January is typically the time of year for organizing, and I find in our home we too seize the slower pace and frigid temperatures to tackle a few projects that have been on the backburner. Over the last few weeks, both Alex and I have both begun commenting to each other just how jam packed our closets feel, how disorganized our cabinets have become, and how generally we can’t find what we’re looking for. (Well, more so my other half on this one, but then again, he can’t find his way out of our disorganized basement.)

Take our kitchen cabinets, for example. It’s a lucky day if we open the cabinets without a shower of cupcake wrappers or canned goods taking a leap of faith. 

We just cross our fingers it’s the former. Canned goods showering down on you as well as the countertops and floor is never a good time.

Today I decided I’ve had it, and I need to get started on a mission to organize. Room by room, beginning with the kitchen, I’m going to clean out the drawers, cabinets, and closets in our home, donating what someone else can use, throwing away broken or damaged items, and reorganizing what we have. I’ve also decided I’m going to do so without spending a single cent. This won’t be one of those max-out-your-credit-card-at-the-Container-Store efforts, nor will it be an impractical effort of making every drawer look beautiful with matching hand calligraphied labels, all carefully organized in salvaged baby food jars. I’m setting out to use what we have, get rid of what we don’t need, maximize the way we use the space in our 15’ wide home, and to restore the delicate balance that is my sanity.

In fact, I’m challenging myself to undertake and complete this effort in the next two weeks. So who’s with me? We can make it a Clean and Purge Challenge. I’ll report back on my progress with before and afters, and if you’d like to share your progress for inclusion in a future post, please send it to me at wendy@oldtownhome.com. I’d love to know I’m not the only one knee deep in torn gift-wrap bags and stale Halloween marshmallows. 

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It's hard to concentrate on other things right now, so we hope our blog post might provide a moment or two of a departure from the events in Boston.

Man oh man, do we have a crazy long to do list in front of us this week. If you read yesterday's post about our recent curb appeal efforts, you know that we realized we had signed up to host a neighborhood party this month. With little time to spare, we took stock of what we needed to accomplish this week before 40 or so people descend on the house. 

So where are we, exactly, in our to do list? Here's a quick recap of where we stand. Before Friday's event, we need to:

• Trim the topiaries and plant flowers in the front urns
• Plant flowers in the front bed, and mulch the area
• Clean the front steps and vestibule
• Rake up the sticks and debris along the side of the house
• Clean out the beds in the back yard
• Plants herbs
• Plant the vegetable garden
• Clean and oil the outdoor furniture
• Clean the house
• Oil the kitchen counters
• Replace the Christmas carol artwork in the sun porch with something less seasonal
• Purchase wine, cups, and other party items
• Set up an outdoor buffet for the party

Tonight we decided to tackle item number four on the list. Although not a top priority, the area on either side of our alley wall was in desperate need of a little TLC. On the alley side, general debris had collected over the last several months, to include sticks, leaves, trash, and a few indications that we have inconsiderate pet owners that walk our alley. (I'll spare you photographic evidence of the last item.) Here's a look at what we were starting with.

Sure, it wasn't horrible, but it needed a bit of a spruce up. I got to work, quickly raking the base of the wall, pulling old leaves and general junk from the roots of the ivy. I raked the debris into several small piles, and Alex got to work bagging. 

Meanwhile I spent a few minutes pulling up clumps of weeds that were growing alongside the front of our house. 

After only 20 or so minutes, the area was substantially improved. It's a subtle difference in the photos, but in person it seems more apparent that our home is inhabited by people who weren't raised by wolves.

On a bit of a side note, what we have now is 1,000 times better than what we had when we moved in. Years of neglect left the ivy struggling to survive. Now that we've worked on it for 10 years,  trimming and training the ivy along the way, the old images are both shocking and a distant memory.

The next step involved the narrow alley on the inside of our wall. This tight and rather dysfunctional space unfortunately serves as a catch all for yard tools, broken pots, the sky pencils that used to reside in our front urns, half used bags of soil, and other miscellaneous junk. It's a total eyesore, and unfortunately we've yet to crack how to properly organize this narrow space. (Perhaps a little shed build-out is in Alex's future?)

