bikes, bikes, baby

The closet in our guest room's main purpose since day one has been to house all of the Mr.'s cycling gear.

The closet in and of itself is unfortunate with its lack of lighting and sliding double doors that only allow you to see half of the closet at a time. I guess that's a 1940's house for you.

But despite its inadequacies on the outside, the inside was all together tragic.

Like I said, this had always been Mr. Spouse's space - a spot for him to dump all of his bike gear behind closed doors and forget about it. I was totally fine with this arrangement as I rarely enter said guest room and even more rarely open the closet doors. That is, until the Mrs. decided to play copycat and take up cycling herself! After a few months of trying to live with the closet in its current state, I could take it no more!

We did have some sense of organization in the closet, though, see? We had a shelf for water bottles and a tub for all of the tiny accessories that could get lost in the general debris.

There was a shelf for socks and nutritional products used during rides:

Each of us had a shelf for our cycling shoes and helmets:

All of our spare tire tubes were in the same general area:

And any spare, rarely-used gear was discreetly stored on the top shelf!

Ideal, right? Perfectly user-friendly, no? Truly...organizers everywhere should marvel in the beauty of that cycling closet!

Sarcasm aside, it didn't take long for both of us to realize that with two people trying to use the cycling closet, we had to rethink its organization. Hallelujah, praise the Lord!

Working with the Mr., we started by making a categorized list (is there anything sweeter?) of everything that was in the closet: water bottles, lighting equipment, nutritional items, triathlon gear, etc. and decided that everything inside the closet fell into nine categories. Therefore, I went to Target searching for nine gender-neutral bins (for the Mr.'s sake) and two larger bins that could store both of our everyday cycling items.

I snatched up nine of these...

...and used two of these that were leftover from my linen closet project.

Now, it was time to sort! I laid out all of the navy bins on our guest bed...

...and after only a few minutes of sorting, everything was transferred from the closet into a bin!

Everything was finally contained! We had a box full of organized nutritional products...

...and spare tire parts.

Never have I ever been so excited to fold up tire tubes!

I then created a label for each bin:

All of the bins were loaded back onto the top shelf of the closet! I did my best to photograph these results, but with no lighting in the closet, it was a bit tricky...

As for the green, Y-Weave bins, I used these to store items the Mr. and I use every time we ride (helmets, sunglasses, Road ID's, headphones, etc.).

So now, each of us can just go in, grab our bin and shoes, and get ready for a ride!

Now, when we slide those glorious 1940's doors open, we see this! 

The Mr.'s side:

The Mrs.'s side:

Quite a bit better than where we started, huh?

Now that we've done this small update, we REALLY want to install some lighting in the closet (shocking, I know) and figure out a new door situation. This closet is just too big to be cut in half by sliding doors. Can I get an amen?!

Happy cycling, patriots!

a december classroom tour.

As we are two short weeks away from the conclusion of the fall semester, I thought now would be the completely logical time to give y'all the grand tour of my, now, not-so-new preschool classroom! I'm just going to give y'all the brief overview today, then I will be back to give you more specific looks at certain areas of the room to show y'all some tips and tricks I've discovered for the wee ones.

Let's get started! Here is our classroom door...

...with our daily schedule and weekly lesson plan posted!

Each morning, the kids "sign-in" for the day by placing their picture on the schoolhouse - this not gives the kids' ownership over their own attendance, but it also gives them ample opportunity to see their name in print! Above our sign-in board, I have door hangers that detail all of the places we might be throughout the day (playground, chapel, music, etc.). These are posted on our classroom door any time we leave the room.

For my 2 year olds, we have cubbies in the room where we store the little ones' diaper bags, lunch boxes, etc. so we aren't constantly running out into the hallway to grab things. The kids are responsible for finding their cubby each morning and placing their bags, lunches, and lovies inside! More name recognition practice!

Here's our helper chart for both ages:

The largest bulletin board features the kids' birthdays, the alphabet, and a place to display the two year olds' work:

The kids LOVE finding their birthday cake!

Our calendar board is super simple and streamlined - we don't want those baby eyes getting distracted!

As for centers, we have the Writing/Cutting Center:

The Home Center:

The Blocks and Car Centers:

And then, a shelf of wooden blocks, Legos, connectors, shape and color games, etc.

All of that put together...

As for my storage space, I am SO lucky to have tons of drawer and cabinet space!

