Two kinds of before and after

Just something I'm thinking about doing here. I wanted to post the before picture because I usually forget and then it's all new and there's nothing to show for what it used to be.  Today someone showed me their home right after purchasing it eight years ago and then a shot of what it looks like today, thanks to an iphone.  Wow. What a difference eight years of life, small projects along the way and one big renovation (putting your family in an apartment for six months) makes.  It got me to thinking about how the significance of the change is in the impact of seeing the "before" and sharing it with others. I think it parallels greatly to life and how while significant difficulty, trials and struggle exist for our growth, they should be shared along the way so that when the change comes the people in our lives who know the story can be amazed together with us! I had that experience today seeing the house and sharing in the excitement of the change.
Today I was also able to share about a relationship in my own life which has been restored to something more beautiful. This can not happen by trying harder to get things right on my own. Only in the work of Jesus Christ to die for my sin and selfishness by taking my place on the cross, am I given a new life in him. A life of freedom to love and serve others and to be a part of God's work of restoring the old things of this world into new things that display him more clearly.

How to organize the average closet

Step One: Look at it. Don't be afraid of it and take a picture to own it for what it is. It's a mess and the door won't close most of the time. I usually shove something in there right before guests come over and if I'm lucky it stays closed. Unlucky and it pops open while they are standing right beside and it startles them.

Step One point Five: Get comfortable. No need for restrictive or fancy clothing here.

Step Two: Take everything out! Even if you know it is going right back in. You'll then have an empty closet and a floor or table full of junk.

Step Three: Don't panic that it now looks worse than it did before. Just set a timer for 15 to 30 minutes and then group everything you find into categories. Throw away things that you don't want or need, and make a give away pile for things that could be taken to GoodWill or repurposed.

Sometimes you end up discovering things like...you have four Blockbuster cards and two Movie Gallery cards and those places will soon all be out of business so you can toss them thanks to Netflicks and Redbox!

The latest version of your resume is on a disk that looks like this. How will you get it back? My computer certainly doesn't have a disk drive.

You find a cute Crate & Barrel French Press Carafe still in the bag which was someones wedding gift. Sorry someone.

Eight great black and white postcards of rural village scenes that I brought back from China and forgot about. Will most likely mat and frame these. Nice find.

A collection of Minton Rose China with some unique serving pieces lovingly given to me on behalf of my grandmother Alice Francis McEwan. Beautiful!

Two great quotes that I will blog later...

Now on to Step Five: Find any empty containers, baskets, boxes or items that you could use to help with the organization as things go back into the closet. You really don't have to run to Target at this point. You have things that you can use, just have to look around for them.

Step Six: Begin placing items back into the closet based on categories and use the containers that make sense for the size of your pile. (Is this stuff too obvious?)

Step Seven: Make labels if that helps you or your family to know what goes where. I found 15 pages of different cute tags on line here but then decided it was easier and less time consuming to just draw a fake tag on half of a note card. You can get as creative as you want with it but remember that the goal is to organize the closet, not spend three hours on a tag. :)

Take a picture of your finished product to remind you of what you accomplished. You can even stick the picture on the inside of the closet door (before and after) to help you if it starts to get messy again. Do you see how much space is left now that it is organized? Well, I did cheat a little bit by not putting the vacuum cleaner back yet, but now it has a space too and the door will still close.

In the end we collected

three bags of trash

one strange pile of odds and ends

leftover paint and Christmas stuff to put up in the attic.

BEFORE

AFTER