You had me at “Turquoise Barn Door”.

Chalk board message center.

Built-in lockers,

The coup de grace.  A scrub tub for a utility sink.  I love, love the faucet.  It’s beautiful and oh so practical.  To me, this picture sums up what good interior design is… pretty, practical, and a little playful.  Please stop by The Idea Room and get Amy’s behind-the-scenes story for this mud room and the laundry room she designed.

     My kids haven’t been back in school for very long but I am already getting buried in piles of paper.  The younger ones take their papers out of their backpacks and leave them wherever they happen to be.  My oldest doesn’t even bother to tell me about papers I need to see.  Either way, it is a bother to have to hunt down papers and sort them for three kids every day.  I decided to try to get us all organized, so I thought up these  magnetized clipboards. 

     There are four clipboards, one for each kid.  (My youngest isn’t in preschool yet but he didn’t want to be left out.  He proudly hung his artwork up with the kids’ papers.)  There are two clips on each board.  The left is for papers that I need to see and/or sign.  The clip on the right is for papers that I’m done with and can be returned to school or put in memory books (if they are to be kept).

     The kids wanted to paint their clipboards their favorite colors.  That is how we are going to keep track of whose is  whose. 

When the paint was dry, I hot glued these mini clothes pins on.

 Then I cut some magnetic tape to length and hot glued it on.

     Today was the first day we used the clipboards.  So far, so good.  I hope they work out because it is a simple system that should work if we don’t get lazy.  It also was a cost-effective organizational solution.  I bought the craft sticks, mini clothes pins and magnetic tape at Hobby Lobby for under $10.