My organization life savers!

Scott and I cleaned out the basment yesterday.  Now I'm not too much of a pack rat, I haven't got rid of the baby stuff yet, but I do make a regular trip to Good Will.  My exception is "old electronics" because I don't know what to do with them- that's Scott's department.  So for the last 8 years we have collected 6 BIG boxes of old elctronics (old computers, camcorders, etc.)  We sorted, got rid of, got rid of, and organized what was left into one tub.  So I'm loving this....

One of those big boxes, was full of cables, snarled, tangled, knotted cables!  You know, the snarl where you pick up one end and the whole mess comes out of the box.  I came up with this way to organize it!!!  (After we got rid of a ton of speaker wire and phone cords, and a 30+ foot cable that also ensnarled the mess!)  Bags with LABELS of catagories-computer, TV, S Video, web cam, coaxial, USB, and of course the ?.  So now we can atleast look through and find the right category we are searching for with out them getting caught on one another!!!!  Loving it!

So while I'm on the topic, here are a few more of my lifesavers that I did last summer.   So they are tried and true, meaning SO helpful and easy to maintain!!!

This is the door to our basement, so it's hidden and Layla can't open the door (GENIOUS)!!! This IS our junk drawer, office, and art room!  It's simply a shoe organizer, and was so geniously put together so that kids can't reach the top pockets and can reach the bottom ones!!  So in the top I keep batteries, permanent markers, stickers/envelopes, hot glue gun, Ipod cords, tape, and paints.  In the middle (rows Alaina can't reach with out asking) are scissors, glue, pens, hole punches, sharpeners, rulers, and lower is pencils, learning games, and supply boxes of twistables, colored pencils, markers, and gel pens.  And aprons and paint smocks!  The kids use this stuff non stop and they know exactly where to put it away!!!  LOVE IT and could not live without it!!

And this is $1.97 craft box from Michaels.  I saw this done forever ago, but I thought it would never maintain.  I did this last summer and the only problem we had was on vacation, it came open, upside down of course, in the bathroom bag.  But other wise, I have loved this!  Before we just used the same ones over and over because they were on top and the only few we could actually find two of.  Now instead of looking through the hole mess they can look through the right color and the matching one is near by!  Love it!

But, having FOUR GIRLS, we have a tone of hair accessories, so we also have a container for head bands, and this drawer box that holds larger bows and ribbons, and of course I can't forget the little hair band box.  I bought it at Walmart, the bands actually come organized by color in a little "pill box".  Love it!

(so thats the behind the scenes of life with four girls!)

And these really are my lifesavers because messes stress me!!