Food storage Tetris, and kids that grow out of clothes too fast...

This weekend I tackled the organization of our food storage room, and the place under the stairs that holds all our kids clothes. As discussed in an earlier post, my friend Mike makes me fit everything in our house because there isn't a square to spare in the garage.
Anyway, I knew I was going to tackle this project, and I knew I wanted to write about it on the blog, so I thought about taking "before" pictures. The problem is, it was such a big mess I would have been embarrassed to document it on film. (yes, I know I don't use film anymore, it's a figure of speech).
I had just gone to a case lot sale, and had nowhere to stash the stuff I bought, so I just stacked it in piles in the already disorganized room. If any of you are fans of the show Friends, this room is to my house as the closet is to Monica. (for those of you who aren't familiar with the show, Monica is a clean freak, but she has a secret closet that is an absolute mess.) I am not a clean freak, but this room is out of control. It is my craft, scrapbook, food storage, things I don't have another home for, sewing, deep freezer, and things that should normally go in a garage room. As you can imagine, it is a mess. I have had it under control at different times, but the room seems to be shrinking, and the mess got out of hand.
Back to the point of the post...Mike gave me a "kid free day" on Saturday to sort it all out. (Not exactly what I would have loved to do on a kid free day, but I'll take what I can get.) The biggest glitch of the day is that my iPod froze up and I had to wait for the battery to die to be able to use it. Not a big glitch you say? I rarely do anything without listening to a book, so I couldn't get started. Then I remembered my old MP3 player and I was off. It took all day, but I got it cleaned up.
I added 3 big garbage cans to the room to hold my sugar, flour, and wheat. I use those things enough that I didn't want to store them in #10 cans and keep opening them. This way, I just take out a bag when I need it and put it in a 5 gallon bucket.

I was even reluctant to take "after" pictures, because although I did get the food storage part organized, the other half of the room is an absolute wreck. But, the camera couldn't get that part in anyway because of the angle of the room. You still can't get a real idea of the place from these pictures, but I did have to add some pictures or you'd get bored.

The other huge project to tackle was the kids’ clothes. For some lazy reason, I hadn’t sorted and put Jake and Allie’s old sizes away for almost a year. I just had piles stuck in bags and tossed into the room under the stairs. Now that it is getting colder and I needed the clothes behind those clothes, I sorted that all out too. (Sounds complicated, I know…it was).
As I was looking at the clothes they both wore not so long ago, I was getting a little sad. I can’t believe that Jake has grown out of a 2T. I looked at some of those warm jammies and couldn’t believe he’d grown out of them. I can remember him running around the house begging me to chase him, Allie running close behind in her little pink jammies too. I was getting sad, but then I reminded myself that it is a good thing to see them grow up. Not only are they growing out of some difficult stages, they are growing. That right there is a blessing. I’d be sad if they weren’t growing and progressing. So, I put the clothes away, and was glad I am constantly taking pictures. I may not want to document the messy room downstairs and in the corner, but I do want to document the messy faces (and cute clothes) of my two favorite growing kids.