The most important storage space, in our living room, is this dresser I recently made over. The dresser is in the living room but also right next to the front door so it stores tons of stuff for us.  The top left drawer is organized with baskets and holds all of our running accessories: headphones, sunglasses, headlamp, etc. The right drawer holds my small camera stuff so I can grab it and throw it in my purse if I need to.

The next drawer down holds our Bibles, our notebooks for church and our binders for the classes we are taking.  I know the living room might seem like a strange place to store these things but for us it’s perfect because they’re right by the front door so we can grab them when we’re heading to church!

The next drawer down is where I keep all my Scentsy bars.  My Scentsy burner sits on this dresser so when I need to add more to the burner, the bars are right there! {BTW Scentsy is one of the prizes for this challenge!!}

The other key piece of furniture in our living room is the TV stand {of course}.  Inside the TV stand I have our DVDs nicely organized {post on that will be coming soon} so they don’t take up a lot of space.  Would you believe there are 40 DVDs in there!?  It’s true!

Last year when I did the living room makeover  I took all of Malea’s toys and put them in her room.  I was tired of having lots of toys in the living room so I moved them all out, with the exception of this one bin.  The bin kind of hides next to the couch so it doesn’t bother me, but it holds a few of her games and some books.

I love having a “cozy” living room but I love even more that it’s clutter free!

Now I want to show you a few ways I’ve organized Malea’s playroom, aka her bedroom. In her awesome loft bed, that my husband built, we have open storage under the stairs.  The bottom stairs store a few of her toys and the middle stair hold her plethora of stuffed animals.  The third stair is actually a closet underneath, you’ll see that in a sec.

Under the bed is her playhouse, which is also very organized.  Her kitchen is organized with labels on each of the shelves so she knows where to put everything.  She is very particular about it so if you put something on the wrong shelf she gets mad at you {wonder where she got that from}.

Here’s a look at her Princess dress closet.  All her dresses are hung up in the closet and all her tutus and accessories are stored in the pink and purple bins next to the kitchen.  I love having this little closet for her because it has taught her how to be responsible for picking up her own clothes.

The rest of her toys are stored in her closet.  I’ve used lots of bins to separate them all and it helps keep her toys tidy and easy to find.

Now it’s your turn!!! I can’t wait to see what creative organizing solutions you come up with for your living room and/or playroom!!!

The post Family Room and Playroom Organization appeared first on Ask Anna.

The closet I’m the most excited about, in our house, is my daughter’s closet. Kids’ closets can be the hardest to organized because not only do you have clothes, you also have school papers, toys, etc. I recently received this incredible custom closet from EasyClosets which gives me all the storage I needed to organize all of her stuff!

On the top shelves I have IKEA boxes that store her baby keepsakes, calendars, school work, etc. They were really inexpensive and they look great!

On the shelves below I have a few pictures, her puzzles, books, toys, and of course, her clothes. One of my favorite things about this closet is that her clothes are hung low enough for her to reach them. This helps me be able to teach her how to hang up her own clothes and stay organized.

We also have a valet pole so that we can hang out her clothes for the next day.

And of course my favorite thing is all the storage for her toys! Every toy has a place which makes it easy for clean up and it teaches her how be organized. (Full post coming Wednesday!)

Here is how I organized my linen closet.  The shelves are very deep so I used baskets to store smaller items, that way if I need to access items in the back I can easily pull the basket in front, out of the way.  (See the full post here.)

Our master bedroom closets are also fairly small, and being a girl, there is never enough storage in a small closet.  On the {one} shelf in my closet I also used baskets for storage.  Placing items in baskets has allowed me to store so much stuff, on my one tiny shelf! (See the full post here.)

My favorite closet organization trick is the one that made me think outside the box.  I personally, have a lot of jeans and sweaters, and those take up a lot of space in our dresser drawers!  So I purchased this shoe organizer and came up with a creative solution to store them vertically, giving me tons of extra drawer space! (See the full post here.)

