Organized Basement Playroom

We moved into our new house in March of this year. Ever since, it has been an on going goal to get things unpacked, in a space, and then organize that space. One that has been at the front of my mind is our basement playroom.

I'm going to start with GASP! the before pictures.





To be fair, it didnt always look this way (sometimes it was worse ha, ha). No really, I had gotten so tired of the disorganization that I avoided it for a couple of weeks-which meant the kids didnt have to pick up after themselves-which they loved. We had a number of problems with the set up that have became more apparent the longer we were here, and until they were addressed I refused to spend any energy on the room.

The #1 problem: The basement gets wet. It was dry the first month and a half we were here-until all the snow melted. Then we found out about the problem. Not all the basement gets wet, but half of it. The half I am not showing you would double the size of the playroom, but the toys would be wet about once a month-or more the way this year is going. So we had to move all the toys over to this side of the room, which meant we no longer had enough spaces to put everything away.

2nd problem: The shelving we had was all wooden. Now, we all know that wood and moisture do not mix. I needed to take away the shelves and replace them with something else. I had never completely finished buying all the wood shelves I wanted before I found out it would be a problem. Thankfully, only one of the shelving units ended up with any damage, I caught the problem in time.

3rd problem: (Which I am still working on)-Carpets and water do not mix. The corner of the first rug actually got wet during the last rain storm before the redo-we had gotten 2 inches of rain in about an hour. The other carpet is not in a place it will get wet, but I know it adds to the musty smell so I am on the look out for more foam basement tiles at a good price.

4th problem: It is a BASEMENT playroom. Playrooms should be bright and cheery with fun colors and decorations. We have cement walls, cement floor, and exposed wood work on the ceiling. And, its rented. We have permission to paint as we want, but I'm not sure that painting the basement walls primary colors are what they had in mind.

Solution:

I received a little money from the hubby for my birthday and decided to head off to the local home improvement store and see what kind of PLASTIC shelving I could find. I didnt want to spend ALL my birthday money on plastic shelves, so I was looking in the 25.00 range plastic shelving units.

I had started to made a decision, when a clearance sticker caught my eye. Sitting just to the right of where I had been looking where 3 different sized shelving units. One was 49.99 marked down to 24.95, one was 45.00 marked down to 22.80 and the third was 15.95 marked down to 5.00!! The 5.00 one said it was missing a leg, which meant it would be 3 shelves instead of 4, I was fine with that. The other 2 shelves had the same 'damaged' sticker, but didnt say what was wrong. They were both 'new' products (there were plenty of the same on full price) but at 1/2 price, I preferred these to the others. I was getting twice the product for less then the price I was willing to pay. After verifying I could still return them, if Heaven forbid they were unusable, and I bought them all. Turns out there was nothing wrong with the 2 shelves-nothing. The mark down was a Heaven sent special just for me :). Grand total: 52.75.

Then off to Walmart we went. We have a huge lack of 'fun' organizing stores here. No IKEA, no Target, no Container Store. We have Lowes, Home Depot, Menards and Walmart. Loveliness. I didnt know exactly what I was looking for, but as I walked into the store a voice in my head (I'm thinking the Lord) said 'milk crates.' I was skeptical, but I still walked over to the office supplies and wouldn't you know? The milk crates were 1/2 price! I bought 5 (all there were) and went on. I also purchased 4 laundry baskets, a package of floral wire, and a package of tissue paper-total spent: 36.75.

I still needed artwork, so I took apart an extra copy of Miss Spider's New Car that I found for a quarter at a yard sale and laminated a few pages. Then I made up a few labels and laminated them as well.

After I cleaned, purged, organized, rearranged, created, etc, etc, etc.....


The results:











A clean, organized, decorated, and cheery playroom.

Total price: $89.75. A happy mommy & kids: priceless.

God Bless!!