Ideas for Organizing your Craft Room & Home Office

Hey all!  Yesterday I gave you the list on getting your craft room/ home office organized.   This is part of the Delightful Order Monthly Organizing Challenge. Read all about the Challenge HERE.

Here's some organizing inspiration for you.  

Simply click the links below to be directed to each blog post:

May you be a little inspired!

Until next time,
DaNita 
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View more of my Most Recent Projects HERE.
 

March Challenge: Organizing the Craft Room & Home Office

Hello! How did you do with the February Organizing Challenge? Hopefully you got some control over your kitchens.

We're into March now and this month we're going to clean and organize our Craft Room/Home Offices ~ If you don't have an office or a craft room, you can clean and organize the area that you keep your paperwork & bills, craft supplies, etc.

This month, I'm challenging you to do the following:

Organize all your paperwork

Organize your manuals

Organize your mail & bills

Organize your tax information

Organize your coupons & receipts

Organize your paint samples

Create a filing system that works for you

Organize your filing cabinets

Organize your children's paperwork

Organize your books & magazines

Organize your office and craft supplies

Organize your photo's (digital and physical)

Clean and organize the top of your desk

Organize desk drawers

Categorize everything that you can. Use boxes, bins, baskets, binders, tray dividers, file boxes, photo boxes and more.

Tomorrow I will share a TON of inspiration with you that will cover most all of the items that we will be organizing during the month of March.

Today, I'm sharing a bit of my craft room/home office with you:

I've made some major changes to this room since I shared it on the blog back in 2011.  If you missed that post, you can find it here.

Here's a before and after side by side photo so that you can see the changes:

I painted the cabinets and the desk with Annie Sloan "old white" chalk paint. I love how bright the room feels now.

A few of the drawers in my room.

The cabinets on the other side of my room hold memories and photo albums:

The gray file boxes are for my boys memories, school papers, etc:

I have this system set up like I shared a while back.  You'll see more of this tomorrow.

The black boxes hold larger items that won't fit into the file boxes.

I've started creating my boys' keepsake photo memory books... each of them have one of the green albums.  I'm creating these books for them.. and my plan is that once they graduate high school, their album will be finished and it will be part of their graduation gift.

Here's a peek into how I am creating their memory keepsake books:

I'm doing the albums "Project Life" style.  I'm creating my project life pages in digital format.  If you haven't heard of Project Life, read all about it here. I'm so in love with this system. It's so super easy and so very cute!

Here are a couple of pages from one of my boys albums:

Photo Credit (Anneli Kirstine Photography)

I absolutely LOVE designing these pages!  I design my pages in photoshop myself and print them onto 12x12 photo paper. I use some journal cards that I have purchased and I also design my own too.  I actually sell some of my designs in my ETSY shop here.

I also have photo albums for family and friends, myself and my husband and our yearly family photos. Most of my albums in this section are a "work in progress."    I do have some of our yearly albums complete.  Again, if you come back tomorrow you will see more to how I organize my photos.

Here's you free printable checklist:

(simply click the photo above and  print)

Okay so now that you have the list of things to do this month, let's get started!  Remember to come back tomorrow for even more inspiration! 

* UPDATE - Here's the link to the Organizing Ideas for your Craft Room & Home Office

This post is part of the Monthly Organization Challenge. You can join the challenge at any time. Go HERE to see all the posts and bring Delightful Order to your home and life this year.

To stay connected, you can sign up to receive emails when new posts are published or follow along on Instagram or Facebook. (Please note that Facebook has made some changes, and you may or may not see all the posts there.)  I also have a Monthly Organization Challenge board set up on Pinterest, so you can follow along there as well. 

May you be a little inspired!

Until next time,
DaNita 
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View more of my Most Recent Projects HERE.
 

Organizing Christmas Cards: Family & Friends Photo Album

I'm like a little kid in a candy shop, when it comes to getting my mail every year, during the month of December. Why? because I LOVE to get Christmas cards from my family and friends.  

For the last couple of years, I display them in my home on a photo board and a little sleigh during the Christmas season.  I showed you that back in 2013 and gave you some more ideas on how to display Christmas cards in that post too.

Once the Christmas Decor comes down, I take those photo cards and add them to a family and friends photo album that I created a couple of years back:

It's just a simple black 3 ring photo album and I use peel and stick pages for the inside.

