You already know that April showers bring May flowers, but did you know that April showers also mean.. the start of UMBRELLA SEASON!  And if your family is like mine, you have extra umbrellas for every occasion. We have them in the closet, each kid carries one in their backpack, I have a bunch in the car, one in my gold bag.. Umbrellas EVERYWHERE! And the last thing I need is wet umbrellas dripping all over my house.

So as my entry into the Power Tool Challenge (This month was a One Board Challenge), I designed a simple umbrella stand to corral all the stray umbrellas and to give them someplace to drip off when they came home wet.

TODAY IS THE BIG DAY!!  It is time for the big reveal of YOUR reorganized space!

At the bottom of this post you can submit your 'after' photo of your creative space. I'm joined with my fellow bloggers to redo our spaces as well.

• Gail from My Repurposed Life
• Jeanie from Create & Babble
• Debbie from Refresh Restyle
• Wendi from H2O Bungalow

Can you believe we are in the home stretch of this month’s Clean Up Your Act challenge?!

I am sorry I missed last week’s post, but my grandmother died and while traveling back to the midwest for the funeral I caught the flu.  Needless to say, my garage clean up came to a screeching halt.   I still hope to complete the clean up by the deadline for this challenge.. JANUARY 30th! 

If you are working on your space, or if you still want to join, there is time!  You have a little less than a week to clean up your space.  




Here is the progress I’ve made on the challenge so far:


This week I need fo focus on polishing everything off so I can get my car back into my garage.  Right now I’m struggling with how to store all the bikes.  We have so many and so little wall space.  That is the last big obstacle of this clean up.

It is week 2 of the Clean Up Your Act Organization Challenge!

Earlier this month I joined four other bloggers (Gail from My Repurposed Life, Jeanie from Create & Babble, Debbie from Refresh Restyle and Wendi from H2O Bungalow) and we are challenging ourselves (and YOU) to get our creative spaces into tip-top shape for the new year.

On January 30 we will reveal our spaces.. and give you a chance to show off yours. Anyone who successfully completes the challenge is eligible to win some great prizes.   (You can read all the details in the kickoff post.)



Now for an update on my garage/workshop:

I have a dirty dirty confession to make.  And I am sharing it today, because I can almost guarantee I’m not the only one.

Remember this amazing garage and workshop reveal I posted a while back? If not, let me refresh your memory:


This was my workspace, everything in it’s place, and I could even park my car in the garage.

Well, like most of what you see on social media and in the blog world, that was only PART of the truth.

Sure, my garage looked like that for the first few weeks after the reveal.. but what happens when you start to accumulate stuff and just aren’t organized enough to put it all away?  I present to you (hangs head with shame) my garage right now:


Yes, that is the same space.  5 years worth of stuff have piled up in there.  It has gotten to the point you can’t even WALK though it.. forget about parking a car.

It reminds me of an episode of Hoarders or something.  And I just can’t take it anymore!

It is impossible to do ANYTHING in there. I can't build things, I can't get to my workbench, I can't find anything I need to decorate for the holidays.  The kids can barely get their bikes in and out.. don't even think about using the coat rack or parking the car. 

The clutter is shutting down my ability to use the space and hinders my ability to build and create things.   

There is one thing that makes me feel better about my situation.  I’m realize I'm not the only one.  After confessing to some DIY blogger friends about the state of my garage, I learned that I wasn’t alone.

A LOT OF US have spaces that just need to be cleaned up and organized.  No matter what we show on social media, or on our blogs.. we all have things that are cluttering up our spaces.  The clutter that is hurting our creativity. 

So this month, myself and four other bloggers decided for 2018 we would tackle our creative spaces and get them organized.  We are giving ourselves 30 days to do it.   We are calling it the "Clean up your Act Creative Space Organization Challenge."
Today we kick off the challenge by coming clean.  We are all HONESTLY showing you our creative spaces on our blogs today. How they really look right now.   You can see the other blogger's "befores" on their blogs today:

• Gail from My Repurposed Life
• Jeanie from Create & Babble
• Debbie from Refresh Restyle
• Wendi from H2O Bungalow

Be it your workshop, or craft room, office or studio.  Whatever space you use to create things, if the clutter is holding you back.. NOW is the time to do something about it.  If you are like me, you have been pushing it off too long.

I am inviting you to share YOUR current space (no judgement or shame.. I showed you mine, now you can show me yours!)  Hopefully knowing that we are all working on our rooms at the same time, it will be just the motivation you need to finally tackle whatever mess is holding you back.

And at the end of the month, we will be giving you a chance to share your AFTER spaces.

BUT WAIT! THERE IS MORE!!!

As even MORE motivation to get the job done,  there will be PRIZES!  Yes.. you could actually win some great swag just for cleaning up your messy creative space.



On January 30 myself and the four others will reveal our spaces.. and give you a chance to show off yours. Anyone who successfully completed the challenge is eligible to win.  (*some restrictions apply.)  You have until Noon EST on February to 3rd to submit a photo of your newly reorganized space to be eligible to win.


I'd love to hear more about your space and your plans in the comments below!  I'm all fired up.. LET'S DO THIS!!!


