The Bare Necessities

Hello from South Carolina! Since my family has been in the moving phase for four to five months now and FINALLY settling in permanently somewhere, here’s what my life has been like: examining box after box and asking what can I get rid of, moving furniture constantly around the house until I find its perfect home, prying my fingers off my girls' baby clothes that I’ve kept for a few years and being okay with getting rid of them, and just really taking joy in getting rid of things, only keeping the most special of things.  Organization has become really important to me, now that I know we are no longer in a transitional stage in life (where I will held onto things until we are out of Seminary, which really prevented me from organizing everything.)  It will take a while to finally get to that place where what we have is what gets used all the time, hoarding nothing in excess.

My goal is to have storage tubs for the following items:
-Seasonal: Christmas, Fall decor, Spring decor, birthday items
-Kids: a storage container for the next size up in clothes for each daughter and keeping only special outfits
-Off-season clothes for Hugh and I
-Garage stuff
-Gift-Giving tub: container for gifts for the year, designating a place for them as I buy them
-Coupon-stockpiling goods: when I actually get into coupon-ing one of these blue moons, I’ll want to have a place for stockpiling.

We hardly have any attic space, and our neighborhood will not allow us to have a storage unit in our yard, and in a way, I’m so thankful that we are forced to purge the unnecessary things. We want to be able to use our garage for my husband’s workshop, vertical storage, and maybe a vehicle.

With that said, I’ve been looking for the perfect piece of furniture for our organization that’s within our budget. And it’s been difficult to move forward in our unpacking if we don’t have the shelving or containers, etc.. We don’t have a lot of money to spend on these things, and even on craigslist, it’s hard to find that right piece. So, I’ve been really into this one site called Knock-off Wood. It’s A-MAZING to say the least, and is one of my most favorite websites. This lady named Ana White builds furniture to emulate Pottery Barn, Land of Nod, etc for a fraction of the cost and gives you the building plans for FREE!  EVERYTHING you can think of is on her site. Being that I love to make/create things, these plans makes me excited to build just the right organizational tool. She gives you every measurement.  I just might muster up the courage to build something myself instead of beg my husband to build it. I will definitely need his help though. A finger or limb is sure to be in jeopardy without is training and teaching.  Be sure to check out her super-cute plans, and let us know what your favorite piece is and if you plan to attempt to build it! Now, our problem lies in creating space in our box-filled garage to build these pieces.