Project 19: Organize the Black Book

After: Good enough.

The "Little Black Book" in case you aren't familiar with the reference is the place where gentlemen kept the phone numbers of ladies they pursued, back in the day.

So, when I was trying to come up for a name for this binder full of essential reference papers-- which, incidently, is not black-- I thought of the "Little Black Book." (Just to clarify, this is not a household management binder. Those are different and I don't have one.)

I set it up the first time I took the Paper Clutter class at Simplify 101. (And no, they don't pay me to mention them!)

I've been meaning to re-organize it since the Paperwork Challenge back in February. Like most of the projects I've procrastinated, this one took less than 15 minutes from the turn of the first page to labelling the spine. (OK, so, no, the labelling took longer than organizing it!)

Before: The motley collection of binders I keep handy to the desk.

Paper is personal. So what we keep in here is useful for our family-- I doubt it would be for anyone else. But the the sort of thing that goes into a "black book" are those things which you want to get your hands on quickly when you need them--and wouldn't have a home, otherwise. Some might be on the side of the fridge, some on a bulletin board, some in a folder, somewhere. This binder is a useful beast.

So, for us, that's library cards. My husband and I take turns going to the library so we need a central location for them.

Other things:

• Information on how to contact the schools the kids' attend and how to access the site where the school posts their homework.
• Bus schedules.
• Stuff relating to Scouts, Guides, and (now) their summer activities.
• Stuff relating to what goes out for garbage pick-up, the garbage pick up schedule.
• Take out menus.

You get the idea.

This year on one page calendar is from www.donnayoung.org. I use it to keep track of my husband's holidays.

The dividers are also pocket pages. I used my handy dandy labeller to identify the contents behind the tabs. Finally. Hopefully, now, things won't get mixed up. There's nothing worse than having to turn every single darn page to find the one you are looking for.

Since organizing all that took no time at all, I thought I'd make the binders on this shelf more attractive.

And that was it. Another project crossed off the Anti-Procrastination Project list. I cannot believe how many of these take so little time. They just needed a little intention.

Project 18: Jewellery Holder, Part Two

There are a gazillion "jewellery organizer" pins on Pinterest. Here's my board.

I took all my jewellery out of my lovely jewellery box sometime in January. That's when I decided I needed to sort it and figure out what I wanted to keep. (And why jewellery and not jewelry? 'Cause this is a Canadian blog, that's why.)

And then things stayed pulled out and jumbled like this for a long, long time.

One of the truly great things in Aby's Simplify 101 classes is that she emphasises doing a little bit whenever you can. In the Fundamentals class we called it "Embracing the Bite." That's how this happened.

No, I haven't painted. That's the difference between a sunny winter day and a cloudy spirng day. The trees outside the window block a fair bit of light when they are in leaf.

First, I got inspired by a vignette on a tray and learned you can put your toiletries in a drawer.

No, wait, first I emptied out a drawer and took the horse napkins and picture frames that were in it, put them together, and hung them up for my daughter.

Then I was able to have a fairly tidy dresser top. But I was really stumped with how to deal with my jewellery.

I looked at options that would let me organize and display my earrings and my necklaces, but it was tricky. I wanted to be able to access the backs of the earrings and that meant I had to put them through something. For the necklaces, I just needed something sturdy to hang them from.

It wasn't until it occurred to me that I needed to make two jewellery organizers that I solved my dilemma. After all, I put my earrings on in the bathroom when I put on my make up and the necklaces in my room when I get dressed. As soon as I realised that, it was easy. I made the earring holder in Part One. This, the necklace holder, is probably more complicated than it really needs to be.

When I cleaned out the bsement, I found some cork tiles and an unused picture frame I'd been hanging onto for probably a decade.

I used the glass from the frame to "measure" the cork.

I cut the cork with an X-acto knife. Several scores and I was through it in no time.

I broke apart some straight pins with wire cutters in order to attach the two pieces of cork. (You can see the second piece of cork hanging off the edge of the dresser above.) It probably wasn't necessary.

The hardest part was spacing the thumbtacks evenly!

And so there we have it, another project crossed off May's Anti-Procrastination Project list.

Project 17: New Jewellery Holder (Part One)

The Story.

I was a difficult child.

Supplies: an old picture frame, sized appropriately to the size of your earring collection, a scrap of black plastic screening and a piece of cardstock in your choice of colour (not shown).

It was my mission in life to push every adult who tried to tell me what to do to their utmost limit. I reduced grown women to tears of frustration (much to my current shame). My mother stopped talking to me for three days straight once, she was so angry with me. (That, actually was the most effective punishment, ever. I was an only child of an extremely gregarious parent. The absolute silence was terrifying--and while it was happening, I'd no idea how long it'd last.)

My mother told me not to pierce my ears.

On a visit to my grandmother's I convinced her to let me get them done.

 Cut the cardstock to fit the picture frame opening at the back.

When I returned to my Mom's, I had nothing to treat them with, so we agreed I'd take out the bullets and let them close up.

Take the screening and fold it around the cardstock. You want the screening to wrap all the way around the cardstock. The fold should be at the "top" of the frame when you assemble it later. Use the cardstock as a template to trim the screening.

About a year later, I think it was the summer I was thirteen, I did the same thing again.

But this time, I was defiant and determined. I thought the bullets were ugly, so I put in a lovely pair of copper and turquoise studs. I still didn't have anything to treat them.

The back of the screen is under the cardstock. The fold is at the right edge of the cardstock. Trim the front of the screen to the size of the opening of the picture frame. Here, the sides are trimmed.

This time, my mother shrugged. There were other much larger battles we were fighting, so she let me have this one.

