The Posh Space

Playroom Makeover Part 6 – Final Reveal!

I am jumping for joy!  My girl’s playroom makeover is FINALLY complete!  I never would have thought it would have taken five months to complete (December-April), but it did.  So why did it take FIVE months and what lessons did I learn?  Some projects you can knock out in one weekend or one week if that is all you do every day in this case, I was working on this on just the weekends which makes the progress slower.  Second, as I often tell my clients life happens and sometimes gets in the way of our plans.  In January we had some major changes happen in our household that changed our entire lifestyle as a result I took about six weeks off from the project.  Then slowly started working on it one little section at a time.

Let’s take a look!

BEFORE

Here’s where it all started.  When we moved into our house as with many people we were just using what we had.  Unfortunately what we had worked great in our other house but it did not work well at all in our new house.  The bookcase was WAY too small and there simply was not enough storage for all the girls toys.  I had some in the closet but the girls were not able to reach them so they would/could never put them back.  It was an organizers nightmare!

You can see more before pictures on my previous post in this series Organizing Stuffed Animals.

I gave serious thought to what we would need to make this space work.  I also asked my girls what was most important to them.  THIS was key.  I asked them what was their favorite thing to play with? Answer: Dress up clothes and Barbies!  I ended up devoting almost the entire closet to dress up clothes see my previous post: Playroom Makeover Part 4 – Dress Up.

So I gave lots of thought to taking the shelves high and getting the most out of our tall room and finding solutions that would grow with the girls.  Above you can see I have three Expedit shelves from IKEA.  If, I mean, when the girls decide they don’t want to share a room anymore the shelves can be split up.  But for now they gave me a great wide space at the top to put something large!

Here is what the full Expedit bookcases look like. On the second row from the bottom we have games, games, games, and puzzles.

On the bottom row we have a box with doll stuff, a  few random cars and toys, tea sets and play dishes, and a box full of play food.  You can see the boxes up close on my previous post Playroom Makeover Part 3 – Box Refresh.

On the right hand side the top three cubbies are Barbie stuff.  To the right of the bookcase you can’t see the top of the bright pink Barbie house!

We keep a folding stool in the playroom so the girls can reach those things on the upper shelves.

I love this stool because it just tucks out of the way and is not a trip hazard when it is not being used!

I added these paper lanterns from IKEA and made the pink paper flowers.  The lanterns give us a beautiful light at reading time at night!  I wish I could capture how magical it is!  My girls love it!

I am not going to lie to you, I hate to sew, but I can if needed.  So, I made the bed skirt, which was pretty easy since I just bought a white bed skirt and attached my fabric to the front of it.  Then I made these pillow shams, which I must admit turned out AMAZING!  I have NEVER made a pillow sham so I was OH SO proud of myself!  I found a few tutorials one from Cottage Magpie and another from eHow and used those along with looking at a sham that I had.

I am not kidding when I say this is how the Barbie house looks on a daily basis and I did NOT do this!  One of my sweet little ones insists that the table must be set for Barbie!  Too funny!

Finally, here is one of my sweet girls getting her lip gloss out of her bag, exactly where she put it and knew it would be!  In the poodle purse of course!  My girls have LOVED the new playroom.  Although I have been working on it for months now, the bookcase was actually up in time for Christmas so they have been using that system for about four months now and I will say it has made my life SO much easier!  They cleaned up the playroom the other day in about 7 minutes!  It’s amazing.  Now that things have a place to go AND the girls know where the things are supposed to go they can and DO put things away!

I hope this has inspired you.  Please let me know what you think about our playroom makeover!

Organizing The Car: Kids

May is National Good Car-Keeping Month so this month I will be bringing you some tips and ideas on how to get your car organized.  May is also the month of Mother’s Day so today’s post will be filled with ideas on how mom’s can keep their kiddo’s organized on the go.  After all, what mother wouldn’t want a more organized car?!

(Izze Portable Car Organizer idea from Real Simple.)

This is such a great idea!!!  I LOVE this!  Time and time again when my kids are getting out of the car and I remind them to pick up their trash or bring in their water bottle and they say they can’t because their hands are too full.  I love this idea from Real Simple because the kids can easily tote everything in and everything out.  Even better, if tote gets messy you can just recycle it or toss it out.

(Shower caddy fast food holder idea from Lookie What I Did.)

Another great idea!  Eating food on the go is a struggle even for many adults, so what a brilliant idea this is from Missy at Lookie What I Did.  Use a plastic caddy to hold you child’s (or your) lunch without anything falling on the floor. Then you can use the paper bag the food came in as a trash bag.

(Pattern and image from tinkerfrog.)

