Upcycled desk system for kids

My daughter has struggled her entire life with organization. She gets it honestly, as my coworkers who have seen my desk can attest.

We have tried everything to help her. Planners. The Brownie organization badge. You name it.

Our latest project came courtesy of the school pizza fundraiser. No, it wasn't a prize for selling, either.

You see, each year, we're stuck with the question of what to do with the boxes leftover from the pizzas we buy for our house. And then I got inspired by Pinterest. Somewhere, along the way, we'd seen a project about project drying racks out of pizza boxes. Granted, the post has long since left me, but the idea stayed pinned in my brain.

So this year, I took a stack of pizza boxes left over from storing them in my freezer (I don't put the boxes themselves in due to space.)

I folded in one side and stacked them, then went nuts taping row after row of peace sign, heart and flower duct tape I'd bought at the school supply clearance.

Ten minutes of effort and a few dollars' worth of duct tape later, and my daughter was blessed with a surprise on her desk: A new organizer for all of her random papers.

Now she has plenty of space for her looseleaf notebook paper, her construction paper, and her various works of art in progress!

The best part was SHE was inspired to do something as well. She took a McDonalds Happy Meal Halloween bucket that was otherwise destined for the Goodwill bin and redecorated it with Monster High duct tape for a storage bucket for her rolls of duct tape. She even took a toilet paper roll and made her own pencil holder.

What ways have you creatively reused or upcycled items to organize your home?

Heirloom Guilt(y)

Heirloom guilt. I'm guilty 100 percent.

Somehow an item passed along carries an emotional weight. The table you spent Christmas dinners around. The painting your grandmother lovingly painted (even though you have eight others.) For those items, I struggle with their future.

I love the term heirloom guilt. It's just so right.

The box of paintings that I've yet to find a home for after five years in this house mocks me every time I enter my son's room. The stupid wooden ducks that do little but collect dust on top of our bookcase stay, year after year, because they're among the few things my husband has from his family. I have no idea from whom it came. But they stay.

Worse yet, I caught myself imparting this on my 3 year old the other day. The well-worn blanket that somehow made the return trip home from Kansas City? It's my husband's 37-year-old cuddle blanket. And it came home. And has joined my son in his bed.

It's easier to cope with items when they have a purpose. Like several of my grandmother's paintings. Or a quilt my husband's grandmother made. Or my grandma's dining room set, destined to pinch tiny figures, which later found a new home at my brother's house after a furniture swap.

For others, I struggle with the clutter they impart and the memories they represent. The box of photos and smaller paintings my grandmother made - which have taunted me to do something with them for five years now - doesn't diminish the love she had for me or the work she created. Quantity of things doesn't replace the quality of love.

Green Phone Booth: Putting my son out of work

Today at the Green Phone Booth, I'm writing about how to cut my 3 year old's career prospects. Check it out.

Organizing kids' clothes: A way to Excel at it

Garage sales, hand-me-downs, resale and other sources for kids' clothes have gotten us through the last few years. The challenge is keeping tabs on my finds.

Whether it's my daughter tearing apart diaper-size boxes of clothing in her closet out of boredom or my accidentally stockpiling 20 (yes, 20) short-sleeve T-shirts in a size for my son, remembering what you've acquired can be a challenge.

My solution? It's a simple one: Creating a spreadsheet to track numbers.

I track each kids' clothing pieces by size and type, and I have it uploaded so that family members who are Christmas shopping or hitting sales to splurge know what we have. My hope is it keeps us from wasting money and space, and freeing us from having more than we really need.

Want to start this simply? Create an Excel or Google Docs spreadsheet with a column for size and a row for each clothing type. For example:

uniform shirts
uniform skorts or pants
sweater
sweatshirt
fall/winter weight PJ's
spring/summer weight PJ's
jeans
yoga/dance pants
t-shirts (long-sleeve and short-sleeve)
sweat pants/athletic pants
winter coat
swimsuit

I could expand this to include shoes I've picked up (such as at clearance or soccer cleats from garage sales), but those for now are much easier remembered.

I update the spreadsheets after purchases, and reprint the well-folded sheets as needed. It's an easy reference at a garage sale and has kept me from at least one unneeded purchase.

Taming the paper monster

I'm buried in a sea of paper. Literally. My work desk is a foot deep in marked-up papers, sign-offs, meeting notes, etc. I've yet to find a working solution. Add a kindergartener, preschooler and a college-student husband to the mix of bills, work and other "business" of home, and you'd think my home would be in a similar situation. And sure, I have a few hot spots, like our kitchen table that never seems to stay clean. But thankfully, we're starting to tame the paper monster. Slowly. Here's what's working for me:

• We reuse. Work papers get rehashed as printing paper for everything from recipes from the Internet to printouts of email receipts to word finds for my kindergartener. And the papers are stored in two locations: one for printing, and one for easy kid access. That way they're not mixed about the house.


• We recycle. We keep at least one, if not two, recycling bags in our kitchen to toss completed math papers, junk mail, newspapers, etc. When the bag's full, we drop it off at the school's paper recycling station, which helps the school as well. Since we drive our child to work anyway, we have no excuse. The cool thing? It helped the environment and raised $1300 for tuition assistance last year!


• We eliminate. I have a serious problem with lists and sticky notes and multiple calendars. This year, I stumbled on a "mom planner," which has kept my life saner and more organized than I've felt in a few years. Each weekly sheet tracks by day my activities and those for each of my family members, along with a space for lists and daily meals. Along with that, we posted a wipe-off monthly calendar and menu on our fridge, so it's easy to consult or change.

What works for you in taming the paper monster? Any other habits that can help us out?