If we build it.....

...they will put their stuff away. Right?!?!


LOL...a mom can dream anyway.


We have a long hallway that has a descent sized closet and access to the garage. Since we don't have a true "mud room", I thought it would be a good idea to convert this hallway into our mud room. I am not good at making decision about buying things so, this project has taken a while to complete. But now, it is pretty much done. Yay!!


I think that I have mentioned before that I am not a naturally organized person. I try to be organized and I would really, really like to be an organized person, but it just doesn't come naturally to me. To my credit, although my own stuff is a bit messy and cluttered, I have always been pretty organized as far as the boys are concerned. If the rest of my house was as organized as their room, I would be thrilled.


Either being an organized person, or NOT, as the case may be, is an inherited trait or I am doing something really wrong. I had the boys' parent teacher conferences this week and I'll just say that the "need to be more organized" was definitely a reoccurring theme. I even took a peek in each of their desks and am quite embarrassed.

So, the whole re-do of our "mud room" did not come a day too soon. I still would like to add a few in/out bins to help with homework organization, but the rest of it is done and I think it is going to work very well.

We started out first by having Cathy paint the walls yellow. When I say yellow, I really mean really YELLOW!


I then got a bulletin board for each of the boys. Since the tan cork boards looked horrible with the yellow walls, I painted the cork, and then the laminate trim, and then I bought and painted letters for their names. I thought they turned out cute and the boys enjoy having a place to show off their best art work. We also added hooks underneath each of their bulletin boards for their backpacks. I *love* not tripping over backpacks all the time now!




Then, I added these cool calendars from Pottery Barn. I stole the idea from my friend Jeannine, who is super organized and manages to do more in a day than I do in an entire week. Thanks Jeannine! The calendars were expensive, but remember how much $$ I saved on school supplies. This was my "reward". :) Now, I'm never going to be the worst mom in the world again.


And then, last but not least, is the closet. Cathy took the doors off for us. The accordion doors on this closet served no purpose other than to pinch fingers. We also took out the old shelf. I built this new cabinet and Spencer attached the coat pole thingies. Now, everything has a place that is easy to use. Yay!!

Now, we are in a week of "training" everyone on our new system. So far, so good. Maybe we'll all become naturally organized people because of our new hallway. Wish us luck!