The Great Book Sort of '18, Part 2

 We thought a lot about why and how the book shelves got out of hand, and one big reason was having the Legos take over the book shelves. 

They were in front of the books, but that meant no one wanted to move them to get at the books, let alone to put books away!

Since the Zoomlians declared the Legos to be necessary (and since I don't want to think about how much we've spent on Legos over the years), we decided to make dedicated Lego display shelves.

And, since we were repainting the library, we were able to paint the shelves to match!

The main walls are peach and the accent wall and shelves are periwinkle.

 And you know, if you organize one part of the house, it means reorganizing the rest!

Not only did a lot of extra stuff end up in the guest room, we decided to move Zorg's desk from the library to the office.

Which meant moving my desk from the office to the guest room.

But we got there in the end!

Now, if only I could get the back basement organized...

The Great Book Sort of '18 Part 1

 We went through every book in the house.

The pictures are mostly the library, but we have book shelves in every room except the bathrooms!

 I had thought we were up to 4000 books, and I knew from experience that we really can't keep more than 3000 without losing track and creating random piles.

It turned out we were probably closer to 5000 books, maybe a bit more.

 We gave away or donated about 2000 books!  And that's not counting the ones we recycled because they were in terrible shape!

 We sorted and we culled and we cleaned for a week, but we ended up with around 3000 books that we love.

And we know where all of them are!

How it All Turned Out Part 2

 The old home school room is our brand new office!

It has space for all three of us to have desks as well as storage for all my books and homeschool supplies.

 My desk is in front of a window, looking out on the neighbor's beautiful beech tree, and flanked by bookcases.

It's so nice to have a (relatively) uncluttered work space in a sunny room!





Leena's desk is the black one, and Klenda's desk is the white one near the closet full of art supplies!

I really like having our work spaces together- lots of creative energy!

Last, but not least, we put the guest room mostly back the way we found it, but we reorganized the sewing and craft storage in the closet.

We also switched out the desk to a larger work table to make projects easier.

Actually, we've been using it as our bedroom because, just as the main floor air conditioning went out when we were moving furniture out, the upstairs AC went out when we were moving furniture back! 

The new heat pump was turned on at 10 pm last night, after about a week of no AC and temperatures in the 90s!  The kids have been camping out in the basement, and the Emperor and I have been staying in the guest room.

How it All Turned Out Part 1

If I was going to go through all the trouble of moving everything away and back, it sure seemed like a good time to reorganize.

We drew scale plans of rooms and furniture and worked out how we would use each room.

So this is our "new" living room!

We mostly shuffled furniture in the living room and guest room, but the office/store room and home school room got a complete overhaul.  I guess, technically, we don't have a home school room anymore.

 Instead, where our office and store room was, we have a museum and game room!


On the left is the plan, and on the right you can see the museum half of the room.






And here is the game half. 


We like games, can you tell?

Technically there are puzzles and some craft and science kits in there, too.

In the hidden corner, we are storing all our paper good and cleaning supplies in the closet behind the curtain.

Tomorrow: the guest room and new office!

Meanwhile...

What do you think when you hear "Meanwhile..."?  Does you brain complete that with "...back at the ranch"?

Mine completes it with "at the Hall of Justice"!  Ahem.

Actual View From Door

At any rate, when I returned from Colorado/Arkansas/the beach/scout camp/my folks/summer vacation, much to my surprise, no one had broken into the house and reorganized my home school room according to my exacting specifications.

Meaning, you still couldn't walk into the room.

I took this as a sign that I actually needed to break in and clean it myself.

 This process took many years decades hours.  Two days, really, because I also had to deal with all the home school overflow in my office!

Actual current view from door

But it's DONE!

I actually went through and tossed or passed on all the preschool to grade 2 stuff.

I went through all the books, games, toys, etc.

Part of the reason it was in such a state is that I hadn't done a major reorganization in a few years.

We've had some busy summers, but really  think it's because I dreaded giving away my "little kid" stuff.

I had such a lovely time when the Zoomlians were little, and I miss that age.

But I'm glad I did it!

The "little stuff" will make other littles happy, and now we can access everything for the kids I have now.

I moved all the books into my office (stuff in current use) or the guest room (stuff I'll need later), so the home school room is all the non book stuff.

I used the book case to hold pretzel bins full of projects.

We have bins for: Legos, dominoes, embroidery, shells, circuits, bones, tie dye, clay, cookie cutters, popsicle sticks, you name it!

I really like the bin idea because it's easy to take the whole bin out to use and it's easy to put it back.

That seems to be the key to successful organization for me: sad to say, if it isn't easy, I won't do it.

I still would like to organize the art shelves a bit better, but I actually know where everything is and can access any of it easily, which is a first in a long time!

Plus we redid the museum!  More on that tomorrow!