Attacking the problem areas: Painting the craft/office cupboard (finally)

The week before surgery I painted an upper cupboard in my room, vowing that as soon as I could walk again that I would paint this one.  I started walking in early November.  Mid-January I finally got to the painting.  Yep.  My main motivation in finally tackling this was knowing how much of an improvement painting was to all the other cupboards I've done.  That was about it.  I knew this one would be the worst (it was) and it would take hours (it did).  But it is finally done.  FINALLY.
Here is where I started about a year ago:

Ugggg...yes.  A mess.  Over the following months it evolved into this:

Better but still not great.  That mustard yellow is just ugly.  And dirty looking.  And ugly.

I used leftover white paint from other projects (although if I paint another cupboard we're going to need more which means these projects stop being free) and worked on it in 3 segments.  Part of the problem is these cupboards are about 2 feet deep.  There are also a lot of supports to paint around.  It's just mind-numbingly dull work.  I watched Morning Glory and She's All That (thank you Netflix...wow that movie is very late 90s) while working.

Then once I finished painting I ran into a new "problem".  I didn't have enough stuff to fill the cupboard.  That is a good problem to have.  I couldn't figure out what else needed to be stored on the middle shelf.  I came up with nothing.  So it looks a little bare but as our lives change and needs change I'm sure there will be something (I'm thinking more art supplies for Luke or homework station type things if we are in this house long enough).

But look at this beauty:

I used containers we already had and just filled some of them differently.  This cupboard is directly above our coat closet which means this cupboard needs to store some winter gear as well as some office supply type things.  Here's what we have in there:

Top shelf: one basket is toys Luke hasn't grown into yet (like marbles) and the other is our heavy winter gear (like ski masks and ski gloves).
Middle shelf: the blue basket holds our American flag (to be hung in warmer months) and all of the birthday and anniversary cards I've already addressed for the year (there are 25 ready to go in chronological order.  Nobody better move.)  The small blue tub in the middle holds the broken crayons we let Luke color with now (since he had a tendency to break them anyways).  The drawers hold sharpies/gel pens, colored pencils, and markers.  Stacked next to that are our gift notebooks and my current travel journal.

Bottom shelf: One basket is some of Luke's art supplies/activities (pipe cleaners, googly eyes, poof balls).  One is our cameras and chargers.  The last is all my other letter writing supplies like new baby cards, sympathy cards, blank note cards, stamps, return address labels, address book, etc.  I would have kept the already addressed ones in here but I didn't have room.


There is much less to store than a year ago because of getting rid of excess and also better organizing my desk.

Look at this huge improvement:

While I love how clean the white paint looks, I think the biggest benefit to this project is the motivation to remove everything from the cupboard and reevaluate what needs to go back.  The fresh white paint really makes me want to keep these clean and organized and starting with a completely blank slate is the best way to begin.  Now that I've finally rid our house of all the mustard yellow cupboards (there were 6 at one point), I'll need to find something else to paint.  I've got my eyes on some kitchen cupboards...