Mail Pouches

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to organize our house.  Alan and I are working together, and have made a lot of progress.  We sorted through all of the toys in our basement, filling two giant bins with stuff to either give away or rotate out for a while.  Then we found a place for everything, using drawers, baskets and a dresser.  It's amazing to me how clean the basement (playroom) stays, now that each item has its own home.

Junk drawers were the next task.  Our main junk drawer in the kitchen is now clean, and filled with little bins to hold everything.  If it won't fit in the small containers, it doesn't go in the drawer.  I also organized a few other kitchen drawers.  My bathroom drawer was a nightmare, but is now filled with the same small containers as our kitchen junk drawer.  I can find things when I need them and I'm not digging through a drawer filled with 10 year old makeup!  Wonderful!

There have been other tasks as well.  The arts and craft room is a continual battle, but it's looking much better now that I have folders that fit in a large container for all of my card stock.  That makes things much tidier.  Abbie's dresser was on the list--I'm proud to say that her drawers are still neat, all her own doing.  They look much better than mine!

Something that is a forever challenge for us is paper.  Mail is a large part of that problem.  We get so much junk mail--Hospitals advertising jobs for Alan, coupons, credit card offers, and tons of other random stuff.  My hope is to rid my house of piles, as I truly despise them.  In an attempt to organize the paper coming into our home, I sewed two mail pouches today.  I love them.  I just need to buy a couple of hooks and a dowel tomorrow, so that I can hang them up.  Here are some pictures:

This is where they'll hang in the kitchen.

This book is amazing.  I got the pattern for the mail pouches from it, but it has a ton of other incredible projects.  Tomorrow's task is Hogwarts capes for the kids!