Growing up my mom kept everything... if she could even fathom a use for it in the future- she kept it. She would have garage sales, on a monthly basis in the summer and if something hadn't sold all summer long, she would keep it through the winter on the chance that it would sell the next summer at her garage sale.
The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction with me. I don't want to keep stuff. I buy stuff, use it and then when I see that I don't have a use for it anymore- I might try to sell it if it's a high $$ item, but if not I just give it away.
As I get older I'm trying to find the balance between my mom's, and my philosophies of keeping stuff. We don't have a ton of storage space and so I find myself in a battle with the kids with what to keep (that they haven't touched in a year) and what to give away. We just rearranged rooms in the house and converted the "office" into a bedroom. The room is a good size, but there is no closet in it, and the quote for building the closet into the room was too much for hubby and I to agree to. This weekend we spent all of Saturday putting in a closet system. It's open shelves so the goal now is to make all the stuff that my 12 year old son can't bear to part with- look semi-organized and neat on the shelves...
I've got a bunch of clear storage containers on it now, but am wondering if I should try and find some more closed storage so we don't see all of the lego's and kinex and bakugan and nerf darts quite as much when we look at the closet wall. The problem comes in finding covered non-clear bins that can be stacked and are small enough for all the small stuff that has to get organized.
If you have any great ideas... I'm open to suggestions! :)
He is a 12 year old boy though and I do believe it would take a miracle to keep it as neat as we see in the magazines... I'm just hoping for semi-neat. lol!
I bought clear scrapbooking cases from Michaels for 4.49 a piece to put the legos in and if it was a kit then I put a picture of the item in the container. They stack neatly (they normally hold 12 x 12 paper). I have kinex in one as well. I'm thinking that bakugan could work in one as well. He has pokemon cards in a container that is smaller but similar. They snap close.
ReplyDeleteMy house is not perfect and I have two girls who absolutely love to make messes...but I do love all things to have a place for things to go.
I have a 3 drawer sterlite container that after we go through school folders, if it's possibly a school thing that we could keep then they put it in their labeled drawer. At the end of the school year, I'll weed through each drawer and then what I decide to keep will be boxed up (boxes from ikea) and labeled with their names and year and put in the crawl space.
Christi