Making My Organizing Efforts Look Good

I'd like to show you a small part of my organizing efforts from this week. You know that I am leaving soon, and I really wanted to get all of my stuff in order so that it is not in the way while I am gone. I also needed to clean some stuff out of my room, as my parents have an intern coming this summer who will be using my room.

Okay, so the truth is that my stuff was a mess and really needed to be purged and sorted badly. And I've been meaning to do it all winter and decided to save it for my last 3 days here instead. Boom. Now you know.

I had a pile of pictures that needed a home. Some were doubles of pictures already in an album, and some were just random pictures from who knows where that probably should just be pitched, but I can't throw away pictures. I did go through them and made myself part with the ones that were too dark to even see what the picture was supposed to be of...and the ones where my finger got in front of the lens....but even those were somewhat hard to part with. I mean, how cute was I trying to take pictures as a little girl with my finger in the way???

Well anyway, because I was doing this at the last minute, I just grabbed some old card boxes and decided to cover then with wrapping paper. I put a small piece of tape on the cover to help hold the paper in place while I fit it to the box.

Yes, this used to be my old pencil box, whatever gave you that idea?

Then I trimmed the corners a little bit:

...and cut straight to the corner to help all the paper lay right.

Then I just folded it into the cover and taped it all real good. I tried to make it all lay really flat so that the cover would still fit down over the box.

Ta-da!

The first one didn't come out so hot...see the ugly box peeking out?? Oh well, live and learn.

Then I just grabbed some scrapbooking scraps and stuck a label on it.

And popped my pictures inside!

I ended up with three boxes of pictures:

Kinda cute, in the end. Not bad for a quick fix. Cardboard boxes probably aren't among the top best things to store pictures in, but its a way to work with what I had.

How do you store your pictures? Do you have trouble parting with pictures, even if they are just old doubles? Anyone else ever get their finger in the way?