by respaced on June 19, 2013
Do you have an older home that has no hall closet but opens instead directly into your living room? Not much fun to trip over piles of shoes when you come home, is it? That’s why this might be a great DIY solution for you. Three bookcases have been painted and screwed together to form a multi-cubby unit. If this unit is going to be placed in a kids’ room, then the alphabet picture in the center is great. But you could also remove the picture and put a flat screen TV there if the unit is for the family room or a double row of hooks for coats and backpacks if this unit will live in the front entry.
Note: I find that when you have an open shelving piece like this, large baskets that fit in each cubby are essential for stowing groups of things. Otherwise, this kind of storage unit can get cluttery looking really quickly.
You can find the three shelves at Ikea in the Billy line starting at $59.99.
Image courtesy of Pinterest.
by respaced on June 17, 2013
As we head into prime vacation and travel time, it’s important to make sure our cars are clutter-free. Clutter in a car can be deadly during an accident. Here are some things to keep in mind:
1. In the event of an accident, anything not fastened down (ie. all of your clutter) could become projectiles. Do you want to see your 2 pound metal water bottle slam into your child’s head at 60 mph? I’m sure you don’t, so be sure to keep your stuff in your trunk. And maybe consider drinking out of a soft-sided, squeezable water bottle instead.
2. Don’t store things under the driver’s or passenger’s seats. The mechanism that allows the car’s airbags to deploy in an accident is located under the front seats, and if you have too much stuff there, it could damage the mechanism, stopping your airbags from deploying when you need them most. Again, put that stuff in your trunk.
3. Don’t use a car seat or booster seat that is 5 year’s old or older. The plastic in these seats breaks down in the heat of the car over time, which could mean they don’t hold up very well in the event of an accident. And if you’ve been in a car accident, replace the car seats altogether, because the plastic could have sustained tiny hairline cracks. Car/booster seats can be recycled at most Fix Auto Body shops in the Portland area, at Far West Fibers and at Legacy Emanuel Hospital.
by respaced on June 12, 2013
So let’s say you are one of those people who likes to have multiple projects going on at once. And as a result, you have a bazillion pieces of papers, scribbles on sticky notes and ripped-out magazine articles to accompany each project. And let’s also say you are a highly visual person who is deathly afraid of filing. This set-up in the picture above would be PERFECT for you.
Each clipboard can represent one project that you are working on. You can clip all accompanying pieces of paper to the appropriate clipboard. If you are a student, each clipboard can represent a different class or different paper that you are researching. You can take the clipboard down and work with it on your desk or somewhere else in your house (can’t really do that when everything is stuck to a bulletin board, amIright?)
This is the perfect project/paper management system for highly visual people. Are you one of those people? If so, would this system work for you? If not, what does work for you?
Image courtesy of some genius on Pinterest.
