DIY Basement Storage Shelves

One of my goals for 2014 is to organize the basement.  To do this, I wanted to add shelving in the future “storage area” of our basement.  Right now, the entire basement is essentially storage, but one day we hope to finish it & it would be nice to have “phase one” out of the way!  So, over Christmas break, my husband made my dreams come true! 

So, here is what the area looked like before the shelves were built:



After we cleared the space, we decided on the length, depth, & height of the shelves.  Based on this, we decided we would have three columns of shelving, three shelves high.  Each shelf was 40” long by 24” deep by 22” high.

First, Mark used 2x4s to create horizontal ledgers to hold the back of the shelf.  (The top of each ledger sits 22” above the floor or previous shelf.)  These boards were anchored into the wall using concrete anchor screws.  To screw these in, you will need to first use a hammer drill to drill a hole through the board, into the concrete.  Then, use a screwdriver to screw in the anchors.  He installed one screw on the end, & then went to the other end, made sure it was level, & added another screw.  Finally, he screwed in the middle.  Mark estimates he used a screw about every 40 inches.

 

The next step was to add the vertical posts.  These were spaced 40 inches apart.  Since our basement is unfinished, Mark used a nail gun to attach them to the ceiling joists. 



Another view…



Shelf braces were then added to connect the vertical posts to the ledger boards.  Mark used his nail gun to attach a 26” 2x4 to the ledger board.  Then, after checking to make sure it was level, he nailed it to the vertical post. 







The final step was to nail 24”x40” pieces of plywood into the side braces & back ledger boards to create our shelves.  We used 3/4 inch plywood, since we had some of it on hand, but I would probably recommend 1” plywood if you plan to put a lot of weight on your shelves.







And here they are nice & full:



(Umm…  Yes that is a Commodore 64 computer my husband insisted we keep.  Somewhere in there we also have the original Nintendo.  We only have to store them for about 20 more years!  He tells me he wants to tinker with them when he retires…  Really?)

Three previously full corners of our basement have been cleared out & consolidated into one storage area!



Looking at this makes me feel so good about my goals, but then I turn around & look at the massive amount of things I still need to sort through. (I’ll spare you a picture.)  Let’s just say it would fill our study, entry way, & living room!  The good news is that it’s things we are either donating or selling & some unused furniture we will either get rid of or use when we finish the basement.  I have a feeling I’ll be down here for a while! 

So, have you started working on your home goals?  Anyone still have a 30 year old computer sitting around?  (Please tell me we’re not the only ones!)

Keeping Kids Busy During Summer Break

Like many other moms, every year I struggle with ways to keep my kids busy during the summer months, while maintaining a somewhat clean house & remnants of my sanity!  Most of the time I don’t have things figured out before summer break begins & my plans of maintaining my home & sanity, & my kids’ education have vanished!

Fortunately, this year, I read this article well before summer began & started making a plan for how to keep the kids occupied & educated while keeping our home clean!  Since this seems to be working pretty well for us, I decided to share it with you guys!

I encourage you to click over & read the article, but for a very quick recap, the author/mom had a list of activities for her kids to do between breakfast & lunch each weekday.  The activities included things to help grow their minds & bodies, as well as household chores. 

After reading the article, thinking about it for a few days, & discussing it with my husband, I came up with a plan.  I took the main idea from the article above and combined it with this daily cleaning calendar and a combination of the summer math & reading programs at my kids’ school (these optional programs were new this year for our school).

So, here’s a breakdown of our summer schedule:

Upon Waking

• Make Bed

• Get Dressed

• Feed Pets

• Straighten Bedroom & Bathroom (Putting dirty clothes in hamper, hanging towels, wiping toothpaste out of sinks, etc.)

• Empty Dishwasher- Mom (While getting breakfast ready)

• Breakfast + Rinse & Load Dishes in Dishwasher (We are trying to keep everyone accountable for their own messes!)

• Wash Up & Brush Teeth

Next, everyone participates in a daily home chore.  My husband & I realize that our job as parents is not to do everything for our children.  It is to train our children how to become independent, responsible adults.  Therefore, we are requiring them to help with the daily running of our household.  While these responsibilities may seem like a lot on paper, I assure you our children are not child laborers!  These tasks usually only take them 20- 30 minutes per day!

