january organizing.

what is it about january that makes you want to pull everything out of your house, either clean it or get rid of it & then put it back all beautifully organized & color-coded? maybe it's just me. i usually get a major cleaning & organizing bug right after christmas instead of at 'spring cleaning' time. this year, yet again, there's a bit of baby nesting in the mix- 6 weeks or less to go!

this is actually a project i did a few months ago before we moved, but january felt like a good time to share it in case the organizing bug has bitten you too. remember when i labeled all our kiddo crafty stuff? that's when i discovered this cool organizer/container that my dad's wife [a jewelry designer] was using to store her bead projects-in-progress. it is a "photo and craft keeper," essentially a plastic suitcase with a handle full of little removable sections made for 4x6 photos. each section & the whole suitcase itself snaps together really securely! i immediately started thinking about all the things that could be organized in it...

i held my breath the first time i tried to put one of the chunkier puzzles in a little section- i'm just ocd enough to be annoyed by one puzzle having to live somewhere else when all of the rest of them are nicely organized in one container!

it has even held the 100 piece ones we usually get at the dollar tree. i tear off the edge of the box that shows the finished picture & the number of pieces- you can tuck it right into the section with the puzzle. and kiddos can take one puzzle out at a time to work on it rather than dumping all the puzzles into a big ridiculous mess of lost pieces.

currently ours is storing 5 sets of flashcards & memory/matching card games, 6 puzzles & we still have 5 empty slots to fill as we need them! that's way better than a bunch of torn up cardboard boxes that the puzzles come in, constantly losing pieces & trying to organize those boxes neatly in one place.

my favorite part? it fits perfectly on the shelf of an expedit. you could even fit 2 side by side!

see it hiding there on the top right cube at our old house?

i'm kind-of hoarding these little suitcase containers now- i get them at michael's with a 40% off coupon. i have this one in the playroom, have already gotten one to use for my own jewelry & beading project-in-progress & i'm thinking about getting one to start getting our photos out of cardboard boxes & at least protected, if not organized. but i know the photos will probably take several containers, so i haven't even started on that!

maybe next january...