What does January bring for you?

January brings lots of different things for people. For some it provides a new-found commitment to attend the gym regularly. Some set goals to play more with their kids. Some vow to eat healthy foods. For me, it brings a desire to de-junk! With a family of eight we quickly accumulate a lot of unnecessary stuff. And all those unnecessary items find strange places to be stored throughout my house.

As I began filling bags with treasures to take to DI for donation, I began organizing several areas in my home. I don’t like piles. I don’t like not knowing where things are when I need them. I hate sifting through things I don’t need to find things I do need. So, this month I have been de-junking and reorganizing.

For me personally it is a bit of a high. Some people get their high from drugs, some from exercising (I get that too), but as of late, it has been organizing that gives me that feeling of euphoria. I have also been trying to do it without spending and arm and a leg. Here are a few things I have been doing around my home:

I picked up these cubicles from Walmart for $12 each. I put them together and labeled each one with my kids’ name. I don’t know about you but I really dislike my child saying she needs her shin guards, socks and jersey one minute before we have to leave. I am hoping this will remedy the situation and they will know right where to go to get their stuff.

Here is another thing that drives me nuts…batteries! We have a million batteries rolling all around in our cupboard. I bought this drawer because it fit quite a few batteries in each drawer. We mostly just use AA and AAA batteries around here anyway. I also have a few tiny miscellaneous gadget batteries that I put in the little container at the top. We rarely use it so I will probably store it elsewhere.

My craft closet is always a mess. It is pretty much impossible to keep it clean with six kids rummaging through it on a regular basis, but I found this pants hanger idea on another blog and thought it might be a good idea to try with my ribbon. I haven’t really used it yet, but so far, so good. The hanger cost $4.

Lastly, my mudroom. It isn’t a large mudroom. It has large closet/cubbies that take up much of the space, but I am trying to utilize all the space I can. Here is where my life is run. It has all my notes, reminders, calendar, everything. With all the kids and activities we have going, there has to be some level of organization. I have been pretty good about storing their papers and such, but mostly in piles. I found this magazine rack on Amazon. In my opinion it was pretty spendy ($58), but we had an Amazon credit so I bought it. I couldn’t be happier. This gives ten separate pockets that I can label and best of all it doesn’t take up much space and just hangs on the wall. (*I printed out, labeled, laminated, and hole-punched each tag and hung them with zip ties.)

This is just my dry/erase board that I keep all my flyers and such on. We also keep our chore list there and my “life-saving” calendar as well. The real beauty is the rack next to it.

I am in love. Each kids has a slot for their homework/papers/junk. I also have a few extra for coupons, bills, phone directories and such.

I have also started on a few new projects. I am working on organizing all of my kids’ stuff into folder boxes. In addition I am making digital scrapbooks for each kid. I have been overwhelmed by this stuff for the past few years and then decided I would give it a try. I love Shutterfly and it has been awesome to work with. I am making each kid a scrapbook for birth to kindergarten, kindergarten to sixth grade, and seventh grade through high school. Thankfully I can work on these over time and not have to do them all at once. It is my goal to give each of them one for their birthdays this year (well, that is those that are old enough to fall into one of those three categories).

And finally I am excited to try this new book I found on a Artsy Fartsy Mama. I had Seth print it out and bind it for me at work. I am hoping this will help me with my weekly menus, shopping lists and I am going to attempt to make it work for budgeting too. I plan to keep track of my grocery budget there so I don’t overspend (which I normally do). I also have sticky notes all over my house. Ideally this will cut down on those as well. As hard as I have tried to use my iPhone to make notes and check lists, it just doesn’t work for me. I need to see them written out daily and put where I can see them. I prefer old-school on some things. 🙂

Seth thinks I am crazy. I told him if he gave me a little free time, I would work wonders! Ha. I personally think it drives him nuts, but man does it help things run a lot more smoothly for us. Of course by January of next year I will have to start over and come up with more ideas, but for now this is working great!

What have you been motivated to do this January?!