One of the biggest car clutter problems is trash!  The best way to solve this is by adding a trash bag within arms reach.  You can add a super cute trash bag like Tara did in the picture above or you can be old fashion with a super simple grocery bag.  Personally I like the little blue diaper sacks from Sassy. I keep a stash of those in my car and when the girls fill one up we just grab another one.

(From Martha Stewart.)

This idea from Martha Stewart is an excellent way to keep a lot of items organized, off the floor, and off the seats. If you have children under four I would be careful with this as I have found my little one’s arms cannot reach the back to the seat.  This is both frustrating to her and me as I’m trying to drive.  In my opinion a system like this would work best for a mom with a baby to keep extra diapers and supplies organized or for an older child.

(IKEA Flort as car organizer idea by The Odd Mom Out.)

Elizabeth from The Odd Mom Out transformed an IKEA Flort (remote control organizer) into an in car organizer for her kids!  I love this because it is so much easier for the kids to reach!  Big kudos Elizabeth!

There we have it five ideas to help get your organizing juices flowing and help you on your adventure to car organization!

Good luck!

Eco-Organizing, Kids – Part 3

{Photo found on Pinterest  From HGTV}

If you are new to the blog welcome!  Today’s post is Part Three in an earth friendly organizing series including Eco-Friendly Organizing Kitchen-Part 2 and Eco-Friendly Organizing – The Office Part 1.  Today we will looking a few ways to organize kids.

Ooh, ahh.   Who knew an old tin can could look so good?!  Recycle old aluminum cans to hold kids’ craft items.  By using containers that are the same color and finish it automatically gives an impression of being more tidy and pulled together. Don’t forget to label the containers so everyone knows where things go.  Remember large easy to read labels work best.

{Photo from BHG}

Time and time again I hear from people who are struggling with what to do with all those stuffed animals.  I love this idea from BHG!  If you are like me you may have purchased one of these wall mounted baskets for you garden only to discover how quickly they dry out and your plants die.  Sigh......... but never fear you can turn that planter into comfy spot for kiddo's best friends.

{From Money See, Monkey Do}

How fun is this?!  It's so bright and beautiful kids might even be inspired to keep up with the organization!  Jen from Monkey See, Monkey Do gives you the DIY instructions on her blog for creating this fun crayon organizer by painting the inside of old baby food jars.

{Photo from Brown Paper Packages}

If you have not seen these baby food containers from Gerber you are missing out! Above Kierste from Brown Paper Packages shows us how we can store some girls hair accessories using these baby food containers.  All I can say is let your imagination go wild with these!  There are SO many ways you can use these.  I have used them to store hair accessories, tiny little toys that tend to get lost, Box Tops for Educations, change in drawers, stickers, and much more I'm sure.

{From Heart Of Wisdom}

Are you a big coffee drinker?  If so you can recycle those old coffee containers into toy organizers.  Robin from Hear of Wisdom shares label templates for a variety of things and she offers several other ideas on how you can use coffee containers in other ways.  Oh, and she also shares the secret behind getting the coffee smell out of the coffee cans!

Happy kid organizing with a twist of green!

Playroom Makeover Part 5 – Displaying Artwork

In December I started my girls playroom makeover and it was going great.  You can see Part 1: Stuffed Animals,  Part 2: Collections,  Part 3: Box Refresh,  Part 4: Dress Up, and a side post on Organizing Fairy Wings (you’ll only need this if you have young girls) by clicking the above links. Then, I’m sure you can relate, my family and business life got very busy and my project had to slow down.  It happens, even to organizers!  So here is what I’ve been working on over the past few weeks.

I was struggling with how to display my kids artwork.  I had tons of ideas but nothing was clicking.  Then I started looking at every available frame we had in the house.  Ah ha!  I remembered that we had this cork board that I had never used and this mirror that I just wasn’t ready to part with in the attic.  Oooh, my vision was starting to come together!  My number 1 assistant (my husband) carefully removed the beveled mirror (which was glued) from the white carved frame.  Fortunately it came out in one piece!

Then we gave each frame a few coats of high gloss black spray paint for about $7.00.  The white was nice, but the black POPS against the walls.  Next we found this galvanized sheet metal at the home improvement store.  Amazingly, one sheet was exactly the amount we needed for both frames!  The metal cost about $10.

We glued the metal to the frames using a hot glue gun then tacked the backs of the frames back on.

The frames were positioned and hung and I used a metal magnetic clip for the first frame.  I love that these are magnetic so we can move things around and I don’t have to worry about tacks falling on the floor and getting lost in the carpet.

Since my cork board frame was very simple I added an embellishment to the top that I found at Hobby Lobby for about $9.00.  I didn’t even have to spray paint it!