My biggest advise for how to start the process of organizing a closet is to take everything out of the space first.  Then clean closet, wipe down shelves, vacuum it, etc.  Next throw out (or donate)  anything you don’t use/wear anymore.  Once you’ve done all that, then start placing items back in the closet.  Whether you use baskets and/or a shoe organizer to organize your stuff, the most important thing is that the closet functions the way you need it to, and that all of your stuff is easily accessible!

Now it’s your turn!!!  I can’t wait to see what creative organizing solutions you come up with!

The post Organizing Closets appeared first on Ask Anna.

By removing 4 cabinet doors I made the kitchen feel bigger, more open and it shows off how organized the cabinets are!

Because my kitchen is small, I also had to be very strategic in where everything was placed.  I created “zones” so that things I use at the same time, are all very close together.  Here’s what my cooking and baking zone looks like: spices, prepping ramekins, pots & pans are all located next to each other.

My kitchen only has 4 1/2 lower cabinets so I had to be VERY creative in how I stored my pots and pans.  Luckily my cabinets are pretty deep so I was able to layer them and fit everything all into one cabinet!

I am lucky enough to have a pantry but it’s very tall, very narrow and very deep which, if not organized well, would make it hard to find anything.  Because I need to use every inch of the pantry I used baskets to store my food items. With everything in baskets I can easily access items on the back of the shelf by simply sliding the front basket out of the way.  Before implementing the basket organization I was only able to store about 1/2 of what I have in there now!

I use baskets in my other cabinets too.  They are a great tool for keeping items together, that would normally fall over easily.  I use them to store my martini shakers and shot glasses, as well as all of our water bottles and to go cups.

Another very important organization tool in my kitchen is my brain, I mean my chalkboard message board.  Without having this chalkboard in the kitchen I would forget so many things!  Having an easily accessible message board I am able to write down our meals for the week, items we need to pick up at the grocery store, our schedule, my “honey do list”, etc. This keeps all my “to do” lists off the fridge and counters, and puts them all on one cute little chalkboard!

So now that you’ve seen how I organized my kitchen, how will you organize yours?  I can’t wait to see what creative solutions you come up!

The post Organize the Kitchen to help it run Smoothly appeared first on Ask Anna.

Let’s start with the left side of the room.  This is where most of the things in my office are stored, let me show you…

This stack of drawers is where I store almost all of my craft supplies.  When I purchased this drawer set from the AS IS section of IKEA it was missing two drawers, which worked out perfectly for me!  I store all my paint brushes and taller items in the top drawer and use the others for “flatter” items.  I labeled each drawer with vinyl letters so I know exactly where to find things.

I also purchased these boxes and IKEA and then personalized them with scrapbook paper labels.  Having these big box has been awesome because they provide so much extra storage!

I keep my NeatDesk Scanner on one of the shelves with a bucket to hold “need to be scanned” receipts.  I love my NeatDesk scanner and I’m so excited that one of you will win one if you participate in this challenge!!!

I also purchased these glass canisters at IKEA and use them for storing all sorts of things!  Here they are hold thread, glue sticks and twine.  I also purchased some little spice jars to hold buttons, brads, etc.

Above the drawers I have my “brain”.  I made this message board to keep my thoughts organized so I wouldn’t have sticky notes all over my desk.  Here I can keep track of deadlines, pin up magazine pages with project ideas, update my project list, etc.  I love this message board and it was pretty simple to make.  Click here for the tutorial.

On the other side of the room I have even more creative storage solutions.  Because I don’t have a ton of it, and I think it’s pretty, I used 3M hooks to hang all my Silhouette vinyl on the wall.

Below the vinyl I hung these IKEA wall organizers for storing ribbon, and even more spice jars, filled with random crafting accessories.

My husband and I also built this custom work space for my Silhouette, printer, sewing machine, or whatever it is I’m using it for at the moment.  My favorite thing about it is the extra shelf below that I use for even more storage!  The wire baskets provide lots of extra storage and keep things off the floor!  This is where I keep my “to do” sewing projects, you can see Flounder needs a little fixin’.

To see even more of my office makeover click here.

Now it’s your turn! Have fun organizing!

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