unless it’s time to sleep. Then we love our light-blocking panels.

But I digress.

This is the starting point. I’m so sorry.
Left side:

We’ve had the white unit for almost 10 years. Steve reinforced the back, which was bowing in, and it’s good to go for another 10. He gets two drawers, I get two drawers; my makeup and most of my jewelry go on the lower shelf. We share the top shelf and he gets the middle shelf.

Right side:

Did I mention we share?
Yep, he gets the top level while I (being all of 5’1″) get the lower one.

Since we didn’t have a good place for my long skirts and dresses, we decided to move things around, and give the old thing a paint job while we were at it. Nothing fancy, just the same Valspar “Cream in my Coffee” we have in the living room, but it was an improvement over this loveliness:

Of course, things got a lot worse before they started to get better:

I still have a lot of sorting to do, given my array of costume jewelry, so things aren’t 100% finished. But we are both happy with the results so far.

Hopefully, I will have more (neater) stuff to show you soon!

Have a wonderful week!

2013, house, husband, organizing, project, storage, wood

Sweet and Simple Storage Solution

by casadeberry4 Comments on Sweet and Simple Storage Solution

Our garage houses many things, except our cars. Most of our “stuff” is stored in large bins, but as always, it is the little things that are always bouncing from place to place, unless they have a permanent home.

We recently inherited, among other things, a few bins from Steve’s parents, who closed their catering business after thirty years. Given the unused space next to Steve’s desk and the new-to-us bins, he decided to build something to store small things like cables, computer parts, etc.


This idea is similar to Ana White’s Laundry Basket Dresser.

The area before:

Measuring (twice) and cutting (once)

The finished – and oh so useful! – storage area with bins in place.

As always, I have to thank my sweet husband for always looking for ways to make our lives more efficient. Less time spent spent searching for things means more time spent having fun. Yesterday I sat at his desk, while he measured and cut, working on a little project of my own, while our boys had fun in the front yard. But for now we are loving the orderly look and more streamlined area. Woot!!

2013, office, organizing, paper, storage, under 5

Taming chaos

by casadeberryLeave a Comment on Taming chaos


You might recall my pledge to makeover my husband’s desk. You know, the one I’ve been relegated to because, as my oldest says, “we like playing on your clean desk” – mm-hmm. So in my quest for a new desk, I started with an area that drove me batty every time I looked at it — the charging “center”.


Believe me, I was very kind in taking a grainy, far away picture, because you did NOT want to see this desk up close. Or the tangled mess that was the charging strip and the bazillion cords plugged into it. It’s the area to the left of the monitor where the Kindle and assorted black cords and items are sitting.

I chose a boot box we had laying around because it would be large enough for the bulky charging strip. I covered it in some delicious peacock paper from my home away from home, Paper Source, and then made two holes in it. The one in the back was large enough for the charging strip:

and the rectangular one in front was for the charging cords to plug into our various items.

I am so happy with the result. It’s not a space saver but a visual chaos tamer, and a much welcome one. The peacock paper brings together the colors I plan on using in this area, including shimmery gold:

First step taken — well, actually, the first step was cleaning the behemoth of a desk, so second step taken, yay me! I like how $4.95 (plus tax) for the paper was all I invested in this little change, and I already had the paper from a previous excursion to the store. I hope to make more progress this week and share the new desk area with y’all. Wish me luck!

* Today is my darling daddy’s birthday. I miss you so much, dad, I hope you are enjoying some good Peruvian coffee and freshly baked bread, and having a good conversation with friends, or maybe watching some Peruvian futbol. Love you lots.

2012, organizing, pantry, storage, Uncategorized

Organizing someone else’s pantry

by casadeberry4 Comments on Organizing someone else’s pantry

The conversation went like this:

and before I knew it, I’d agreed to help a friend with her pantry.

Dear Friend’s house does not have a lot of storage, so her (and Mr. DF’s) laundry room has become THE storage room for non-perishables, linens, pet supplies, home improvement items, etc.

I forgot to take a photo at the very beginning, but at this point we had just cleared out the second shelf from the top.

I asked DF what would work best for her – we put the items that are least used on the very top shelf, including some appliances and seasonal items. My main goal was to make the space as functional as possible for her and her husband. We sorted and grouped items together:

Camping items together on top of paper towels.


Different paper towels (recyclable) and cleaning cloths.


All the large cans of paint were moved to the back, since they are only kept in case a touch-up is needed. They were formerly in front of the shelves, taking up precious real estate. The white tower is next to the washer and dryer, so the laundry supplies went on top and the less-used light bulbs went below.

By the end of the afternoon, we had cleared out a lot of items that were no longer needed, shelved items according to frequency of use, and made enough room for items to be grouped in appropriate clusters, i.e. soups and broths, beans, various rice varieties, coffee supplies, pet supplies, etc. Here is the storage room by the end of my visit:

Then we moved on to the kitchen cupboards – the result of going through every corner is finding many items you’d forgotten you had, and also a few past their expiration date.

The baking goods cabinet.

We enjoyed some soon-expiring chocolate chips, and then I went home to my men. DF said she was very happy with the results and I think we did a good job going through everything and deciding what the best place was for each item.

So that was my adventure organizing someone else’s space – hope you enjoyed it!

food, ikea, kitchen, pantry, storage

Another reason to love IKEA

by casadeberryLeave a Comment on Another reason to love IKEA

We’re moving away from plastic containers in this house, and a goal for the year is to store things like beans, rice, pasta, etc. in clear containers in the pantry so I can better see what we have on hand.

IKEA has an awesome selection of glass storage jars and as much as I love The Container Store, IKEA has them beat in price.
I love the closure on the Slom jars, I think I’ll pick up a couple here and there to build up my pantry storage.

I was in no way compensated for this post. IKEA have no clue who I am, I wasn’t given money or anything for talking about their awesomeness. However, if they were to choose to give me money or products I would be like, totally psyched!