(Source)

Home Chores

Monday- Bring down laundry baskets; Help sort & stain treat your clothes; Help mom fold one load of laundry; Put away your clean, folded clothes at the end of the day (Mom will fold & put away the rest of the clothes.)

Tuesday- Vacuum Living & Dining Room; Vacuum Study & Family Room (Each child does one set of rooms per week for the month.  Mom will vacuum the upstairs & steps.)

Wednesday- Clean & mop kids’ bathroom (I usually have one child clean the sink & mirrors & one clean the toilet.  To be completely honest, we only clean the shower/tub on the 4th Wednesday because I HATE to clean the tub!  Then, one child sweeps & the other mops.  Mom cleans the other two bathrooms.)

Thursday- Help sweep & mop downstairs while mom prepares the grocery list, shops, & cleans the appliances.  In the evening, the kids collect the garbage & take it to the curb.

Friday- Swing Day (A different chore is done each Friday of the month)
1st- Dust
2nd- Wipe walls, doors, cabinets, & baseboards (as assigned by mom)
3rd- Wash bedding (remove & replace bedding)  Sorry if this grosses you out, but it’s another chore I hate doing & sadly, once a month is much better than it has been lately!
4th- Clean glass (windows, monitors, mirrors- as assigned by mom)
5th- Quarterly Chores (Dust lights, clean carpets/rugs, vacuum upholstery, wash couch cover- These are mostly my chores, but I plan on enlisting the kids help removing the couch cover & vacuuming the upholstery.)

Hopefully, with everyone helping around the house, it will always be pretty clean!  To maintain our home throughout the day, we will all load our dishes in the dishwasher after eating, straighten up before leaving the house (or going outside to play), & clean up as a family after dinner (putting the food away, wiping the table & counters, & sweeping & spot mopping the floors).

Upon completing the daily home task, it is time for the kids to work on their summer reading & math programs.



Learning Time

Read for 20 minutes (Our nine year old reads independently, while I listen to our six year old.)

Write in journal for 10 minutes (I have told my son that he can write for 10 minutes or 5 sentences, whichever comes first.  Hopefully, this will motivate him to quickly come up with five sentences, since looking at his journal from last year he barely wrote one complete sentence on most days.)

30 minutes of math (For this time, they can play math games on the computer, take online math quizzes through Pearson Success Academy, or work on the unfinished pages from their math workbooks from school.)

Depending on when the kids wake up & how motivated they are, all of these tasks only take up about two hours of our day. 

Screen Time

If our kids had the option, they would watch TV & play video games all day long!  Therefore, we have chosen to limit the amount of screen time our kids get each week to two hours.  (Yes, that is two hours per WEEK!)  We do not count special family movie nights or math computer time as part of their two hours.  We also allow them to earn 10 minutes of extra screen time for every 30 minutes they work on a skill (examples include reading, practicing a sport, practice riding a bike with no training wheels, helping make dinner, etc.).  This has really motivated our son to read more & he has gone a couple of weeks having nearly five hours of screen time from practicing tennis, basketball, & reading!

 

We keep track of the kids’ screen time using this Taylor brand timer I bought in the cooking section from Wal-Mart for about $10.  It is pretty easy to use & has two separate timer functions.  We use the top one for Zeke & the bottom one for Elie.  Every Sunday, we simply add two hours onto the time they have remaining on their timer.  Then, whenever they want to use their screen time, they just hit the button for their timer & press start & stop it when they are finished.  Whenever they earn extra time, we have them bring us the timer & we add it immediately.  This timer is simple to use & helps ensure the kids stay within their screen time limits.  (FYI:  Wal-Mart also sells timers with four timer functions, but I didn't feel that one was necessary for our family!)

Fun Time

We are trying to do something fun several times a week.  To keep track of the fun things we want to do & the fun things we have done, I listed them on our chalkboard wall:



We are quickly working our way through the list!

So, there you have it!  My plan to maintain our home, education, & sanity throughout the summer!  Do you come up with a schedule for the summer months or do you just take it one day at a time?  I’d love to hear your thoughts & ideas!