Nevertheless, a cleanup was in order, so I first got to work trimming back the long strands of ivy.

Meanwhile Alex began identifying items for the trash, as well as organizing the items that were staying. Is hiding junk behind the air conditioner really a solution, especially when it's in plain view from the dining room window? Definitely not, but it will have to do for now.

Even Lulu looked at us disapprovingly for that move.

Once we had the majority of the junk cleaned up neatly tucked behind the air conditioner, we swept up the yard waste and neatly wound up the long garden hose.

All in all, the area isn't "organized" by any stretch of the imagination, but it's greatly improved from the hot mess that it was just a few hours ago.

It's all part of a good spring cleaning, and I'm still grateful for the self imposed deadline that's forcing us to tackle the yard work in a timely manner this year. 

Do you have areas of your home that you tend to ignore? Maybe a space that seems totally unusable? Do you have any ideas on how we can better organize this area? We'd love to hear your ideas.

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As we mentioned in past posts, the addition of our closets to the previously underutilized chimney wall solved a significant storage problem in our room. Now our clothes, my shoes, and even our extra storage tubs have a place to stay neat and organized. However, there's one very critical storage item that wasn't solved with the closet build -- my collection of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and other miscellaneous bobbles I've picked up at thrift stores, antique stores, Ann Taylor Loft (there's one on the way home from work, I'm powerless to resist), and various other places. Yep, things just got real, I'm talking about jewelry storage. 

At this point you've seen all of the various after photos of our bedroom, as well as the interior shots of our closet, but have you been able to pick out my jewelry storage from these photos? It's been hiding in plain sight all along. Here's a refresher. See if you can spot it.

Can you see it yet? No? Any guesses? Take a closer look.

Okay, here you go, I'll let you in on my little secret.

Yep, that's right folks, the mirror between the bedroom and bathroom door is actually concealing all of my costume jewelry. This little hidden cabinet creation came to me a while back when I realized my previous jewelry storage solution was particularly lacking in both form and function. My previous setup primarily consisted of shoving all of my stuff into a few wooden and cardboard jewelry boxes that I then shoved under my socks and underwear in my dresser drawers. Given my Type A need to organize and understand exactly what I have when planning my outfits, this configuration left something to be desired.

At one point I proposed a solution to Alex that was a challenge of sorts. I think I said something along the lines of "can you build me a jewelry cabinet?" I'm pretty sure his willing husband response was, "Yeah, sure I can." (Don't you love his optimism?) I followed that up with the next logical question of "how long do you think it will take?" Though his voice said, "Meh, a few days," his verbal response didn't matter, I could see it in his eyes, it was not days or weeks, but probably months at least. I appreciate my husband for all of his creativity, DIY skills, and drive, but his ability to properly estimate a project's timeline is, how do I put this gently and accurately...severely lacking.

In my quest to both achieve my desire for organized jewelry storage and my need to accomplish the task while I'm still young enough to wear said jewelry, I began researching other options. During my nights of Internet sleuthing I stumbled across a somewhat ideal solution from a organizational perspective, named the "Safekeeper Mirrored Jewelry Cabinet."

This cabinet seemed just about perfect. It has storage for earrings, bracelets, necklaces, glasses, and even pockets and cubbies for miscellaneous items. The various compartments satisfied all of my storage desires while allowing a tremendous amount of room for future growth. What more could a girl want? The only problem with this cabinet is I didn't want my jewelry cabinet sitting out in the middle of our room. So I took my photos to Alex and presented my next challenge, "Can you use this as a basis for the storage but somehow integrate it into our room?" After a bit of arguing that he could build the same thing for so much less money and at a higher quality, he eventually agreed, it was an excellent starting point for our needs and he could use the cabinet as a built in item, but make it unique to our room. Okay, problem solved and challenge accepted.

The place that I first saw this cabinet had it for sale for about $300. This was extremely steep given that we weren't planning to use the whole thing and that it isn't made of solid cherry or mahogany. Alex and I started searching for deals and eventually found one on eBay for just $110 including shipping. When it arrived we got to work. 