And since there are two teachers trying to work in this space, I kind of went on label overload (shocking) so that we wouldn't have to constantly ask each other, "Where's the....?". I labeled where each type of game belongs...

...what is stored in each drawer...

...and where all of the various paint supplies are stored. Overkill? Yes. A more streamlined day? Absolutely.

And remember all of that sorting I did over the summer with the year's curriculum? Those monthly curriculum binders made the jump to the counter for easier access alongside our tubs for storing items to be filed, copied, and used throughout the week:

So, there you have it! Looks a little different then my class of firsties, but I love every inch of it...even more when it's full of wobbly toddlers and preschoolers!

Anyone else care to share their classroom now that we're almost halfway through the year? :)

happy cyber monday, y'all.

Oh hey, friends! It's that time of year again - time to get your keyboards and mice ready for Cyber Monday! Now through Tuesday, everything in my store will be 20% off! Use the code "CYBER" at checkout for an additional 8% off your purchase!

Happy shopping, y'all!

lovely linens.

Considering the size and age of our casita, we are really lucky to have tons of closet and storage space throughout the house. Typically, older homes tend to have tiny closets that are few and far between so we (read that "I") were/was super jazzed to find that we had plenty of closet space as well as a sizable linen closet! But as large storage spaces always do, our linen closet was quickly becoming an "everything" closet causing a sharp decrease in its functionality and attractiveness. Boo and hiss.

As the linen closet is located in our guest bathroom, I really didn't think about it a lot (you know, out of sight, out of mind). But a couple of months ago, I was putting away sheets and almost gagged on the unsightliness of the space. Not only had I let the light bulb die (thus the flashy-flash pictures), but I had also allowed the closet to become a catch-all for anything and everything that didn't have a home somewhere else in the house!

Sick out. Spare curtains, spare cushion covers, old blankets, beach towels, bath towels leftover from the Mr.'s bachelor days, medicine, paper goods, napkins, plastic ware....I mean, what WASN'T in that closet?! Disgustoid.

I thought about making this a massive overhaul and painting the inside of the closet, but really, that's kind of a waste of a quart of paint. Really, all the space needed was some order, function, and a little bit of pretty. Wanting to make the closet seem more coordinated and calm, I was super amped when I stumbled upon this wrapping paper at Home Goods for $3 per roll.

The paper was more plastic-y than paper-y so I knew it would be the perfect amount of durability for wrapping the shelves of the closet. 

I then started looking into baskets. I wanted to find a basket that was white or grey to go with the shelf paper and that was either solid or had a very tight weave to hide the contents, thus decreasing the visual clutter in the closet. While at Target one day, I found these Y-Weave baskets:

Tight weave, yes, but white? Absolutely not. However, the baskets WERE on clearance and they had the exact number/size of baskets that I needed, so I figured the savings were totally worth it, and I could just slap on a couple of layers of spray paint to get the white basket I had in mind!

So I bought all of the baskets I needed, and started placing items into the baskets to a) be sure I had enough baskets and b) start weeding out items we no longer needed. That took our closet here:

Already a TON better, but obviously not the right coloring. Off to spray painting land!

After a very light first coat, we were definitely headed in the right direction!

While the baskets were curing and in between coats of paint, I removed all of the shelves from the closet so that I could wrap them in the paper I found at Home Goods. 

This is when I realized that, yeah, the closet isn't in the best shape wall-wise, but seriously, it's just a closet. So I forged on with my plan to just wrap the shelves and ignored my impulse to slap a layer of paint on those tragic walls. Wrapping the shelves just like I would wrap a book, in about an hour, I had beautifully patterned shelves in my closet!

I felt like it already looked one thousand times better! And after the baskets had finished drying and curing and had been reloaded with their contents, I was smitten!

I used Martha's Adhesive Metal Bookplates to hold labels for each of the basket's contents. 

So now, the top shelves hold the now boxed and concealed paper products, plastic ware, and blankets:

The middle shelves house beach towels and bath towels:

And the baskets on the sides of the closet house pillowcases and hand towels:

And the bottom shelves house sheets:

Everything finally has a pretty home!

We even have room to grow!

As for all of those spare curtains, cushion covers, etc? Well, most of them were donated, but the ones that chose to stay are now housed in some drawers I used to use in my classroom, but no longer needed (thus the doodles on the fronts of some of the drawers):

These are now screaming for some labels of their own, but I haven't quite gotten around to that yet.

My how things change with the help of some baskets and shelf paper!

Before:

After: