Tsunami Watch-52 Weeks of Organizing

While I wait for the tsunami to hit the North Coast, I figured I might as well use my time wisely and get this week’s organizing post done.  First of all, we should keep all the people in our prayers and the families from the earthquake that hit Japan last night.  Apparently I was snoring so DH got out of bed and was watching TV when it hit the airwaves.  He immediately came back and woke me up to tell me.  Living in earthquake country, earthquakes are pretty important to us.   That is why we keep bottled water and food at all times, just in case. 

Seriously, our town of McKinleyville sits on a cliff, so I am not worried.  However, my husband’s business is closer to the bay in Eureka.  He called and said all the businesses were closed around him.   He also had an young employee call and say he was leaving town.  A bit of an overreaction I think.  However, back in 1964 when the big one hit Crescent City, my uncle Gene (who worked for the government in an unknown exactly what he did type of position) missed getting dragged out by one city block.  So we do take our natural disasters seriously here in Northern Coastal California.

Well after all that happy talk onto this weeks issues:

1. What are your hot spot landing zones?  See picture!
2. Think about ways you can tackle these flat surface areas to manage the stuff that continues to pile there:  Maintain, maintain, maintain!
3. What are you most proud of so far in your 52 weeks journey?  That I am actually sticking with it.  I have bad startitis and not finishitis.  But then I have no job now, so this is my job!

I have several areas of ongoing decluttering and organizing going on.  Here is one before and after shot.  I picked up this brown shelf at a local kids store that was closing.  I did not know what I was going to do with it, but for $3.00 I figured I would find someplace to put it.  My first thought was organizing scrapbook supplies, but I don’t scrapbook…..yet!  I have an entire rubbermaid container of stuff leftover from YD’s scrapbooking days.  Unfortunately it turned into shoving any and all paper that comes into the house….well okay not all of it.

Before:

After:

That was easy!  All I did was dump all papers into here:

Where does all the paper in my house come from?  I don’t have children living here, going to school, etc.  It is just mail!  So I have a nice big project to do while watching a Lifetime movie…oh goody!

Several years ago DH made this little hook thingee for my office.  It gets pretty messy, so I cleaned it up a bit from this:

To this:

The bags from the left hold:  Upcoming knitting projects, current knitting project, plain bag is my “shopping bag, which holds this week’s current ads, a college ruled notebook, my coupon file folder and a pen and scissors, the far right holds my library books.

Another area I tackled this week was a shelf in my garage that has stock up items from the holidays.  Why did I buy so many chocolate chips? 

I found these plastic stacking containers in my office that had a bunch of old computer crap in them.  I threw some stuff away, put some stuff in other containers and was able to use them for the choco chips and sugar:

Aah much better.

After cleaning my landing pad in full disclosure, this morning it looks like this:

Hey in all fairness I was gone all last weekend to a family funeral so I did not maintain like I am planning.  Yes that is a smoke alarm sitting there.  We had a security system installed with a new fire alarm hooked up to the system, so we now have an extra…I wonder if my mother needs one?

I finally got my granddaughter’s quilt out to finish and was not happy to find the backing material, (minky polka dot) it not quite wide enough, so I am going to hack off a row on the quilt so I can get that finished up for her:

I will be sewing on my newly cleaned off sewing table with my new machine that is keeping my old Bernina company:

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You may remember the before shot a few posts ago, if not no need to remind you of how bad it was!  The shelf is up to the right of the table with the cute red accessories. 

Looking foward to seeing what everyone else did this week over at www.orgjunkie.com.  I am sitting listening to the local radio who is checking in with people reporting on the bay and tide, etc.  Stay safe everyone!