Since our room's walls are plaster on brick on two of four walls, and the third wall is a party wall between our house and our neighbor's, we really only had one place where we could locate the cabinet as an in-wall unit, and that was largely taken by the two doors to the room. Given our limitations, we found a good location that satisfied our needs and allowed us to conceal the whole unit. We cut a hole in the wall and had an amazing stroke of luck. The stud Alex expected to be in the way and we'd need to work around was mysteriously missing. It seems the walls had been altered at some point in the past and there simply wasn't a stud behind the plaster/drywall that occupied the area.

We put a support stud in place on both the side and bottom of the cabinet and popped the bad boy into the wall with two nails through either side of the cabinet. 

We had removed the mirror from the front and weren't sure if we were going to use it on the final install. Since this cabinet was going to live inset into the wall, we really needed something that offered a bit more overlay around the perimeter of the cabinet, but what that thing was exactly, I wasn't sure.

It wasn't until we were out at Luckett's Antique Store on one fateful day when I saw my mirror waiting for us. We had long debated if we should use a traditional dressing mirror or something more visually interesting. We had hoped to find something with dimensions that would conceal the entire cabinet, but also knew our specific dimensions made this very difficult. When we found this mirror its dimensions were nearly perfect, just a little short and narrow, its style was something that I loved, and one of the mirrors had a small and barely noticeable crack, which meant it was significantly marked down, score! We snapped it up and brought it home that day.

The mirror itself is actually three dimensional. Each four triangle section makes a pyramid that protrudes from the base several inches. The frame of the mirror is steel and is painted in a manner to make it looks weathered.

A short while after we brought it home Alex began work on the custom panel and frame for my angular and interesting decorative mirror find. He determined the ideal dimensions for the door and necessary overlay based on the side of the mirror, the size of the opening, and the location between the two doors. He also had to accommodate the light switch to the right of the location. It wasn't an easy calculation, so I'm very glad he and his anal retentive math skills were on the job.

Alex built the base of the mirror/door from 1/2" plywood and used a few wood screws to hang the mirror using the hanger holes on the rear of the mirror. The plywood allowed us to mount the mirror in a manner that would cover the entire cabinet and properly position the door in the area between the two passage doors. The end result looks completely integrated, but we can remove the mirror from frame at any time simply by loosening screws and sliding it out.

He then used a combination of two moldings to wrap the plywood, as well as a few pieces of 1/4" trim to form a border on the rear of the door. This effectively disguised the plywood and made a true frame for the mirror.

This also allowed me to carefully pry the black fabric panel from the rear of the cabinet's original mirror and affix it to the back of the newly built door. Alex finished off the whole install with a pair of European cabinet hinges that helps the door extend away from the wall as it opens. Without these hinges, the overlay of the left side of the door would gouge the wall.

He inset one side of the hinges into the door panel using a standard European hing drill bit, and then attached the business end of the hinge as a surface mount to the interior of the cabinet. We had to clear away a little bit of foam padding on the ring section to make it work, but it's a minor sacrifice to make this functional.

The end result is the jewelry cabinet of my dreams (to complement the closet of my dreams) neatly concealed behind a visually interesting piece of wall art. When I show off this little feature to people who visit our house they're usually shocked, excited, and a little bit jealous, all understandable.

It still brings a smile to my face every morning when I open the cabinet to pick out the bracelet or necklace I plan to wear for the day, and every evening when I hang my earrings or when Alex puts his cufflinks away after a fancy night out.  

What do you think of our cabinet? Did you ever think there was anything more to the mirror on the wall than just an interesting mirror on the wall? Do you have a creative jewelry cabinet or storage solution that you're particularly fond of? I'd love to hear about any cool thing's you've done. Perhaps we could incorporate it in a future project.

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Our old wicker bench in the sun porch of years past was a nostalgia piece of furniture. We purchased it almost immediately upon our arrival in DC and placed it on our apartment's balcony. Since then it's been a versatile piece and a constant in our lives. Mel has used it extensively, as has Lulu. And Ollie? Well, Ollie chewed it all to hell leaving the front rather ragged, but I'll say he loved it too. (He also liked to pulled the shoes out of the baskets under the bench.)

For all of its sentimental reminders, it was definitely past its prime, and it was also far from looking particularly good. That's why we'll go ahead and use "nostalgia" as the excuse for why we kept it in our sun porch for nearly a decade.

