Re-purposing!

This week I've been attacking my house with renewed motivation and actually making progress - yay!  Thanks to awesome conversations with organizational-minded friends, I started getting inspired to move things around and organize.  In the process of all that, I also am purging tons of stuff!!

I took a glorious trip to The Container Store this week (I seriously could stay in the store all day) and got some great tools to create our new "Homeschool" center.  Over the past weeks, just about every surface in our house was starting to get covered in some kind of educational item.  It was not a pretty sight.  My original idea for storage was not working and that meant things were just being left out for easy access (but not so easy on the eyes - MESS!).

I'm still in the process of creating this (there is definitely another trip to The Container Store in my future) but here is a sneak peak:

This is a vast improvement from what we had before!  I originally had everything in a difficult to access cabinet and it was all fitting in like a jigsaw puzzle!  You basically had to take 10 things out to get just to one item.  Now they are all easily accessible and right next to the table where we do most of our work. The extra storage also means I can store Corbin's therapy toys as well!

What I love most of all is that I was able to re-purpose our old entertainment center.  Now that TVs are such different styles, these cabinets are obsolete!  And no one really wanted it when I tried several times to sell it on Craigslist.  I love this cabinet - it's made so beautifully and is solid wood, but I just couldn't figure out what to do with it.  I ended up just being a place for clutter to collect!  Now it has a great purpose and is an awesome addition to our house.

Have any of you been re-purposing lately?  I'd love to hear about any other recycled projects as my mind is moving more and more towards re-purposing instead of buying new!