I've Caught Some Bugs

I caught some kind of bug that's had me coughing, hacking, sneezing, and SO congested since the day before Christmas. Happy holidays. Hopefully this long weekend will be enough to kick the cold.

To distract myself from trying to cough up one of my lungs, I started browsing on Amazon. I've been looking for DVD storage solutions forever. Our DVD stands we have now are beyond overflowing and starting to sag. They're showing their age and quality, being 5 years old and cheap.

You can catch a glimpse of the less crowded of the two behind my napping husband here on Thanksgiving weekend.

I haven't found much that would accomodate our needs. Apparently it's not average to have 1000+ movies???

Atlantic 12 Tier Media Rack - Holds 450 DVDs

This little guy has been on my "maybe" list for months. He'd have to be a triplet just to accommodate what we have now, much less what we'll have before we leave Japan. Which is costly for something that may or may not work...and that I can't see in person.

I've also been drooling over these pretty woven boxes to replace my four shabby card board boxes in our entertainment center. Which hold -- surprise -- more movies.

Woven Banana Leaf Collapsible Storage Bin

Glancing at my "maybe" list again led me to browsing all the storage and organizational goodies I'd love to purchase at some point in the future. I'd love some small ottomans and some hooks in our little entry nook so our coats and crap don't get piled on the kitchen table. I'd love some baskets and bins to tame the clutter in all the closets we have. Some under the bed storage since we actually need summer and winter wardrobes now (in Lemoore I never had to switch my wardrobe!). All the little kitchen spinners and racks to contain spices, soups, dishes, pot lids, etc. etc. etc. Lots of stuff for the office so our files are maintained, the closet is used for more than piling crap we don't want to look at, and the bookshelves don't explode. More storage bins for the living room and bedroom to again tame the clutter. A new desk for the office since our current one is hanging on by one screw, maybe two. Maybe some cheap side tables and coffee table to replicate our badly dinged and dented cheap Ikea versions. I only have one side table and Jeff always claims it! We're pricing new TV's for the future and possible new entertainment stands.

The list goes on and on and on...I caught the organizing bug again.

But it's harder when we're here. Normally I'd hit the stores like Target and Marshall's to see what I could find for cheap. Then look through Amazon. I can do that, but not much furniture makes it all the way here. And it's hard to see quality online looking at a picture. We've been to an Ikea-esque furniture store out here in Japan, recommended by a friend. I loved looking through everything and pointing out what I liked, but we only came home with those hanging basket things for the closets. I need more stuff! If only the new year wasn't a huge holiday that basically closes business in Japan for a week...

Oh, and I looked for Ikea in Japan. Nowhere near us. Damn.



The first step is to clean the mess I already made. Before buying more stuff. Having a party while you're under the weather means the mess stays exactly the same for seven days. Give or take. I may try to tackle the mess tomorrow, or I may curl up on the couch with some hot chocolate from my new Keurig. And then make sad, sick faces at Jeff until he goes to pick up dinner. Yeah, that sounds better anyways.

We Collect Things.

We have lots of stuff. The plus side is we actually use the stuff we collect. The down side is the limited storage options when living in a 2 bedroom apartment overseas, where we can’t just run to Ikea or Wal*mart when we need some affordable and quick storage pieces. If everything is bigger in Texas, everything is smaller in Japan. Houses, furniture, people. Everything is tiny and insufficient for our collections.

What are we collecting?

Besides dust and the insane amount of paperwork the military tries to drown people with, mainly books and movies. Most people are aware of one addiction or the other. If you’ve met me, you know I love to bury my nose in a good book. If you’ve met my husband, you know he can quote movies like nobody’s business. But our collections are like tumors, taking over. We both laugh at how much it feels like we’re always trying to stuff the latest addition to our collection somewhere. Don’t believe me?

Take a look.

April 2010.

Oh, just a few books. This was a year and some change into living together. I had college textbooks and a small collection of “for pleasure” books picked up from Borders. I don’t see any of Jeff’s books on the shelf, but he was deployed at the time so maybe they were with him?

September 2011.

I’m *so* glad we decided to pick up a second bookshelf from Wal*mart before we left the states. It’s one of those sturdy metal shelves that can go anywhere and hold anything. It also gave us the option to do ‘his’ and ‘hers’ bookshelves. Perfect.  (Mine’s on the left!) As you can see, our books are overflowing. And that’s after my electronic love, the Kindle, took over a lot of book purchases. My mission this week was to organize the office (Only so housing could get into the room to do maintenance, not for our own pleasure. Priorities, clearly.) I finished my mission, and then went to a friend’s house and picked up a box full of books. She’s moving and I’m always looking for a new book. It was the perfect pairing. Except I have no idea where to put those 20-30 books I just picked up…for now they’re sitting in the car.
And here’s the bigger, and much more impressive, collection.

February 2010

Not a shabby collection, right? Most of these movies were collected by my then-single husband while he was stationed in Italy. Movie buying slowed down considerably when we got married and actually had bills, but it’s been picking up speed steadily since we moved back overseas. Ask anyone, AFN (American Forces Network) isn’t the most entertaining television on the planet.

September 2011.

 Yes, I’ve got stacks on top of stacks on top of the full shelves. We’ve looked for larger storage solutions, but found limited options over here. Surprisingly, not a lot of people have this size of a movie collection! Ha. The best part? That’s not even all of the collection. See those black squares under the television?

