What is it about secret places? Secret hiding places? They just invite you to come in, to escape a ‘magical’ place. Lately I’ve wanted a ‘secret place’ for me, oops, I mean my girls, to sneak off to! Oh the secrets they could share, the books they could read, the stories they could tell to their dolls. Or if they were feeling more adventurous, the escapades they could go on – spying, saving the world, or creating their own magical land!

Lately, my own secret place has been pinterest.com – Oh the joy I have in escaping to distant places, touring amazing homes, and being inspired to try new things! (side note: If you haven’t checked out pinterest, their site says you need an invite to join – which a friend can either send, or you can ‘request’ one – they sent me a request within 24 hours of my ask!)

Well look at these secret hiding places I’ve discovered on pinterest.

What fun to turn an old wardrobe into this! This would be especially fun for any kid that loves the classic story of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe!

And how about this…a climbing wall. I can so picture this in a boy’s room, although I think my girls would love it too!

I like the ‘openness’ of this one, yet it still looks like a fun place to go! I wonder if my girls would read more books if they had a fun place to climb to for just that purpose!?

Under the stairs are perfect places to create secret hiding places and cute playhouses!

Don’t forget the little ones – this would be an easy one to make today! This could also work at the end of a dresser.

How about this place for your teen?

And lastly, a place just for you! Oh I could so see myself cuddling up with a great novel, sipping some hot cocoa, Christmas piano music playing the background. Oh.Sweet.Sigh.

So, does your house have a secret room?! Do share!

Today, meet these super-cute Wall Decals from Shutterfly:

You simply upload a photo of your adorable in action and voila – a great enlarged cutout photo arrives which adheres to their bedroom or playroom’s wall.

Heck, you can even put it up in the living room.

Your choice.

Available in 3 sizes to best suit your room’s needs.

And you can win one!

Giveaway

One lucky, lucky winner can win a Shutterfly Wall Decal ($59.95 and up) simply by leaving a comment by Friday, February 18th. I’ll choose the winner using Random.org and announce it on Saturday.

Because I just LOVE comments, here’s how to gain extra entries (please leave them as separate entries):

1. Do you subscribe by email or RSS to The Good Stuff Guide? I love my subscribers, so you get an extra entry. Wahoo!

2. Email 5 of your friends about The Good Stuff Guide and tell them what a rockin’ website this is. We’d love to have them join us!

3. “Like” The Good Stuff Guide on Facebook and receive the latest news and your chance at additional giveaways. (I LIKE you too!)

Good luck!

When I find a product I love, I tend to buy more than one for myself and to recommend it to all my friends.  What meets my needs so well is not always perfect for a friend, of course, but every so often a product proves so useful and reasonably priced that a ripple effect occurs and I find out about friends of friends of friends running out to get their hands on one!

I found these ClosetMaid Cubeical Organizers at Target this summer just after we moved into a new home.   New spaces called for new systems of organizing books and toys and these cube shelves became my new obsession!

First up was our picture book library.  This shelf is a dark, espresso color.  It sits in our great room amidst pieces of non-Target furniture and blends in seamlessly.  Aside from being stylish (enough for me!) it makes it easy to categorize and store hundreds of books while providing easy access to the shelves and disaster free book removal and, this is key, book re-shelving that even little kids can manage independently.  Gone are the days of the book avalanches we used to deal with!

I have since learned that when I used to buy 5 of the same shirt at Old Navy, varying only in color, that I was committing some sort of wardrobe faux pas according to the experts and I’m sure similar rules apply to furniture.   Apparently I can’t help myself.  I bought a shelf for each of my boys’ bedrooms, in colors to match their dressers (one espresso, one alder) and I chose white for our basement playroom:

These were just too useful, durable and reasonably priced not to buy more!   I love that the kids and their friends can see the toys we have, access them without assistance and put them away themselves.

You can find these awesome shelves in a bevy of colors at Target – the ClosetMaid Cubeicals Cube.

Many thanks to Sarah, in her debut as Contributing Writer at The Good Stuff Guide!  How about a little comment love?

Oh and I’ll race you to Target for these!

As the owner of Peace by Piece Organizing and also the mother of three small children (ages 5, 3 and 1), Renee Kutner definitely knows playrooms!

Stage 1: the beginning.  Ha!  This looks just like my house!

Stage 2: It’s contained, but you know it’s going to look like Stage 1 about 3.2 seconds.

Stage 3: It now has a system!  Clean-up now has some direction and hopefully the room will look like this after a 5-7-minute group cleanup.

She has some great tips to offer us to organize the toy mayhem:

Lose the lids.

Storage systems with open bin containers enable kids to just dump the toys in and move on.  Lids are great for stacking, but they are difficult for kids both to open and close.  Of course, if they want to play with something they’ll find a way to open it…but they’re not quite as motivated to put it back!  Besides, stacking can be a disaster for little kids who inevitably want to reach something on the very bottom.

Label, label, label.

Use pictures for young kids and words for pre-readers and readers. When kids know where something belongs, they are much more likely to put it away because it’s not such an overwhelming task.

Rotate toys.

Not having all your toys out at once obviously decreases clutter. Further, though, it keeps kids excited about the toys they have out so
they want to take good care of them and keep them in order.  When they lose interest in a toy, they really don’t care how it is being treated.

Avoid the large toy chests.

