No more junk drawer!

Ever get the feeling like there's not enough time to do everything you want or need to do? When you look around your house, are there piles of piles of piles? (Purposefully arranged, of course!) As busy, hard-working, fun-loving people, it's easy to put organizing your home on the back burner. But when I realized that life could feel more at peace when our home was more orderly, my husband and I decided to team up to tackle one project at a time. This week? The Junk Drawer...

I admit, as much as I was dreading this task, it was a lot less cumbersome than I thought. After sorting all the items in the drawer (old birthday candles, employment pins from when Matt was an entertainer at a local amusement park, a rainbow of highlighters and markers...even an unused cigar in a wrapper that my Dad gave me for my 21st birthday!), I pitched about half its contents and salvaged a myriad of useable writing utensils and notepads. I even found some treasures I didn't know we had!

The next step was to find a helpful way to organize the drawer, so it wouldn't become junky again. Initially, I purchased an overpriced tray from a local store, but then Matt had a brilliant idea: he would build an organizer that would be functional and cost three times less than the ho-hum tray!

A quick trip to a hardware store and an hour later, my sweet and resourceful husband produced an exceptional organizer that will maintain the order and peace in our newly dubbed Functional Drawer. Now we'll never have to dig through it again!

Now, on to the next project: my son's closet!

Do you have any success stories of getting and staying organized?

Mandy Forbus is a Sr. Marketing Specialist for Texas Health Resources and an organized Mom of two.