Organizing Like A Man

I have been informed that not every organization project needs to involve “girly” things like pretty labels and a label maker.   Or even color coding.  Which in my opinion takes all the fun out of organization. 

But for our latest organization project we were in Man Land (also known as the basement) and all my decorating and organizing powers suddenly disappear when we walk down there and Derek is in charge.  Oh so he likes to think so.

A little background on Man Land-It was finished when we moved in and other than doing a mini-makeover on the workout room, we have not touched it so far.  Other than to dump our old furniture (and a new must have poker table) down there.  Derek has big plans for Man Land, but other projects have taken our time and money so it keeps getting further down on the list.  There is also an unfinished portion of Man Land that is really nice for storage and to keep all of our DIY supplies.

So why bother with organizing a space we are not really using?  Ummm well because this is what it looked like.

Embarrassing.

All of Christmas waiting to be put away

This picture pains me.  As DIYers our tools and supplies should not look like this. 

Random Unorganized Crap

More Crap.

So we had a lot of organizing and purging to do.

As a disclaimer (because I will hear about this later)- Derek is actually the clean/organized one in our relationship.  Especially the clean one.  I have a bad habit of leaving things out.  Like the clothes that I wear to work I like to stack in a pile over the course of the week instead of put them in the hamper or hanging them back up.  I have been threatened with husband hacking of the blog and an expose of my piles.  So now you know and if you ever see pictures of my piles posted you will know who is behind it.  Just saying.

In the world on Man organizing, all you need is a couple of tools- a Sharpie, some tape, and boxes for organizing (not required to match).

One of the main things we needed to organize was our paint.  We had tons left over from the previous owners, our previous house, and gallon cans that were an 1/8 full that were taking up space.  So sorted through all the paint colors that we would never use again and dropped them off at our community’s household hazardous waste site.  That took over three big boxes.

The paint that we still have in our house and were more than a quarter gallon full went into this newly hung cabinet that was harvested from the old laundry room.  Finally a place for honey oak in our house.  All the paint was properly labeled with painters tape and a sharpie.  No girly labels here.

The other paint that did not have much left in the can but that we could still use for touch-ups was dumped into quart containers.  And labeled with the ever popular sharpie.

But how should we store all the paint, not to mention our painting supplies?  How to organize it?  Did we need to buy new shelving?  Nope.  Since the basement is also the place where we store random furniture, we moved this dresser over as our new organizer.  And added more labels.  Obviously dusting is not very manly.

On the top of the dresser went paint trays and my box of spray paint.  Also it is the new home of my multi-use paint (like primer, trim and cabinet paint). 

In the drawers are various categories of manly tool stuff.  This one holds sponges, painters tape and protective items like gloves and face masks.

And the drawer of paint…

We did buy some plastic bins to sort some of the remaining items on the work bench….

And added some hooks to the pegboard….

So now we can actually find things that we are looking for….

I do have to admit that organizing the Man way was very inexpensive.  We spent less than $25 on materials and made a large contribution of random stuff to charity which will be a bonus on next year’s taxes. 

So you do what that means?  Time to start some new DIY projects since we can find everything again!