I just wrote about my struggle to adjust my thinking about projects vs. progress.

A finished project can’t be the end of the road when it comes to home organization. Shoes don’t automatically go to the right spot just because the spot is pretty.

But I am definitely trying to take advantage of my looser schedule this week and get some very necessary projects done.

Let me begin with a confession. I have said at least once that I don’t have any storage in this house. This is a lie. Not an intentional cover-up, but a lie of self-deception. I often long for the storage that I saw in a house we looked at. The house was not as good for our family as the one we bought, but in my memory it had four or five (I know it was at least three) walk-in storage closets. Seriously. Not closets in the rooms, but additional hall closets. There was a hall going to the kitchen with door after door of walk-in closets. It was the weirdest thing.

Now in my mind, all of that storage would solve all of my problems, right? But in reality, I’d fill them right up and want more.

I don’t have walk-in storage closets that I had overlooked (although I do have a recurring dream that I find an extra room in my house), but I do have SOME storage.

One storage place is this cabinet/laundry thing. It’s in the office, and I used to use it for my ebay storage, which is kind of funny since this entire room used to be ebay storage. I’ve gotten away from ebay as I’ve realized it only fuels my clutter issues, but this cabinet has been my last place to keep those “I should really put this on ebay” items. The only problem was that I wasn’t getting it done. If I bring something home from a garage sale and it’s truly worth what I thought, I put it up on ebay immediately. This closet was full of the things that might or might not be worth any money (or my time). So they sat there and made me feel guilty.

But I’ve decided that I’d rather have the storage than the guilt. As this room becomes more usable and a true family game room, I wanted to store games in it. I didn’t take a before pic, but here’s the after. The box and bag at the bottom are full of the stuff that came out of it.

There are still a few odds and ends in there, but they are things I want to keep.

Okay, second case of storage-space-denial. My coffee table is an old sea-chest. I love that thing and it’s been with me since college. It is huge and is great storage . . . except that I only open it once a year or so when I need it for a play or a monologue or something.

So a few weeks ago, I needed it. I looked inside and found all of the many things that have been stored there . . . for years. But if you had asked me where any of that stuff was, I would have had no idea.

So today I took it out. There were games to go in the above cabinet. Some things were total junk destined for my own garage sale. Some of it was stuff I’d like to have out and displayed. So I moved things to better places, and decided to use the chest for extra blankets, and only extra blankets, so that hopefully I’ll remember to look there when I need one. My linen closet is always in a shambles, even after my wonderful mom just organized it for me when she was here while we went on the cruise. So I decided it couldn’t hurt to remove the big and bulky blankets from the linen closet and give them a new home. Now the chest is almost completely full, and since it’s winter, most of our favorite blankets are on beds right now. When it’s time to store them, I’ll have to analyze whether or not the ones in the chest should be put in the garage sale. I get overwhelmed with those kinds of decisions, especially concerning the red and blue throw that my husband’s grandmother knitted, but which doesn’t match anything we have.

And last, but not least, is something I’ve been meaning to do for a very long time. I get completely overwhelmed by all of the piles of papers that “might” be important, so I hesitate to throw them away. Then when it turns out that one item really was important, I have to search through all of my piles to find it.

I have no idea what the best way to organize this box would be. So I just decided to create a file for bills to be paid, another one for paid bills, and then files labeled A-Z. I’m going to put tax stuff under T and hope that whatever logic my brain comes up with for filing something is the same logic it comes up with when I need to find it. It has to be better than random piles!

Oh, and I also took stock of my pantry and fridge-freezer. I haven’t braved the cold of the garage yet to check the deep freeze, so there will be a lot more in there. I came up with 10 complete meals just from what I have, and three or four more that only need one or two ingredients. So hopefully I can actually stick to the 50$ per week budget. The budget is just for things to round out what we already have, and for basics like milk, fresh fruit and veggies, eggs, etc.

I’m linking on Tackle it Tuesday at 5minutesformom.com