An Update: The 4 Big Organizing Projects I Wanted to Tackle in 2018

I wanted to tackle four major organizing projects in 2018– an office, a mudroom, a garage, and a basement. Come see where I succeeded and where I failed!

I know it’s cliche to say, but I truly do feel like 2018 absolutely flew by. I started out the year with the ambitious goal of completing four major organizing projects around our house, and then I blinked, and suddenly here we are in December!

So did I complete my organizing projects? Did I not complete my organizing projects?

Well, it’s a little bit of both. 

Today I thought I’d take a look back and show you what we finished, what we didn’t, and where we go from here.

An Update: The 4 Big Organizing Projects I Wanted to Tackle in 2018

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Project 1: The Other Half of My Office

I started this year extremely excited about my office. We had just completed a corner storage unit with the IKEA PAX system, so half of the space was looking pretty good…

The other half of the room? Not so much.

I was doing the best I could with what I had, but I was in serious need of some additional storage pieces and systems. We worked hard on this space throughout the rest of January and a good part of February, and before March came around, I had the beautifully organized office that I had been dreaming of!

I started out by purging my pillow collection, keeping only the ones I really love and use often. (Which, admittedly, is probably still more pillows than most people keep around…oops.) This etagere ended up being the perfect piece to store my pillows, printer and paper, and some small supplies like ink and envelopes.

In addition to my desk that I already had in the “nook” area in my office, I was also able to fit in a second work surface, which I was excited about. I took this small IKEA dining table and whitewashed it, and it ended up being the perfect size to fit in that corner. It is so lightweight that I can also easily move it to the middle of the room if I’m shooting a video and want to have a pretty background.

And speaking of that pretty background…

The other big storage piece we brought into a space was a piece we created with the IKEA BESTA system. We added some trim work to it to make it look more custom, and I love that it holds everything we need while also displaying everything beautifully!

As a backdrop and “wow” factor in the room, I stenciled the back wall. It was about 14 hours worth of work, but I love how it turned out!

You can get more details about my office and see the full reveal in this post.

Project 2: The Mudroom

After we finished my office, we took a few months to tackle some smaller organization projects around the house, but we came back to our “big four” for the year in July when we completed phase one of our mudroom.

I love that this house has a mudroom, but we definitely hadn’t been using it to its fullest potential. The small closet only had a wire shelf + rail combo for hanging coats, and I knew we could do better than that!

So we ripped out the wire shelf and replaced it with my favorite IKEA ALGOT system, giving us some extra shelf space to store shoes and helping our coats and outerwear stay neat and tidy!

Get more details about the closet project in this post.

While we were at it, we also put a little command center on the empty wall beside the closet, and it has helped us keep track of all of the boys’ school papers and upcoming events.

Get more details about the command center gallery wall in this post.

“Phase 2” of the mudroom was completed in October. At the beginning of the year, we just had a bench and shelf from our last house sitting in the mudroom “nook”…

But we had a very talented friend of ours build and install a beautiful built-in bench and shelf unit in its place, and it has helped us stay much more organized (and it looks pretty too)!

You can learn more about our mudroom built-ins in this post.

Take the tour of the entire completed mudroom here!

Project 3: The Garage

Oh, the garage. It was pretty scary at the beginning of the year…

I had a long wish list for this space, but to be honest, it was pretty intimidating to tackle, so I put it off mostly because I just knew it was going to be a ton of work! I was determined that we were going to park both of our cars in this space by the time it got cold, though, so when we were in between “phases” in the mudroom, we started working away at the garage a little bit at a time, and eventually, it was complete!

We again turned to the IKEA ALGOT system to add a ton of shelving to the space and keep everything up off the floor.

We used a combination of aqua tubs (my choice) and gray bins (Donnie’s choice) to keep all of our gear organized but also somewhat out of sight.

To hang some awkwardly shaped items like lawn tools and bikes, we used a track system with various attachments, which worked like a charm.

I tried to bring in a little bit of “pretty” by using a few pegboards and painting the door and stairs.

It took a while to chip away at all of the different pieces, but we got there in the end, and I am thrilled to say that we met our goal of parking both cars in the garage before the cold weather hit!

You can take the full tour of our garage and get all of the nitty gritty details in this post!

Project 4: The Basement

Along with the garage, the basement was another space I would have categorized as “scary” at the beginning of the year. It is unfinished and had become sort of a dumping ground for anything extra that we weren’t quite sure what to do with.

Here it was at the beginning of the year…

And here’s what it looks like today…

BASEMENT ORGANIZATION FAIL.

Out of the four spaces we had on our goal list, this was the only one that we didn’t manage to complete. Admittedly, it was the lowest on our list of priorities because unlike the other three spaces that we use daily, the basement is primarily used for storage purposes.

We are still hanging on to a lot of the furniture stored in this space because we have some family members who are moving in the not-too-distant future and may need some of it. We have the space, so I’m totally fine with keeping it here until we figure out if they’ll need it or not.

There are two parts of the basement, though, that I definitely want to make sure we do something with early in 2019, even if it means spending $0 and just taking a weekend to get things sorted out.

This storage nook is still a bit out of control. We even have some great storage pieces for this area, but we aren’t maximizing their potential at all. This will be a quick fix; we just haven’t taken the time to come down here and do it!

Donnie’s “workshop” space is the other part of the basement that I definitely want to get sorted ASAP. Again, we already have some great organizing pieces, but probably adding one more shelf and then just taking the time to sort through everything will make a huge difference here.

So here I am, in front of the entire internet (or my little corner of it anyway 😉 ), committing that we WILL make progress on this space in early 2019. I know that even a day or a weekend of work in here will make a huge difference, so even if we don’t take the time to make it really pretty (which for an unfinished basement isn’t really my priority anyway), we will make it organized!

 

So that is the status of our organization project goals from 2018! Three out of four isn’t terrible, and we are really loving the three spaces we completed! I will be back soon with our list of goal projects for 2019, so keep an eye out for that!

In the meantime, I would love to hear about your favorite organizing projects that you completed in 2018, so be sure to let me know about them in the comments below! 

Get more info about the organizing projects I mentioned in these posts:

A Beautiful and Organized Home Office Tour

An Organized Mudroom

Our Organized Garage Tour

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

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.