My Personal Purge Challenge

My husband and I live in a fairly small house, less then 1000 square feet, and as a result we have to be pretty good about not taking in too much stuff, if, you know, we want to be able to walk around in our house. However, we have a baby on the way and as a result there is a large pipeline of baby gear that has started heading our way. We are the major beneficiaries of some serious amounts of hand-me-downs, which is awesome. To make room for all the baby stuff, it is time to do a major whole-house purge. Over the course of the month I will be taking a critical eye to every last item that thinks itself worthy to sit on our storage shelves or clutter our linen closet. Items will have to prove themselves, I may assign five-paragraph essays to items in question. If they can’t explain to me exactly why they deserve to stay, out they will go, into hands that will love and appreciate them more then I can right now. At this point, the cats and my husband are really the only things in the house that are safe from my scrutiny.

To make things fun, I’m also going to take the crafty challenge and try to find a new use for 29 things for every day in February. This was inspired by the ‘thing a day’ group, which is a cool concept, and Bella Dia’s thoughts on repurposing. I will be sharing my ideas with you, my fellow purgers. I say, what fun is a challenge without a crafty clause?

So, here is today's entry for the first of February. A new use for old CD cases. I actually started this a while back, but continue to add to it as more pictures come in. I asked all my friends and family (especially the kids) to contribute a picture they drew of a frog or a bug (which is the theme in the baby's room). I supplied the paper so they would all be the right size. Then I put all the pictures into old CD cases, which serve as perfect little frames. I used the back side of each case, popping out the piece of plastic that holds the actual CD, putting in the picture and then popping the plastic bit back in. I then attached them to the wall with that foamy, double-stick, mounting tape. Assembled together they make a cute collage of kids drawings. This could be a fun thing to do in any kids room as it is a cheap (free!) way to frame art, and it is easy to swap out the pictures when you get tired of them (or when the new batch of art comes home with your kids from school). I've seen lots of variations on this theme, here is one tutorial on how to make a mural, and here is another on making basic frames (goes into more depth than I have here). Many more uses for how to reuse old CD cases can be found at Planet Green.