Repurposing for Reorganizing

I've been doing some reorganizing lately.

I've been kind of a crazy person going through my house room by room to empty, clean, toss, donate, and organize.

I should be done in roughly 12 years.

When I was working in the kitchen, I looked with new eyes at my old Hoosier cabinet. It had become a catch-all for everything that didn't have a proper home. It stored the pens, pencils, scrap paper, receipts, phone numbers, files, phone books, dog medicine, tooth fairy bags, you name it.

What would Martha say???

I decided it should be used for what is was designed for: a piece of kitchen furniture. So I took everything off the surface and out of its cabinets and drawers. I cleaned it. Then, instead of putting back the flotsam it had previously housed, I placed canisters of sugar and flour in the flour mill. In the upper cabinets I put all my spices.




Yes, Hershey's cocoa powder is a spice in my book.

It was a great place to put my cook books, so in they went, as well as table cloths in the drawers and oversized kitchen implements like grill forks and tongs.




I stood back, wiped my hands on my proverbial apron, and smiled. I was pleased.

But then I turned around and saw all the junk I had removed. Insert curse word of choice here.

I wanted a way to keep it all handy, and yet look nice. I started looking around. I found the old tool box I had picked up for about ten bucks to corral the charger cords by the sofa. It hadn't worked out as I had hoped, and it was sitting empty and forlorn, looking for a new job.

And I had one for it.

I went to the store and bought some larger mason jars. We have plenty of the smaller kind for drinking and other purposes, but I needed the next size up.

I arranged the jars in the toolbox and started filling them up.

Colored pencils, Sharpies, chalk, rulers and magnifying glasses, scissors, highlighters, pens and pencils. I even have a separate jar for unsharpened pencils in the back, so if someone picks up a pencil with no point, they can at least put it in that jar instead of back in with the good ones. The pencil sharpener is tucked in there, as well.




Along with the toolbox, there is also a phone charger caddy and the homework basket.  On the wall above is a year calendar and a dry erase/bulletin board for messages and to-do lists.  




In the cabinets below, I have a drawer organizer with paper clips, tape, glue, etc. There is space for the phone books, the receipts, loose pictures, photo albums, yearbooks, and lots of etc.






Happy sigh. I feel fresher. I feel lighter. I feel better.

And all I paid was a few dollars for the mason jars. Everything else was already on hand.

Sometimes you've just got to look around and think.








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