Conquering fridge clutter: Intro to my mess

April 16, 2013

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Do you hang things on your refrigerator? I started doing this when my kids were little - the fridge was always covered with photos and pieces of their artwork. But my kids are 23 & 21 now. Maybe it's time to clean off the fridge?

Somehow, over the years I ended up with a magnet "collection". And I have photos of my nieces, nephews, Gus's cousins' kids, and friends' kids on the fridge. I like them where I can see them as I walk by. A couple of times, I took everything off the fridge, only to be questioned by Gus and the kids - and they were a little upset. So I needed to come up with a plan that would make everyone happy.

At first, I thought about painting the exterior cabinet that houses the fridge with magnetic paint. But the more I read about it, the more it seemed like it was a crap shoot as to whether or not it would work well. I didn't want to ruin the cabinet, so I went back to the drawing board.

After a lot of consideration, I sketched some ideas and came up with something I liked that would also be fairly easy and inexpensive to do. I want to share those projects with you, so I'll be breaking them down into individual projects/posts - with a final post showing you everything together!

I'm so excited, because this series of posts will include the debut of "All Gus'ed Up" - a new category of posts revolving around Gus's projects! Get it? All gussied up? All Gus'ed Up? (Please note that y'all should be ROTFLOL or at the very least chuckling at my clever wit!) We have a lot of spring/summer projects planned, so I hope you'll come back to see them, and tell all your friends, too!

Some of what you'll be seeing about conquering refrigerator clutter:

easy-to-make frames
magnetic board
picture board
cork boards & hooks

Check out the "before" pictures again:

Yes. That is a Thomas the Tank Engine mylar balloon. No, there are no children in my household. Gus likes trains. Thomas the Tank Engine is a train. Buddy used to watch Thomas when he was little, and Gus still watches it. I tried to put the balloon away (I got it for Gus for his birthday two years ago), but Gus got upset with me. So there it is. For everyone to see.

If you think that's bad - take a look at the mat under the cat/dog water bowls (Hey, the outside of the bowls may be dirty, but at least the inside is clean!):