Our New Command Center

I've always had a junk counter.  Some people have a drawer, I have a counter.  I hate it, but I need somewhere to stow my stuff when the table needs to be set for dinner or the rest of the kitchen is taken over by baking.  Everything ends up on the junk counter until I have time to put it away.

My junk counter is our "command center."  It's the place where I drop my purse when I come home, charge my cell phone, sort through mail and coupons, take messages, you name it.  But it's always been awful to look at.  Even when it was tidy, it was cluttered. 

This was the old "clean" look

This weekend, I needed to grab a recipe off my blog and was so annoyed that I had to go all the way upstairs to get it.  Again.  This is a daily occurrence...sometimes multiple times a day.  But there's no good place to keep the laptop downstairs, mostly because it's old and the battery is dead and it needs to stay plugged in all the time. 

Then it occurred to me: what if I turned my junk counter into a little media nook?

Before

After

This popped into my head because soon, I'll be getting my mom's china cabinet for our formal glasses and dishes, which are currently kept in a weird closet off the back hall by the garage door.  But I've been wanting to turn that closet into a "kids closet" for years...keeping their arts and craft supplies, socks and shoes, gloves and hats in the winter, swimsuits and sunglasses in the summer, etc.  Once that happens, I can carve out a shelf in there to act as our "command center." 

In the meantime, I turned our laundry room counter into a temporary drop zone.

Before

After

Those stackable black shelves each have a vital purpose in controlling my incoming paper clutter: The top is a catch-all for mail and items to go through, the next shelf is for coupons, the third shelf is kids paperwork and the bottom is for unread magazines (that I grab for the gym).  I also added a couple of little buckets to contain smaller items of the kids' that seem to get lost, like Ryan's mouthpiece and stickers for football.  And the little white basket is for Christmas cards that need to be hung.  (yes, I already received my first Christmas card - I'm waiting to get a few more before putting them on the wall)

I haven't been this excited about an organizational project in a long time.  When I get the china cabinet, I'll post before and after pictures of that back closet.  I can't wait to get that done!!!