Anna's Playroom

A few weeks ago I helped my friend Anna to tidy up her playroom. It was my first job as a professional organiser (although I wasn't charging her as I need to gain experience).

Anna's issue was that she had a toy room (used to be a dining room) which was just completely overloaded. There were too many toys. Some toys that were not appropriate for her sons' ages, some were rubbish (broken toys, papers and artwork that was not worth keeping), and many duplicates of the same thing. Here are the before pictures:

I took with me several large plastic boxes, black bin liners, post it notes and a marker pen.

We started by clearing the area by the window of toys one by one and deciding which of the following categories it was:

1. Keep
2. Bin
3. Sell
4. Donate

In the space of 2 hours, we filled up an entire bin bag of rubbish, 3 boxes of stuff to sell and a few items that were not worth selling (my kids are currently making use of them at the moment).

Once we'd finished with the corner by the window, we also tackled the cupboard to the left of the door.

Here are the after photos:

This is all the stuff I took away to sell on Anna's behalf. So far I have made over £36 - £7 commission for me (20% I'm charging this time), and over £28 for Anna. I am tracking all the items and sales in a spreadsheet (of course) ;) .

There are some areas that we didn't quite get to in the 2 hours we had spare (I also had my 20 month old daughter with me "helping") so I do plan on going back at some point (as soon as other commitments, namely my Java course, are over). We didn't have time to tackle the table area or the bookshelf above it (or the lower bookshelve corner either):

If you would like me to come and help you declutter a room, cupboard, area (no job too big or small), let me know. Lets look at the before and after photos again:

BEFORE

AFTER

Dumping ground box

My friend Melissa asked me if I could find a solution to her problem.

She has an area where everything - her keys, work card, purse (by that I mean the thing we girls keep our money in, not the American meaning of purse, which is the English handbag), and other bits and bobs - get dumped when she gets home.

See before pictures of the area and the things that she was looking to find a home for:

I had an idea in my head of what I would make and then I found this box:

Its just a packaging box (probably from Amazon) and I cut off the flaps as you can see above. I used some of the flaps to cut up dividers:

 

Then I set about finding nice paper to cover it. 

This is what I finished up with:

 

This is how it looks in its rightful place.  She is a very happy bunny.

 

 If you would like me to make you a purpose built box for whatever purpose, please contact me.