One day, just before I was about to leave for a babysitting job, I decided to change the earrings.

I couldn't find the backs.

To cut the bottom, measure the cardstock from top to bottom and subtract the measurement for the "lip" of the frame. Mark the spot with tape so you know where to cut.

Mom thought that maybe I hadn't put them in, so she started tugging on them from the front. When I yelped with pain, she stopped, and got out some ice cubes.

I was instructed to hold the ice cubes to my ear lobes while she got out the pliers and pulled.

Screening all trimmed out. The fold is at the bottom of the cardstock in this picture. I hope it all makes sense, now!

With blood running down my neck and the time for me to go to my babysitting job looming, Mom and I decided that she would go babysit for me and I would get in a cab and go to Emergency and see what was what.

So that's what we did.

As the doctor cut the front of the earring from the back and then gently removed the back from the skin that had grown around it, he admonished me quite severely never to pierce my ears again. I now had scar tissue in my ear lobes, he explained, it just wasn't a good idea.

I followed that doctor's advice for 35 years. Last summer, when my daughter turned thirteen, we went down to the mall and got our ears pierced together.

We got stuff to treat them.

The end.

Project 16: List Left-Overs for sale.

Unfortunately, when we built that last section of wall in the basement, we had to go out and buy a huge roll of vapour barrier and a full package of batt insulation to finish things off.

We tried to buy someone else's left over's first but we did not like what we found. I swear, the first batch we found was used. It looked as if someone had pulled the stuff right out of the wall. My husband said he thought he saw mouse droppings in it. The second batch, though not used, looked as though it had been left outside for the winter. In the interests of finishing the wall while my husband had the time off, we bought new.

We had 13 pieces left over from the package we bought.

We only used 12 feet off of this 59 foot roll!

Finally, I got them listed for sale! Let's hope they don't linger for long.

The Basement Walls: Done!

And to think this all started because I wanted an empty cubby!

I started rearranging, purging and prettifying the basement in February, though we didn't actually start work on the walls until March.

I was enrolled in the Organize Your Creative Space Class at Simplify 101 and the Photo Freedom class at Big Picture Classes. I got the idea that I wanted to organize the Big Open Area in the diagram below into a back up scraproom area.

As I shuffled things around the make that happen, my husband decided we should finish insulating the basement. That meant repairing and patching the concrete, framing and putting up insulation, and then putting up wallboard on two and a half walls. (The area in pink below.)

This diagram is not to scale! (I hope you can read it.)

Wow. Looking at that, I realise what a big job it really was. No wonder it took 3 months and a bit.

Phase 1:
a) The Area under the Stairs.

We insulated the Laundry Room/Pantry area of the basement in October of 2011. I'm not exactly sure why we procrastinated this part. Maybe because it is just so full of stuff we didn't want to deal with it?

You can see where the white wall board stops: my husband didn't think to line it up with where the insulation stops. That caused a minor hassle trying to attach the new wallboard.

He and my son took Spring Break (the last week of March) to frame and put up the insulation and wallboard.

I like this shot I took after painting the area under the stairs ocean blue because you can see all the way into the "games room."

b) The Games Room

This started as wasted space. It held a lat pull down machine no one had used in over 15 years.

I sold it. I wanted it gone so badly, we even delivered it to a small town forty five minutes north of us.

With that space empty, we set it up as a "games room" for my son so I could work in the main area (where he had been) getting rid of stuff.

Then, after about a month, we moved him out again so they could get to work. There were a lot of pipes to figure out how to go around and deal with over in this part.

Part of the south wall. That black pipe is my kitchen drain.

Part of the east wall. The wall o' shelves start right at the right edge of this photo. Those white pipes are the intake and outake pipes for our High Efficiency furnace.

 

Here's a blurry shot of my two workmen!

They went around the corner a bit.

Things stayed like this until my husband had another week off at the end of April.


Phase 2:
The Wall O' Shelves

I started working on the shelves in February.

Should I show you what I started with in January? It is a wee bit embarrassing.

Things were a bit better by the beginning of March. At least I could get to them!

Just before we took them down in late April, I made up this info graphic to help me figure out where to put things back.

I made one for each of the four columns of shelves. They were very helpful, as a matter of fact.

My husband and I had everything down in half a day.

The window had been covered with black paper. I hadn't even realised there was one there.

After my husband patched the walls and welet it all dry, the wall went up fast.

We used scrap pieces of wallboard going into the corner. They're behind the shelves, anyway.  My husband figures we saved about $100 doing that.

I painted the shelves outside over the course of a few days.

Sorry for the blur. This was taken from the window on the stair landing. That's the last of the snow on the ground back by the garage.

And here we are, today.

I will be putting the curtains back up after I get them washed.

I purged a lot and I sold a lot to make this happen. I went through every. little. thing. We also moved the furniture around. But that? That is a story for another day.

For now, it's done.

Linking to Jules of The William Morris Project at Pancakes and French Fries.

Project 15: Organize the Camping Supplies

As a family, we go camping once a year.

As part of their Guiding and Scouting adventures, the kids go camping more frequently. They usually have to take a mattress pad, a sleeping bag and a mess kit.

So, I wanted to make it easy for them to get those things.

The only complicted thing was being able to access the items for their mess kit.

Everything is in here, now.

The mesh bag sits on top.

As long as nothing gets piled on top of the container, all will be well.

Another simple Anti-Procrastination Project completed.

Project 14: Pressure Wash the Fence

In the Spring of 2009, we washed and painted half the fencing in our backyard.

This half was not done.

'nuff said.

Delegating still gets the job done!

Here's to help with the Anti-procrastination Project.