Completing the Home Command Center

This post is the completes Pantry Organization Part 1. Other than making the door magnetic and adding a fabric covered cork board there were several elements I wanted to add to make the command center functional for our family. I did a lot of research to find exactly what I was looking for and thought I’d share it all with you here.

A Week-to-Week Dry Erase Calendar

I have a good friend who has one of these and I thought it was AMAZING. The weeks break apart and when one week is up you just wipe it off and add it to the bottom. You always have four weeks of what’s going on right there in front of you. We color coded calendar items that match the color coding in my iCal. It’s fantastic! I found this calendar on amazon.com. (I actually bought two cause I wanted all black, so if you’re looking for an all red calendar let me know.)

You’ll notice that I shot these photos back in November. I’ve been holding off on this post so I could share with you what worked for us and the things we’ve added as we went along. I’ve started to make special magnets for the calendar. For example Sam dog gets her heart worm pill on the 15th of every month. I created a little heart magnet that always lives on the 15th of the month, no matter what day that may fall on.

Extra Strong Magnets

I purchased a pack of extra strong magnets from Hobby Lobby to use on the top portion of our home command center. We like to keep special things up here like photos and our friends’ wedding invitation (which I happened to design). It’s also a great place to put up doctors appointment reminders or I love you post-it notes.

Room-by-Room To Do List

This little gem has made my life 800 times easier. Bill works really well with to do lists, if I put something on a list he does it. It’s magical really. The only thing was I was finding myself writing a lot of to do lists with a lot of the same information in a lot of random places. So I came up with the idea to create to do lists per room and break it down by daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. There is even a to do list for the yard which includes seasonal tasks like winterizing the pipes. I got all the lists laminated at a local teacher supply store for 25 cents a foot and they are now dry eraseable!

Small Magnetic Dry Erase Boards

I found these two mini magnetic dry erase boards on amazon.com. In these photos they are my to do list and Bill’s to do list as well as the color code key for the calendar, but they’ve since changed. I keep my to do list on paper so I wasn’t really utilizing the board. It’s now a things to do when we don’t know what to do board. So many times we’ll be talking with friends about some cool thing in Houston and we’ll say, “we should do that/go there one day!” And then we promptly forget and never do. Soooo, we’ve started writing them down and we’ve since done two of the things on our list.

Magnetic Clothes Pins

I also made magnetic clothes pins for our command center in green, gray, black and white. They’re super easy to make. Grab some wooden clothes pins and paint them. I’ve seen some painted with glitter paint which I thought was super cool but didn’t really fit the kitchen. Then hot glue some magnets on the back. And you’re done.

Hanging Basket and Extra Organization

I found this fantastic basket at the container store. The pen cups are empty cans spray painted black (the same paint I used on the entry way frame). I bought all different colored dry erase markers on Amazon.com and store them in the re-purposed tin can pen cups. They also hold the dry erase board cleaner, pens, tape, extra magnetic clothes pins, and pretty much anything else I need them to hold. I also store recipe cards, a small container from Ikea filled with thumb tacks, and the calendar Bill keeps track of his travel schedule in the basket. It definitely completes the command center.

Check Out the Other Posts In Pantry Organization Part 1:

Using Magnetic Paint

How to Make a Fabric Covered Cork Board