Kitchen Organization Complete!

So, by now you are probably completely tired of hearing about my kitchen!  I’m happy to finally say, we have the whole kitchen clean, organized, & functioning well for our family!  Since I've just been showing you bits & pieces, today I thought I would show you the kitchen in it’s entirety with links to each post.

If you'd like to see how it started out, you can see the "Before" pictures here.

To the left of the microwave, we have the cooking cabinet:

Using a spice rack helps me easily grab the spices I need when making dinner.  I painted the insides of these doors with chalkboard paint so I can easily see the week’s meal plan & write down any groceries I notice we need throughout the week.  Hanging my recipe cards & measuring cups & spoons on hooks on the door helps maximize storage & keeps dinner making necessities at arms reach. 

Next to that (& above the microwave) are the cookbooks & cooking magazines:

This is also where I keep my Grocery & Meal Planning Binder.  I keep my printable grocery list & staples list inside it.

To the right of the microwave is the baking cabinet:

Measuring bowls, cups, & spoons are stored along with baking supplies & mixes to save time.  Lesser used items, such as cake decorating supplies & cookie cutters are stored together on the upper shelves.  

The upper corner cabinet is home to disposable dishes, serving dishes, & other random items (like the snow cone maker):

The glasses, plates, & bowls are stored in the next cabinet, which is above the dishwasher:

Building custom drawer storage keeps this cooking drawer tidy.

Below that, our bake ware cabinet holds baking dishes, cake pans, cookie sheets, & muffin tins, thanks to this pullout bin my husband created:

Having this pullout bin for trays & tins makes it so much easier to take them out & put them away.

To the right of the stove three drawers store utensils, & the kids’ plastic dishes, bowls, & cups:

Mark built another custom drawer organizer for our silverware.  It’s amazing how much more we can fit in this drawer than when we were using a store bought organizer!

Kids’ dishes & cups are easily accessible to Zeke, Elie, & Evie since they are in these lower drawers.

The lazy Susan in the corner is used to store our canned items.  Keeping the can opener with them saves time during meal prep.

Below, you can see where the kitchen cleaners, dish towels, & to-go items are stored:

Under the sink, a basket on the door holds sponges & a built-in caddy holds other cleaning supplies. 

 

Storing the dish towels in a drawer next to the sink makes more sense than next to the stove where they were previously!

Below them, I created a “To Go” cabinet, which houses the supplies I need for packing lunches or grabbing quick snacks for the road.

Having all these items together saves time when packing the kids’ lunches every morning.

Across from this cabinet is the island.

(Obviously, I was so focused on not getting the counter top mess in the photo that I didn’t notice the food scraps on the floor!  Sorry!)

The cabinets on the end are home to most of our small appliances:

The middle drawer & cabinets contain all our food storage items:

 The island cabinet closest to the sink & stove serves as a food prep area.  We keep our sharp knives & cutting boards in the drawer, & we created a built-in trash & recycling bin below it.

Having these items together makes food prep & clean up a breeze!

This is the wall across from the island:

The door on the right of the fridge is our pantry:

Moving the lesser used items to the top shelves made this pantry function so much better for our family!

The hard-to-reach cabinet above the refrigerator contains first-aid supplies & medicines:

The upper cabinets next to it holds the kids’ art supplies:

Obviously, we have a ton of art supplies!  I found that corralling like items in containers & using stack-able paper trays helps the kids maintain the organization.

The drawer below holds mounds of pens, pencils, erasers, chargers, papers, & important phone numbers, & more!

One of our containers is for “Pencil Repair” (wish I remembered the site I got the idea from).  Pencils that need to be sharpened or are out of lead go there until we fill like repairing them.  This works so much better than grabbing 50 bad pencils before finding one that works!

The cabinets below the drawer house the kids’ games & puzzles. 

 

This isn't my ideal location, but I didn't want them in the family room where the baby could choke on one of their small pieces.

Again, I am so glad to have this place functioning so much better for our family!  I hope you were able to find some inspiration somewhere in my process!  For now, I’m taking an organizing break!  I’m ready to do some more decorating!

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