project two : : update (in the orange!)

Ready to see the fruits of a day's labour?


Before

After

No more clutter and random boxes on the floor!

Before

After

Now you can actually see the ribbons, and there are two specific boxes for painting and stamping tools. :)

What a productive day it has been for the landing area! I had so much fun pulling things out of the cupboard and constantly saying things like "What the?" and "Oh, that's interesting" to myself. :) Here's some of the stuff I found...

Starting with a most pleasant realization...

Mint chocolate liqueur!

I should have recognized your existence earlier!

Come to mama... :)

And just to show how organized I can get...

Yes, every single one has a number on it. And yes, they are mainly arranged according to numerical order. :) No more hassle if we ever have a cross-stitching itch!

And about organizing seashells...

Haha, okay, I'm kidding.

The seashells were only sorted and labelled because I used them for one of my school projects. Once that was over, I put the shells back into my crafts box so that I could reuse them. I can't imagine sorting and labelling my whole shell collection. That'd be seriously overdoing it - especially that it doesn't really matter that much.

Here's something to help you understand one of my "What the?!" moments...

Yes, that's TEPPENYAKI FOIL.

You know, the foil they use at Japanese teppenyaki restaurants to cook your food. Yes, that. To think I have enough foil at home for about... a week of customers. We also have chocolate foil - as in, the foils they use to wrap chocolates. Don't ask me why we have these. It probably has a lot to do with the family being in the food business...

Only that we don't do Japanese food, nor chocolate.

This was a nice find too...

Mind you, that's a Club 21 Christmas ornament.

I don't know how much it costs, but I can tell you that most Club 21 anythings are not very cheap. It's darn pretty too... I wonder if there are anymore around.

(Can't wait for Christmas!)

Found some absolutely beautiful yarn... 

Hurrah for new knitting/crocheting projects!

How about some nostalgia, anyone?

Just for the record, I LOVED this group.

In fact, I'm going to youtube some of their music right now.
What happened to them anyway? They were so good.

This was a really cool find too (as in creative-geek-cool):

Do you know what it's for?

It's for making stuff like this:

Corrugated paper! *rave*
I believe you can get these at Spotlight or any other hardcore craft store.

And about those boxes on top of the cupboard... 

I wasn't kidding when I said they could be filled with anything. Stamp pads, decor, books, paints... I was really happy to find that little thing with the dial though (yes, that little orangey-red thing with the round dial). I don't know if you know what it is, but you basically put a special tape through it, turn the dial to the alphabet you want, click it, and it kinda...types out whatever you want on the tape, and Hey presto! You've got a label. I don't know whether we can still find the ribbon for it, but if I do find it, it'd be hours of fun (and a very euphoric time of labeling).

And in that last box, I've already told you that it's filled with ribbons...

I was dead serious. :)

So yes, I've spent the whole day wading through a whole hoard of things, but it's okay, after a couple of hours of clearing out and reorganizing, finding new storage solutions, and thinking through the items...this was the result:

From this...

To this...

So it's not perfected yet, but the organization is a lot better now! :)

The top shelf holds random household items we barely use.

The second shelf mainly with dressmaking items and fabrics.

The third shelf consists of my creative stuffies.

The fourth shelf with some frames, christmas items (the will be cleared in December), and bulbs.

And the last shelf is...yes, you guessed it, completely filled with alcohol. (Yes, alcohol that I intend to use in my new plans for friend-making events).


I shall endearingly name the bottom shelf "Molotov". :)

Okay, not funny.

To be honest, the cupboard is still not as clear and organized as I'd like it to be because I haven't found the best storage solutions for some of the items. But I will find them! And I intend to find them from other random places in the house too - so that I won't have to spend a single cent getting things organized. :) If there was an organizing scale from Red (Absolute Mess) to Green (Organizational Peace and Happiness), I'd say this place is somewhere in the orange-yellow now (just need to get better storage solutions and get rid of a pile of stuff I'm planning to give away before I get to the green.).

Proud of myself today. :)

I'll probably be spending the next two days working on Project One. 

Wish me luck! Can't wait to share the results!


P/S: The album of things to give away should be posted up tomorrow! (Hope I'll be able to group and list everything properly in time) Look out for that if you want anything.

Tip of the Day

Here are some things that I found very helpful in my packing today that I thought would be worth sharing:

A clever step ladder.  

It stores neatly as a stool when you don't need it and it's very handy for the house. Not to mention it's a lot prettier than those metal monsters any day. I unfortunately can't remember where we got this one. I did find a pretty vintage one on ebay if you're interested in getting yourself a step ladder. It looks very "e ole' library"ish, but know that it doesn't fold away.

About storing ribbons, I found a lot of half used ribbons today as so:

Thing is, you can barely see the ribbon that's inside of it - which would make ribbon-searching very annoying. So I did what would have made life a lot more efficient...

Yes, I just cut away the extra cardboard. It takes up a lot less space now, and it's a lot more efficient to find. Not to mention that I no longer have to deal with the crummy banged up extra cardboard. (As you can see, it does not have to be a perfect circular cut. Don't sweat the unimportant small stuff.)

You might have noticed that, other than the big box of ribbons on the top of the cupboard, I also created a duplicate space for ribbons in the cupboard itself:

As I thought about the usage of ribbons in my home, I realized that although we sometimes look for specific colours, most of the time, we just need something to make a present look a little more decent. I accomplished two goals by setting up this duplicate ribbon space: i) it reduces the hassle of having to climb up to get the huge box of ribbons from the top of the cupboard, and ii) it encourages finishing the currently much smaller rolls (which is what I put in this basket).

Thinking through usage patterns really helps in thinking of how to create and organize spaces. Think and plan before you begin - it'd save you a lot of frustration and reorganization later.