.



Fine Print:
**WINNERS MUST BE 18 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER AND RESIDE IN THE CONTINENTAL U.S. Both a "before" and "after" photo must be submitted to be entered. Decisions of the judges are final. We reserve the right to disqualify entries that do not meet the criteria. Winners must provide shipping address within 24 hours of being notified or a new winner will be chosen. We are not responsible for lost or mis-delivered prizes.

I spend a LOT of time in my garage.  In fact, after we purchased this house it was one of the first 'rooms' in my house I fixed up because it is so much more than a garage for us. It is a mudroom, and workshop and storage area.

Right now my garage is full of projects and I'm not actually parking my car inside.  Because it is more of a workshop than a parking spot,  I am constantly coming and going out, opening and closing the door to control the temperature, or let light in, or to load and unload my building supplies and thrift store treasures.

As a DIY’r, my power tools are a huge investment and a big part of what I do every day.  In order to prolong their life and keep them in good working condition, it is important to keep them clean and maintained on a regular basis.   Power tools, especially ones specifically designed to work with wood, tend to get filthy.  Sawdust and fine grit builds up easily.  This build up can get into joints and moving parts and hurt your tool performance.  To avoid this potentional costly damage, I wanted to share some tips with you on how to quickly give you power tools a quick clean up.

Like most homeowners in our area, we do not have an attic or basement for storage.  Because of this our garage is a major dumping grounds for all our stuff. The problem with that is that I also use the garage as my workshop and we would like to actually park a car in there once in a while.

In the past I have shared our struggle to keep it organized (and the amazing previous transformation) but since that time we have accumulated more stuff and once again, we are running out of room.

Recently we went camping and I had to drag out all the coolers, sleeping bags and suitcases. The volume of space these items ALONE take up is massive.  I knew I needed to add more storage!

It is that time again.. The Build It Blog Hop Challenge, and this month's theme was: REPURPOSE IT!
You have no idea how long I hemmed and hawed and walked around the thrift store trying to think of a project idea that wasn't lame.

It is HARD.  Some days I think "everything cool has already been done."  But all my fellow bloggers came up with some fantastic projects so NO EXCUSES!

I originally built my cabinet door cornhole boards as my submission to this challenge, but then one afternoon, inspiration struck me.. AT THE DOLLAR STORE.   A huge pile of wooden handled hammers...

What can you do with a bunch of claw hammers?

Father’s Day is coming up and today’s project would be a great gift for dad.  It is a pretty straight forward sewing project (all straight lines) and it is completely customizable depending on what exactly you want to carry around.
I made sure my organizer had room for both small hand tools (like screwdrivers, wrenches and pencils) along with large pockets that could accommodate larger items, like garden tools, hammers and a Brita water bottle.  When working outside or in a hot workshop it is important to keep hydrated and so having water bottle within reach is a must.


With this organizer you can have all your tools close at hand, along with storage for large items in the bucket itself. It is like a portable workshop!

So how did I make it?  Spoiler: It took me less than an afternoon...

Because I’ve had so many inquiries into how I get my garlands to look the way I do, I have decided to do a thorough tutorial on making the most of your fake plastic garland.  It is really hard to find “off the shelf” garland that is full and beautiful (without paying an arm and a leg) but I’m going to teach you how to get that look without the huge price tag. You are basically going to assemble your own, which also let you control exactly the look you get.

I admit, I’ve become a garland snob and it makes me cringe when I see a sad thin wispy garland adorning someone’s front door.  When you see pine garlands in magazines and in high end hotels, they are usually really full and often filled with lights, like this:

But in reality, most people end up with something that looks more like this:  (which just pitiful)

#1: Storage  #2: Workshop #3: Mudroom #4: Freezer #5: Trash

Here is the original plan I drew up back in April:

I am happy to say that I was able to successfully incorporate all those areas, and more! Let me give you a little tour. 

#1: Storage

This was a biggie.  I wanted to sort and organize all the junk that we keep in the garage.  Holiday decorations, camping and sporting gear, kids clothes and equipment, suitcases, coolers.. you name it.  We don't have a basement or attic so everything is stored in the garage.   There was some rough shelving already installed, but it was quickly overflowing with our stuff:

I taped, mudded and painted the walls (and ceilings), as well as painted the shelves, sorted and boxed all the stuff and labeled it all with my label maker.  It is amazing how much stuff can fit once you just get organized!

The niche to the right of the shelves was the perfect spot to house my #4: Freezer.  I surface mounted an electrical outlet near the shelves above the freezer so I would no longer have to run an extension cord to it.  (I also surface mounted an outlet above my workbench to use with my circular saw and other power tools.) 

 #2: Workshop:
The full reveal of the workshop can be found here (in case you want to see how I was able to figure out exactly how to fit all my tools, lawn equipment, paint, workbench and paint.) Needless to say I am thrilled with being able to find everything at a glance. 


Hanging the bikes off the floor, and in front of the furnace and water heater (which are ugly but can't be enclosed) is another great space saver.  And to honor the fact that is a garage, I hung all the license plates we have collected off the cars from all the states we have lived in over the door. I love them!