Then I used magnetic sheets to make magnetic photo corners.  Are those cute or what?

My friend Barbara had told me about these sheets for another project so I had recently purchased these from Office Depot.  I cut a piece of card stock into a 3 inch by 3 inch square and then cut a diagonal line to make two triangles.  Then I cut out the little notches.  I just eyeballed the first one and then used it as a template.  I ran the card stock through my sticker maker (but you could just use scrapbook glue if you have some) and then attached it to the magnetic paper. I cut the pieces out with scissors and then I was done! Super easy!

So now I have an easy way to change out my children’s artwork!  What I also liked about this project is that I think these magnetic boards can grow with my girls.  In the future when they want to hang up posters of Justin Bieber or Harry Potter now they have a place.  Oh, wait that’s already happening.  Oh well, maybe I can fen those off for a little bit longer. Ha, ha!

Overall this DIY project cost me about $26.00.  Not bad.  Let me know what you think or tell me about what you were inspired to do with your children’s artwork.

How To Organize Fairy Wings

If you have young girls then the chances are you own at least one pair of fairy wings.  It’s no secret figuring out how to store fairy wings is no easy task.  Sure you can fold them up and store them with the other dress up clothes, but because of the delicate material they often end up with holes.  And no one wants holes in fairy wings!  So after attempting many things here is what I finally came up with that seems to work best in our household.

I simply hang the fairy wings by one end with a children’s pant hanger.  Just like a snowflake, no set of fairy wings is exactly the same so you may have to play with this a little.  Some may be hung right side up and some may be hung upside down.  But hanging them by the tips seems to work best.  You may want to put a little bit of felt or another padded fabric over the tips of the fairy wings to protect them from the hanger.

Now you can hang your fairy wings with the rest of the dress up stuff (just as I have in the picture below)!  Isn’t that easy?  My girls can even do it!  Although, I’ll be honest with you it has taken them a few times to get used to using the pant hangers.

Last but not least, if you have been following my girls Playroom Makeover series I will start bringing you the final pieces to that next week.  Woo hoo!  Click here for Part 1 Organizing Stuffed Animals, Part 2 Organizing Collections,  Part 3 Box Refresh, and Part 4 Dress Up.

Do you have an amazing solution for organizing fairy wings?  I’d love it if you would share.  Post a comment below.

Playroom Makeover Part 4 – Dress Up

Ooh la, la, now that’s what I call a dress up closet!  If you follow my blog you know I’ve been working on my girl’s playroom since before Christmas, so no one will be happier than me (well maybe my husband) when this makeover is complete.  This week I put the finishing touches on the girls dress up closet.  Yes I said dress up closet!!! When I asked my girls back in December what their favorite things to play with, dress up and games were top on their list.  So I got to work creating a dress up area they would love!

The picture above is a really bad before of the closet.  As mentioned in the Playroom Make Over Part 1 -Organizing Stuffed Animals when I stared to actually work on taking the room apart I got so excited about organizing I forgot to stop and take pictures.  We were using the IKEA Trofast which had worked well in our previous house but never fit well here.

One of the biggest complaints the girls had was that EVERYTHING was stuffed into the the large drawers in our old Trofast system and in order to get something they had to pull everything out and make a big mess.  So the first things I did was start adding smaller containers, like the little zebra box I showed you in Part 3 of the makeover,   for all the tiny purses and coin purses.  We also made the hanging rack on the wall with a piece of chair rail moulding and pulls I found at Anthropologie and World Market.

Now instead of digging to the bottom of the bin for dress up shoes they are prominently displayed.

Even the wands have a more magical place to go!

Smaller bins (not too big to prevent too much stuff and overcrowding at the request of my girls) for extra clothes, scarves, and headbands are tucked away neatly with cute labels.

Necklaces; both long and short, now have a place to hang without ending up in a tangled mess. I used the the 3M Command Jewelry Organizing and the Command Key Holder.

The rest of the jewelry stayed in these little IKEA boxes but they got a refresh with ribbon and tags which I added using a hot glue gun.

Have you ever wondered what to do with fairy wings?  I found that using a child’s pant/skirt hanger works best.

Before it was difficult for the girls to find their own clothes and dresses.  I tried to keep my oldest daughter’s clothes towards the back, but that didn’t work.  So this time around they each got their own side of the closet.

Now I have two happy girls who are actually doing a great job keeping their playroom clean!

If you missed any part of the series find them here:  Part 1 Organizing Stuffed Animals, Part 2   Organizing Collections , Part 3 Box Refresh.

See you next wee for Part 5, will it be the final reveal???  Maybe, tune in to see!