I have Pinterest envy sometimes.  I love surfing the endless inspirational photo’s, but I’m often left feeling bummed that I don’t have the “space”, money or time to recreate those ideas in my own home!

Some great examples are the mudrooms and command centres  I often “pin”.  We use our garage as a mudroom, so most of the entrance way ideas wouldn’t really work in our home.

Here is our garage setup.  I used to have backpacks in the garage too, but it wasn’t functional because homework and lunch preparation is done in the  kitchen, so backpacks always ended up on the kitchen floor.

I loved this idea, but I just didn’t have the wall space for something like that, so I just dismissed it as even a possibility.

One day it just dawned on me! I had a perfectly good hall closet right beside the kitchen being wasted storing…junk.  By junk I mean clothes I didn’t love, coats we never wore and other useless things I was storing just because I had the space.  I didn’t really want to purge any of my junk,  but the idea of having a spot for backpacks won over keeping the stuff I never used.

I had another problem that needed solving, and that was the never ending papers that my kids bring home.  While I do have a great binder system for artwork I want to keep and important papers, I often piled them on the kitchen counter until I had a chance to go through them and put them away.  I wanted a “drop off” spot to put this stuff until I had the time to deal with it properly.

And so for under $20 I was able to pick up these great paper sorters! I use the top compartment for artwork and the bottom one for stuff like library books, school order forms and other papers I need to deal with.

I simply attached each of their school calendars to the front with a clip and now we have a convenient spot to keep track of all the school events coming up.

I just don’t know why I never did this before.  It is such an easy and effective way to deal with the piles of school papers and the calendar has already saved my butt when I almost forgot about Abby’s Petite Prof Day!

 

You may feel like those great pictures you “pin” on Pinterest or see in magazines just don’t apply to your home or your pocket book, but perhaps you can take the ideas or the concept and apply it in a way that can fit with your lifestyle, space and budget.