With the recent purchase of new chairs for the sun porch, it was finally time to bid a fond farewell to this ragged piece of furniture. My father in law and I recently took this wicker bench to its new temporary home at a local charity.

Though we had mixed emotions seeing something that had been with us for a dozen years suddenly be gone, we had a very real and difficult issue to do with that had nothing to do with emotion or nostalgia. That wicker bench, in all of its battered appearance, did a wonderful job hiding/housing our shoe collection in two wicker baskets we'd slide below the bench. Now with the bench moving on to greener pastures, we were left with the baskets and shoes in a pile in the corner of the room, something my wife informs me is totally unacceptable. 

Every time I'd enter the room I'd glance down and see them staring back at me. I could almost hear them screaming out, "Aaaggghhh, look at me, I'm a monster!!!! Nooooo, look away!!!" (Those shoe baskets are super dramatic, I tell you.)

With our white hutch now in the sun porch, Wendy had been lobbying for the ability to store our shoes in the left side of the lower cabinet. The space is rather large, was currently underutilized, and is just begging to assume a bigger role in tackling our home's organization issues. 

I agreed with Wendy that this area would make good shoe storage, but it wouldn't be able to fill the role without a proper shelf of sorts.

To start working on the storage solution, I ran out to Lowes and picked up the straightest piece of 1" x 12" clear pine they had in stock (which means it was cupped and slightly warped). I had a plan to put my skills of "build out of necessity" into action and started my plan of attack.

We first measured the height and width of the opening to determine max size of the insert. I wanted to build this as a single item that could simply slide into place without having to screw it to the hutch's interior.

We also measured the heights of our most frequently worn shoes in order to establish the height of each shelf.

In our case we needed it to be 17-1/4" tall and 17" wide, with each opening for shoes averaging to about 5" tall.

I took to the basement and began cutting the various pieces for the project. I cut the two sides and the top to 17" even, then cut a rabbet at the edge of each side of the top leaving 1/4" of material. To allow for a little bit of adjustment and change (if needed), I used my adjustable shelf jig and self centering drill bit to cut shelf support holes. 

This jig and the accompanying drill bits have been particularly handy on many projects over the years, including when I built the custom cherry desk in our office and when I built adjustable shelves in Wendy's shoe closet. (We'll be posting a lot of detail and photos on our master bedroom closet project soon, I promise.)

To attach the pieces together I just used a little wood glue, a carpenter's square for support, and 1-1/4" brad nails from my finish nailer. I also cut a few pieces of 1/2" x2" and attached them to the lower back of the box to offer a little additional structure and support.

The final pieces to cut were the shelves for the shoes. My first measurement was a little off and I cut the shelf slightly short. It still fits, it just has a little more sloppy wiggle room. Normally this would drive me crazy, but since this is utilitarian storage that will always be concealed inside the hutch, I let the slightly short shelf as is. The second shelf I cut fits perfectly.

After a little wood filler in the top nail holes and a good overall sanding with the orbital sander, we had ourselves new shoe storage. I slid the shelves into place and loaded it up with our eight pairs of shoes.

The shoe-filled baskets no longer clutter the floor, and this little project built out of necessity took only about one hour from start to finish and cost roughly $20 in materials. Now we have a functional and useful solution for storing shoes that fits our particular needs. Not too shabby.

Do you ever find yourself needing to quickly throw something together in order to meet a need? Are you confident in your ability to tackle tasks like that or do you find yourself more hesitant and instead looking for a ready made solution you can purchase? Is there a messy catch all area of your home that's crying out for a little organization? If so, we'd love to hear about it.

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There are so many different and (arguably) useful ways you can make efficient use of the extra hour you've cheated out of the day. Some like to sleep through it, others prefer to watch an extra hour of television, while others take the opportunity to start a new project or craft. Heck, I've even heard someone say "I think I'll start to learn a new language." I'm not sure how far you can get in picking up a new alphabet in an hour, let along verb conjugation or vocabulary memorization, but hey, more power to them.

