Organizing My Shoes.

Before I went on holidays, I told you I would share my shoe storage solution.  Even though I have had this 'solution' for a few months now, I was inspired to share when Jen over at I Heart Organizing started doing a challenge to purge and organize.

Here are the problems that I had to tackle when it came to shoe storage:

• our house is an older house so there isn't a large entry closet to store my shoes in
• dog fur, dog fur, dog fur

That last one is the biggest problem.  Prior to my current system, I stored my shoes on a shoe rack at the bottom of our bedroom closet.  I liked this option because when I opened my closet I got to see my pretty shoes all in a row. I didn't, however, enjoy having to dump all the dog fur out of my shoes before I put them on in the morning.  As much as I liked seeing them in all their pretty-ness, I absolutely despised having to dump balls of fur out of them before I put them on.

And because I think shoes are pretty, here's a glamour shot:

I thought of all the places that I had left to store stuff in, and under the bed was at the top of the list.

I headed to Walmart and bought an under the bed storage container similar to this, and after purging a few pairs of shoes, I was able to fit them all in.

Ta da!

I love how this neatly tucks away under the bed, and best of all, it keeps all the dog fur out!  So now when I go and choose my shoes in the morning, I just grab and go! No dumping fur for me anymore!

Yay for organizing solutions!

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Stainless Steel?

I love my stainless steel appliances, love, love, love them. They look so pretty, all matchey-matchey, shiney and sparkly. 

Don't know why I could't get a straight picture... this was my third attempt!

With all that good stuff being said, I have a pet peeve.  This pet peeve really only pertains to my fridge.  Before I bash my fridge, I should make it clear that this fridge does many things well.  It keeps all my food cold, very important.  It makes me ice. It freezes stuff, and it looks good doing it.

My problem - it is not magnetized. 

This made it extremely difficult to make a magnet stick (no matter how hard I tried!).

I needed to find a solution to this.  I had things that I wanted to attach to my fridge: photo's of our nieces and nephews, birth announcements, and other random things.

There is a small wall that is right next to our fridge that I wanted to turn into a magnet wall.

After much scouring of the internet, I discovered that Home Depot carried a magnetic paint. I bought said magnetic paint and left it in the capable hands of my husband, the professional painter.

The magnetic 'paint' is really a primer.  The can suggests using two to three coats, the more coats = the more magnetic the wall will be.  My husband found that that didn't cut it.  He did about five or six coats.  After finishing up with the magnetic primer, he topped it off with three coats of our kitchen wall color.

Voila!

This definitely solved my problem.

This also gave us the opportunity to get a magnetic poetry kit. Oh man, the things that can be created with a simple magnetic poetry kit.

I absolutely love it when a problem is solved.  Especially when it is solved so creatively.