I created a family & friends sign for the first page...

... and I add a 4 x 6 print with the year on it,  just before adding new pictures.

here are some the inside pages

Not only do I put Christmas card photo's into these albums, I also add photo's, birth announcements and more to the album, throughout the year, after they've been on my photo display board for a while.

This is the photo board that I have in my kitchen.   This is a fairly new piece that I made.  I made it with a large frame and I just stapled chicken wire to the back of the frame.

I use little clothespins from Walmart to hang the photos.

And then after they've been up for a while, I add them to the family and friends photo album:

I've been doing this now for a couple of years and I love this little system!  It's fun to look back through the years.

How about you? Do you keep your photo Christmas cards each year?  How do you organize them?

May you be a little inspired!

Until next time,
DaNita 
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View more of my Most Recent Projects HERE.
 

Child Keepsake Memory Boxes/Books

If you have children, then you understand that each child collects a lot of papers from school, awards, report cards, artwork, photo's etc.  

Some of these things I want to save for my boys' keepsake memory books that I will eventually finish as a graduation gift for each of them.

The keepsake memory books that I have started for each of my boys will take me years to finish.  They're part scrapbook, part project life, part baby books, etc. (I hope to share the albums with you all someday.  At the end of this post, I'll show you a little sneak peek of those albums.)

In the meantime, I have to have all of my boys' keepsake stuff organized.  This is how I keep it all together:

I've created a large file box for each of my boys. 
You can find these boxes in my Amazon Store Here.

 Inside each box, I have file folders organized by year/grade.

 As the boys come home with a piece of art work, a report card, etc. I simply slip it into the correct file.

 Setting this system up has made it so much easier to keep everything together.

 Sweet little hand prints from 1st grade is definitely worth keeping and adding to their keepsake albums.

 Diplomas, etc are worthy of keeping as well.

 I even slip photo's from the year into these files too.

 anything that I would like to add to their keepsake albums go into these files.

 I store the boxes in my office/craft room closet on a bookshelf.

You may remember a while back I shared this post with you all:

Organizing Children's School Papers

Well since then I have changed my mind and decided that it'd be much easier to have EVERYTHING all together and in one place, including school papers, photo's, art, etc.  So I no longer use this system.  I use the file box system instead and it's been so much easier having it all in one place.

The keepsake memory books that I'm creating for each of my boys look like this:

 Like I said earlier, it will take me years to finish these books.

Here is a little sneak peek at one of the inside pages.  

I am creating my own full page 12x12 scrapbook layouts and I sell them in my Etsy Shop Here. 

 You can find the Announcing You Page (shown above) in my shop HERE.

If you want to create a little simpler keepsake book/album for your child, I do have these digital sets in my shop too:

Aqua Baby Keepsake Memory Book

 ...and some extra pages for the set here:

and I also sell the School Days Memory Books (in digital format) too:

Simply click the photo's above to be directed to the items in my shop.

.. and that is how I organize my children's keepsake items.

May you be a little inspired!

Until next time,
DaNita 
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

View more of my Most Recent Projects HERE.
 

DIY Photo Wall

Hello!  Back in April I spent some time at my parents home.  I organized my mom's office (I'll show you that in another post) and my dad and I created this awesome photo wall for my mom to display all of her wedding & graduation invitations, photo's, thank you cards, etc.

Today, I'm going to show you how to make one for yourself.  Super easy & super cute!!

I L.O.V.E how it turned out! Isn't it just adorable?

Here's the how to:

1. you need screw eyes

2. you need four - 1 x 2 boards (paint them if you'd like) (cut to desired lengths to make a frame)

3 & 4. measure and screw the screw eyes into the side boards

5 & 6. pin nail the boards to the wall to create the frame.

After that, simply string one long continuous ribbon (I used jute from Walmart) through the screw eyes and tie the ends.

then hang all those invitations, photo's etc. with small clothespins (also at Walmart)

little binder clips work as well.

My mom has this piece of furniture right underneath...

...which is perfect to hold the clothespins and binder clips.

There you have it, an awesome DIY Photo Wall! 

I think I may need to make one of these for my own home.

May you be a little inspired!

Until next time,
DaNita 
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