Oh, those are also stuffed with movies. One has all the gaming accessories, three are overflowing with television series. I tried to count the movies a couple times. I always forget the numbers, but they are clearly way up there. We keep them alphabetized as much as possible, which helps when we’re looking for just the right movie. Jeff wants to get them all listed on the computer so we can better keep track of where we need to fill in blank spaces (like trilogies) and what we have doubles of (like Boondock Saints). We started to make a wishlist on Amazon and gave up because every thirty minutes or so Jeff would yell out “Oh hey, what about ________?!” or “I love _____, we need to buy that one”, or any other similar comment. It was time consuming, even for a list lover like me. Especially since we each buy movies pretty frequently these days.

This post was prompted by me happily placing the last book just so on our organized and neat bookshelves in the office. The desk was clear, the closet doors could close, the clutter was contained, and my side of the bookshelf was in alphabetical order (I tried to organize Jeff’s books once, he went back and changed everything, so I gave up forever).  My bubble of organization bliss was popped when I remembered the box of books in the car. 20-30 books that somehow need to be crammed onto the bookshelves that are pretty full even after I crammed all my old textbooks into a plastic container in the closet.

And we may or may not have just ordered some new books on Amazon recently… I shudder a little to think of how full this apartment is going to be when we move in 2014.

Clutter Control

First off, Happy Easter! I cooked way too much food for two and gorged myself on all the deliciousness. I'm hoping my stomach will grow some more room for the cherry pie I've got cooling for dessert!


I have an Amazon cart full of baskets, bins, containers, and all the other million things you can buy to organize your home. But, not surprisingly, the price of all that quickly adds up to out of my budget. So I'm trying to work with what I have and find ways to keep the clutter from over-taking the place. I started with the kitchen a few posts back, but I haven't made it all the way to the office yet despite my blogging about starting it. It's in the midst of de-junking, so it looks even worse than when it started!

But the kitchen's looking good. I de-cluttered the pantry in that first post, and it's stayed relatively organized.The kitchen cabinets were pretty organized to begin with, I just moved some things around for more convenient reach. The only true clutter in the kitchen was the quintessential "junk drawer". It was full of scissors, batteries, pens, and all the other things we wanted handy but didn't have a place for. And plenty of things we did have a place for; they just never made it there.



After a lot of moving things back to where they should be, I stuck a small basket in the drawer to contain pens and lighters and all those loose objects. I put all our batteries in bags since we had literally 9 different containers of AA and AAA batteries. And kept some things handy, like the lighter and flashlight in case of another quake and power outage!



My loving husband bought me a spice rack this weekend, so that's also helping with the clutter-control. My box of random spices was overtaking a whole cabinet. While I'll still use them, now the most commonly used are within reach. And I got some spices I haven't been able to find at the commissary, like rosemary and red pepper flakes.



I'm not a huge coffee drinker when I'm not trying to squeeze 25 hours into 24, but I do like a nice, hot cup now and then. This morning I went to brew some, albeit not that fresh, coffee and got a weird bitter taste that shouldn't have been there. My brother told me to keep my coffee grounds in the freezer, and it does keep them fresh longer, but I needed something else. I cleaned my coffee maker with vinegar. And I purchased some new coffee and took the grounds out of the bag and into Ziploc containers.



Since they seal, I'm hoping they'll keep things nice and fresh so I can enjoy the coffee even if I don't inhale it right away. I'll let you know how it goes. For now they're hanging out in my freezer, with labels so my husband doesn't have to wonder what the heck I'm hiding in there. (I made a homemade sugar scrub and left the Ziploc container in the shower, and he was questioning why I needed to eat while I was showering. Uhhhhh...I got hungry?)

My last clutter controller of the day is a little crafty project I decided to do on a whim. I had a couple yards of burlap leftover after I used a piece or two in my living room wall collage, and I was itching to do something with it. I also had a pile of shoe boxes leftover from both my husband and I purchasing new gym shoes recently.



So I took this (imagine the box is for a Men's 12, not a Women's 7)...



And turned it into this! I covered the box in white paper first so the Asics design wouldn't peak through the burlap. Then I haphazardly taped and glued the burlap into place. I used tape where it wouldn't obviously show, then Mod Podged the edges and seams to try to keep it all in place. It looked like quite the disaster when I was working on it, but it turned out okay. The lid is a little tight to close and open because of the thickness, but it doesn't bother me all that much.



The best part is how much space I now have for some clutter! Turns out a box big enough to hold size 12 shoes is pretty spacey, so I have room and then some for all my computer cords and accessories. I had them all in a large makeup bag, but with my external harddrive and camera, it was overflowing and hard to dig out the cords I needed. This works much better, and the lid closes all the crazy cordage out of my sight.



It sits on our little make-shift laptop charging station. Jeff sits on the couch when he uses his laptop, but it charges and stays here when not in use. I let mine charge here too.



But when I want to use it, I generally pull it over to the kitchen table. Looking at a wall at a shaky folding table is just drab. But this way, I can watch TV or look outside when the blinds are open. Our windows face west, so that whole wall of windows gives us a great blinding view of the sun in the evening. But it's still a better view than the wall!


So that's my organization right now. Little changes that are my attempts to keep the clutter at bay. I have plans for what I'd love to do, but for now things are somewhat more contained and that's enough. The office will need some more clutter control work, but I'll get there. Hopefully this week. And some things we might have to fork out the cash for regardless. I already ordered more bookends for our growing collection, we're on the hunt for a larger fireproof safe (we bought one, but it's not big enough to fit my husband's service record. So it's holding other important documents, but we need something big enough to contain all those military documents!), and we may be moving some big pieces of furniture around sometime in the near future, which would give us a lot more storage space in that cluttered room (more on that later).

I think I'm going to go browsing around blogland for organization and de-cluttering ideas and see if I can get inspired to get back on the horse tomorrow and finish that office.