I'm not gonna lie. I was NOT looking forward to this challenge. In a family of 7, you don't just have a "junk" drawer. You have 2.....AND part of a cupboard. It was a mess and I've been dreading re-organizing it for about 6 months now. I wasn't even planning on starting today but after seeing Cambrey's photos, I caught her contageous enthusiasm and decided procrastinating wasn't going to do me any good. Here's what I had to deal with:
What a mess! Who knows what type of paperwork I would find in there! The bin on the right is SUPPOSED to be for scissors, tape, permanent markers, and other items I really don't want to have easily accessible to 3 year olds but within reach for the rest of the family. Does it look like anything is easily obtainable in there? I think not.
Then there is the true "junk" drawer.
Multiplied by 2. Can you believe we have one complete drawer dedicated to drawing, coloring, & art? Crayons and markers and pencils; OH MY! I didn't get a picture of it, but buried underneath the crayola graveyard is a wooden drawer organizer. R.I.P. little guy. Sorry you weren't made for such a large creative tribe.
After staring at this for a good 30 minutes (NEVER a good idea) and finding just about anything else I could do for another 30. I decided to dive in starting with the drawer on the right. Emptying this drawer and wiping it clean took all of about 2 minutes which was quite motivating. So it only took me 5 more minutes of staring at the colorful drawer before I decided to empty it into a plastic bin. Emptying took about 10 minutes. Scrubbing ink, crayon markings mysteriously looking like a bunch of T's, and something that had helped a purple marker to be stuck to the bottom of the drawer took another 5 minutes.
Then we had a little something that looked like the picture below on the left. Which after another 10 minutes or so of sorting crayons from pencils and markers , turned into the overwhelming picture on the right.
Miss T came in and saw my project and showed interest so I put her to work offering her to either purge the broken crayons or to check which markers and pens still worked. She chose the latter so I got to work on the crayons. I don't think I'll go through and talk about the time each step took because this was a time consuming project on it's own. Add the fact that I had to stop and feed the clan and you've got an all night project. Here's a little shot of what Miss T took from the side of the plastic bin from my fruits of labor. Kinda pretty, isn't it? Now imagine this picture tripled and you've got the idea of how many crayons we were hiding in that drawer.There was a whole lotta crayons! ....Not to mention the amount of pencils, markers, and pens.
So now it's time for the reveal of our 2 not-so-junky drawers..... Cue the angelic choir and spotlight:
Enough admiring. Onto the dreaded cabinet.
Which looked like this:
Notice the papers stuck to the doors? That would be our phone number system. The kids bring home a number from a friend and we'd tape it to the door. It was like playing Where's Waldo? each time you needed to call a pal. To save the details, here's the after pic of our "junk" cabinet.
That would be the new phone number list on the left categorized into Miss T's friends and Big Mak's friends. My list of contacts is now housed into my cell along with a paper version in a file folder on the right of those nifty drawers. Speaking of those drawers; the top drawer is odd-n-ends like garage drawer openers, keys and camera chargers. The middle is housing anything to stick one object to another (ie: tape, glue, staples) The bottom drawer is full of all sorts and sizes of scissors and hole punchers. There are two of those cute little cans one houses dry erase markers and chalk for those days we'd rather practice spelling or art on something other than paper (the kids get a hoot out of spelling on the windows). The other can is holding/hiding the permanent markers. What's that underneath the cans you ask? Oh just another bin of crayons. The lovely wire basket on the left is keeping envelopes, flash cards, and other school needed items handy but in their place. Wheeew! Day one is complete and I'm only a few minutes shy of hitting midnight. It feels good to have this monster tamed. On to the next dragon in day two's battle! GO!
