Home Organization Response

I recently read a post on home organization from which I gleaned a few good ideas (brown wrapping paper with ribbons and clear, over-the-door shoe holders), but overall, it was far too rich for my blood. After 23 years of small houses and our now nine-person family, I've become a great organizational hack. So if you, like me, do not have a linen closet, a laundry room, a mud room, a garage*, or a smart phone; can neither travel with your children nor hire a carpenter; and the thought of a $62. bra (which would keep us in potatoes for months) gives you hives, not joy . . . maybe you'll like some of my ideas.

Here's where Ken and I keep much of our clothing (under the futon where we sleep) because there's no closet in the den. Since there's no closet, no marvelous organizing ideas.

This is right next to the futon, four of those things from Walmart, filled with Addie's clothing, DVDs, and my unmentionables. Closet, I guess.

This is my "linen closet" downstairs** that holds a few books, extra TP, and four towels (Very important to keep on top of the laundry, with only four towels!).

My laundry room is a piece of the hall with a small counter and shelves. Not big enough for  sorting or folding, so I dump laundry onto the futon ~

~ and I'm not sure why the baby's up there, but  we usually fold in the afternoon with a short  DVD, then the kids trot around and put it all away. Perfectly, of course.

One of the ideas was to sync your calendar with your smart phone.  Don't have one, so I sync my calendar with my steel trap of a brain.

This table bench Ken built himself. We cannot hire a carpenter and he is not one, but we want stuff, so  he picked up a DIY book and tried. Viola! Three or four kids sit on this at our table and it opens up for me to toss pots and pans ~

~ which they wanted to illustrate better for this post!

Our vacations do not involve restaurants, hotels, or attractions, so  a travel journal is unnecessary. We  use tents, sleeping bags, hot dogs, marshmallows, and porta-potties (because I require some civility in the middle of the night). And look at the double duty this $20 beaut can handle: morning coffee cart!

*This is the summer of the garage so by the new year, we will have a garage to organize and Rees will move out into the efficiency apartment on the side. 

**Ken did build another shelf-thing in the upstairs bathroom along the back wall. It's a rectangle box with doors that I put more towels in (the ones too crummy for the nicer bathroom!). I could not locate the camera at the time of this writing to show you (I guess I don't have much of a steel-trap brain...).

Happy weekend ~ laugh with me!