If everything can go in, then everything will come out – every time they play.  Kids can stay more focused on only what they want to play with if their toys are sorted.  Further, this is what they are used to from school.  Think about your child’s classroom where they spend most of their day – every activity has its own zone.

Store your toys bottom-up.

Think about the room from your child’s vantage point – they are relatively short.  Therefore, keep those things they use most closer to the ground.  As you move up in your storage unit you can start to put the toys less frequently played with or, if you have multiple kids, put the older kids’ toys higher up.

Many thanks to Renee Kutner, the Chaos Advisor, of Peace by Piece Organizing.  Renee can be reached at 404-309-4807 or online www.peacebypieceorganizing.com.

UNREAL

As in really, really awesome.

See for yourself:

Are you still standing??

Somewhere in the middle of all these photos I had the idea that Mr. Hulfish should come up with a line of giant themed Peel-and-Stick Wall Art.  Then families across the country could enjoy his art and save a little of the time and expense.  Just thinkin’…

I could use some knight/castle/dragon themed wally stickers please.

Pretty please.

Now I don’t mean to detract any from his art, which is just incredible.  I can’t even imagine how spell-bound my adorables would be walking into a room like this.

I’d just love Jason to be local!  And the stickers would make him more mobile.

See Jason’s work at www.jfishart.com for even more incredible photos.  Don’t miss the Star Wars room!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Today’s giveaway is such a great solution and I love the sneaky part of it too…

Meet BOX4BLOX – a brilliant organizing solution for your multitudes of Legos!

Okay, here’s the sneaky part: your adorable *thinks* this is a gift for him/her, but in fact, it’s a gift for *YOU*!

This cut-away photo shows the brilliance:

You stack these multi-colored bins and start dumping your Legos in the top, yellow bin. Keep shakin’.

The grid automatically sorts the pieces into sizes: the largest can’t fit through the grid, so they stay on top, the smallest make it all the way to the green bin at the bottom as they fall through the grids.

And your result is a clean stack of sorted Legos.

I’ll just sit here quietly while you recover…

Ready?

Giveaway

You can win one Box4Blox ($39.95) simply by leaving a comment by Friday, October 15th.  I’ll choose the winners using Random.org on Saturday.

Because I just LOVE comments, here’s how to gain extra entries (please leave them as separate entries):

1. Do you subscribe by email or RSS to The Good Stuff Guide? I love my subscribers, so you get an extra entry. Wahoo!
2. Email 5 of your friends about The Good Stuff Guide and tell them what a rockin’ website this is.  We’d love to have them join us!
3. “Like” The Good Stuff Guide on Facebook and receive the latest news and your chance at additional giveaways. (I LIKE you too!)

Good luck!

Many thanks to BOX4BLOX for this great giveaway! Another brilliant holiday gift idea!!  If you visit the BOX4BLOX website, I highly recommend the 50 second video on the main page (with the great New Zealand accent).

First, here’s a happy playroom she designed:

Here are Amy’s tips for “Tackling the Toy Monster”:

1. Use the “one-toy-out-at-a-time” rule:  If you get another toy out, the current one must be put away.
2. Every toy must have a place to live or it won’t get put away.  Kids won’t know how to clean up when they don’t have places to put their toys or containers to put them in.
3. Use containers like pocket shoe organizers, plastic drawers, collapsible crates, under the bed bins, & fun, bright colored buckets to containerize.
4. Containers for toys should be small enough that the littlest hands can pick them up.  Look for clear plastic with lids that have handles.
5. Label each container.  Example would be all Hot Wheels go in one container and is labeled “CARS”.
6. When buying new toys have kids decide which two current toys can be donated to someone.  This can also apply to birthday and Christmas gifts-give away less used toys to make room for new.
7. Don’t over organize!  It’s better to have broader categories like “Barbies” rather than separate containers for Barbie clothes, Barbie furniture and Barbie dolls.
8. Fewer categories makes it easier to clean up!
9. Every few months have your kids do a Purge Party.  Put on music, dance while you decide what toys no one is playing with any longer. Put them in a pile to donate, and then celebrate with popcorn and ice cream!  Make it fun to give away!
10. When using shelves to organize toys, put the most often used toys on the bottom.  On the top shelves keep the toys that you want them to ask you for-like puzzles, games, or complicated toys.

Amy, thanks so much for your help!

What are you doing? What works for you?

What are you going to work on?

We’re all back-to-school now and with that comes piles of art projects, eagerly looking for a place of honor in our home.

Well we were swimming in cute projects around here and I needed a place to display all of them.  I looked to the basement and I had 2 large empty walls in the playroom.  A dear neighbor offered to help with me cut and glue giant bulletin boards to the wall.  Mostly I stood by and watched – he’s a great one for projects and tools.  He also insisted on the molding around them, and I’m so glad he did!

I need to get these old projects off the board and into some sort of attic storage (I’ll sort and thin them first).  Then we’re ready for the year  for the onslaught of art!

Oh, I use a stapler so I don’t have to deal with pushpins.  The staples pull out very easily (but it’s very hard for the little adorables to do so themselves).

Manufacture this…

It’s an old hardware store display bin that my friend found somewhere, had it painted and voila!  The world’s greatest toy storage.  In case you can’t tell, it’s about 5 feet tall and these bins rotate.  My jaw literally dropped when I saw it.  Vertical toy storage that doesn’t need a wall… now there’s something.  Hello Pottery Barn Kids people???