Hoarding...

Last night we watched an episode of House which featured a woman who was a hoarder. It was horrible.I got hives just watching the show.

And then I felt awesome about myself because I said to myself, "my house doesn't look that bad" (on most days). And I was proud that I had some anal retentive genes that cancelled out my lazy genes and makes me organize and clean out junk. And then I felt ashamed that I was judging another person just to make myself feel better about my life and laziness (like, "at least I'm not that bad"). And then I breathed a sigh of relief when the commercial came on and I remembered that this was just a show and I shouldn't feel bad about judging a fictional character. And then I walked to the kitchen to get a drink of water and passed this:

And then felt bad all over again. Vicious cycle.

This is our typical dumping ground for any junk we have when walking in the door. I'm sure everyone has those spots. Some area where all the crap lands when you don't want to put it away right at that moment.
Junk mail, dishes, lunch box, makeup case, whatevs!

Remember when my great friend gave me all that stuff from her garage sale?
Well, I knew just what I was gonna do with this thing when I saw it:

It will help control that hot mess you see above (or that's the idea anyway).

First, I wasn't feeling the lighthouse look so I decided to paint the organizer a cheerful green. I started by sanding the sides to remove most of the dark colors since the lime green I was going with would make them show through:

And I painted it in about 7 minutes.

I used a free sample I got from Glidden called Spring Leaf. It was a pretty celadon color.
Here it is after it dried:

And the bar after I cleaned everything off and sorted, threw away, etc. all the junk and used the organizer:

Much better. Still junk but more organized. Thankfully.