The long awaited Family Organizing Center

Warning- this post is not for everyone! Not that any of my posts are, but many of you may think that it's extreme to dedicate an entire wall to organizing your family's schedules/paperwork. I could probably use another three walls. :-) An entire family organizing room. Can you even imagine!?! Sigh.....Okay, snapping out of it.

Ta-da.....

Yes, it's not all hanging entirely straight and yes it's driving me crazy too. :-)

The magnetic calendars you'll recognize from here.

Other features of our organizing center include:

•Two cutesy dry erase To-Do lists, one for me and one for Jeremy. These are made by taking an old picture frame, spray painting it, scrapbooking a cute paper to go inside, and writing on the glass with a regular dry erase marker.

•A "mailbox" folder holder for each of our family members. I originally looked for these in the store, but all I could find were plain ugly clear ones and it was like $25 for three of them...and we needed four. Jeremy and I made all of these out of one $10 sheet of particle board and two 99 cent bottles of paint. Plus we have enough of the particle board left to make an awesome mailbox like this for Liliana for Christmas.

By the way, Micah is very disheartened that he has not gotten any mail in his "mailbox." When I get the mail from outside I divvy it up and usually it's all for mommy and daddy. During the school year, he'll put his folder in here but right now, he's been stuffing his bath towel inside because it drives him crazy that it's empty. And my attempts at giving him pretend mail for in there hasn't worked. So if you'd like to mail the kiddo something, it'd be much appreciated. Message me for our new address.

•A chore chart- this isn't something I was planning on putting up. I was trying to avoid the whole laminated-clip-art-looks-like-little-kids-live-here thing. But Micah insisted that he could not possibly help with chores without his chore chart hanging there. I'm hoping to redo this into a cuter something or other eventually.

•A menu board- done in the same style as the To-Do lists. My mom joked that most people who just planned out a menu for the week would consider themselves organized. I will say that we definitely don't adhere to it as much as I'd like to, but usually we end up making all of the meals, just mixing up the order.

•And finally, a little holder thing that has the pieces for the magnetic calendar and some pens, tape, etc. so I can fill out any forms I need to from school and put it right back into Micah's folder. Funny story- I was so excited to find this awesome holder thing at Goodwill for only $3! Score! Then a week later I saw it at Ikea for $2 new. Whoops!

So there you have it. We're officially organized. I will say that the thing we're enjoying the most is probably the To-Do lists. I keep finding little things throughout the day that I need to remember to work on when we get a chance. It's great to jot them down and put them out of mind for the moment. And Jeremy seems to work really well when he has a list of what he needs to do. Not all husbands do well with that, but he appreciates knowing exactly what I need of him and the satisfaction of being able to cross it off the list when finished.