An Update: The 3 Big Organizing Projects I Wanted to Tackle in 2020

I wanted to complete three big organizing projects in 2020. Come find out if I succeeded or failed!

At the beginning of each year for the past few years, I’ve been sharing the organizing projects I hope to accomplish in the next 12 months.

2018 Organizing Goals – 2018 Goal Update

2019 Organizing Goals – 2019 Goal Update

2020 Organizing Goals – 2020 Goal Update (You’re here!)

Sometimes I complete my goals. Most of the time I don’t. But either way, I like having the accountability and direction to keep me focused and moving forward on our projects!

At the beginning of 2020, I determined three spaces in our house that I wanted to organize: the boys’ playroom, our half bath, and our laundry room (which made the list for the second year in a row after I failed to complete it in 2019… oops!).

Read on to see how these spaces ended up!

2020 Organizing Projects

The Boys’ Playroom -Turned- Tween Hangout Room

The first project I tackled in 2020 was the boys’ playroom… probably because it was the room that was driving me crazy the most! Their playroom had gotten pretty cluttered and haphazard, and I knew it was time to put some new systems in place.

This is how their playroom started out…

And here’s what we did with it!

We added some storage around the desk area so we could corral their art supplies and some of their smaller toys. I also put up a few pegboards to display their finished artwork.

We created an entire wall dedicated to LEGO projects, with plenty of storage and even a simple built-in LEGO table for them to work on their creations.

We also reorganized the closet in this room, using it to store some of their bigger toys as well as board games and gaming supplies.

The new setup is working SO much better, and it’s a lot easier to keep everything organized.

See the full tween hangout room reveal, including all sources, in this post.

The Laundry Room

After failing at getting the laundry room situated in 2019, I was determined that it was going to happen in 2020.

It wasn’t terrible to begin with. But the wire shelf wasn’t ideal because it was hard for me to reach. And I didn’t love that all of our laundry supplies were on display.

I also wanted to do something about our teeny tiny linen closet, another spot where I wasn’t loving the wire shelving.

We ended up doing a pretty big renovation in the laundry room. Donnie ripped out the old tile and replaced it with wood-look tile. We put up a vertical shiplap accent wall. And we replaced the pesky wire shelf with two cabinets and a hanging bar instead.

We also tackled the linen closet, adding simple shelf covers rather than totally replacing the shelving. And a few choice storage boxes helped to corral some of the smaller items in the closet as well.

I love the new laundry room setup so much that it almost makes me look forward to doing the laundry! Almost… 😉

You can see the full laundry room reveal, including all sources, in this post.

The Half Bath

The half bath is the smallest room in our house, but it is also a space that you see right when you walk in the door, so I knew it could use a little TLC!

Like the laundry room, it didn’t start out terribly. It was just boring and white with nowhere to put anything…

I knew that we could add some storage and make it look prettier at the same time!

After installing high beadboard / wainscoting, adding a beautiful wallpaper treatment, and changing out the vanity, mirror, and light fixture, the space was looking so much better!

The new vanity gave me the storage space I was looking for too, which makes my organizer’s heart happy!

You can see the whole half bath reveal, including all sources, in this post.

A Bonus Project– Organizing Digital Photos!

Maybe it was because we spent so much time at home this year because of Covid, but not only was 2020 the first year I completed ALL of my organizing goals, but I also completed a bonus organizing project!

Organizing my digital photos might not have the same fancy before and after pictures as the projects that I mentioned above, but it made a HUGE difference for me, both for my personal photos and my blog photos.

With my family photos organized, I get to look back on memories of past years each day and remember all of the wonderful times we’ve experienced! It is also really easy to create simple photo books to commemorate special time periods or events.

Organizing my blog photos was also a total game changer. I can now find the images I need more easily when I write posts, and it has saved me SO much time over the course of the year.

You can read about the strategies I used to organized my family photos in this post and my blog photos in this post.

So those were the major organizing projects we tackled in 2020! It’s fun to be able to look back and see all we’ve accomplished. And getting those spaces organized certainly made a big impact on our day-to-day life.

Completing these spaces means that we’ve now tackled every single room in our house! You can take the before and after home tour and see every room in this post.

But just because we’ve worked on every room doesn’t mean we don’t have projects that we still want to complete. We still have quite a long to-do list! I will be back soon with my organizing goals for 2021– I can’t wait to share them with you!

AND I want to know– what organizing projects did you tackle in 2020? Let me know in the comments below!

Thank you so much for following along! Have a wonderful day!