This year Wendy was dead set on making an efficient and effective use of our extra hour, in spite of my best efforts to sleep right through it. Quite honestly, nothing would have made me happier than to get an extra hour of zzz's this past weekend, but I have to hand it to Wendy, her ideas were far more practical and especially necessary given the items on our ever growing to-do list. So back to the big question of "how did we spend our extra hour?"

Wendy almost jumped out of bed on Sunday morning (or at least that's how I saw it when I was trying to keep my head buried under the covers), and she hit the ground running cleaning. Wendy started the day by packing up the Halloween decorations, and organizing her closet, her clothes, and pulling aside several bags of items to donate to charity. She was so inspiring (I think that's what you call it when she keeps saying "Come on, get out of bed, get a move on, stop just laying there, you've slept enough!") that I couldn't resist getting out of bed to start working on the same task. 

At the onset, it was organized chaos to say the least. My closet had gotten out of hand. Clothes were draped over the bars, other clothes piled on the floor, and my shoes hidden from view. 

Wendy's clothes in her closet were far better off than mine, but she was in the deep throws of the change over from summer to winter clothes, so there were plastic tubs of clothes all over the room and folded clothes piled up on the bed. 

That was the real reason I was "encouraged" from my slumber, as the clothes and Lulu were overtaking my sleeping area.

I started by removing everything that was ancillary from my closet and spreading it all over the room and making piles. That seemed like the most logical approach to this organization process.

My piles, combined with Wendy's piles, made super piles which made us feel like our clothes were taking over our entire room. As the oxygen felt like it was being squeezed from the room by the multiplying clothes, Lulu couldn't even feign interest in the whole task, and instead enjoyed the partially made bed.

The key to this little project was our ability to sort through all of our clothes and determine which items needed to be packed away for the winter, which needed to be taken out of storage (the areas above our closets), and which we simply didn't like or haven't worn in years and could be donated. I had my fair share of trying on shirts and then saying, "How does this look? Should I get rid of it?"

I sorted through all of my clothes and came up with quite a few that could be donated. Telltale signs that I hadn't worn something in a very long time? How about a 2008 Nationals schedule and receipt from late 2007. The receive was for lunch where I ordered a chicken sandwich. The last time I had worn this particular coat, I was still eating meat. Off to the donation pile it went.  

After digging through all of our clothes, Wendy and I compiled a pretty solid collection of clothes to donate. To be exact, we gathered up six shopping bags full of our old stuff that we'll dropping at a local charity.

Wendy packed all of her summer clothes neatly into their storage bins and we stowed them safely in the upper storage above the closet. 

Inevitably, when you clean things up and organize you run across items that make you pause and remember where you were when you picked something up. Wendy came across our Mardi-Gras masks from our 2011 trip to New Orleans, and decided to try them on for the camera. Now she wants to make sure we throw a party sometime where we can wear these masks.

I thinned out all of my clothes in the closet, hung everything where they needed to go, and got everything sorted out and put back in place in my closet. Here's my closet's "after" photo. 

In case you're observant and wondering, yes, those are all pairs of jeans hanging along the bottom bar in my closet. I'm a bit of a jeans hoarder, and this is how I can store them all. It's totally overkill and a little nuts, but there's little I do in life that isn't "totally overkill and a little nuts."

Wendy kept working on her clothes and getting everything in her closets and drawers tidy and nicely organized. Check out just how lovely and wonderful her winter sweaters looked all nestled in their beds.

Unfortunately, I'm a horrible photographer and neglected to take pictures of Wendy's cleaned closets. I was so fixated on my own closet, I became an insensitive and selfish husband and focused only on my efforts. I'll make it up Wendy and all of you on the Internet and get some photos up a little later. Until then, you can curse my name, I will understand.

All told, our extra hour in the day allowed us to knock out a necessary but often neglected task in our home. We were able to collect items for donation, clean out our closets and drawers, and determine clothes we need to purchase to round out our winter wardrobes. Perhaps I need to focus a little more on nicer clothes for work than purchasing more jeans? Just an idea I'm throwing out there.

Now we can appreciate our closets and drawers in all of their clean and pristine glory...without clothes spilling all over the place.

What sort of things did you do with your extra hour? Did you knock out any small tasks? Or perhaps you kicked off some big projects? If you had intended to do something but never got around to it, what sort of thing did you fail to get moving on?

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