Let’s Look: Outdoor Organization

Okay guys. This post. This post almost didn’t happen 😂 I genuinely was planning to just skip this month’s Let’s Look because frankly… for this month’s topic, there is NOTHING TO LOOK AT. Let’s look .. at what? I don’t have any outdoor organization! So instead of an outdoor organization post, I thought I’d do more of a … backyard tour? LOL. Let’s look at my … half-finished, unorganized outdoor space?

Let’s start off in the front, shall we? Here, I present to you … ✨my front lawn✨

As you can see …. it’s kind of a disaster because right now it’s an active construction zone for J’s third garden box he’s making me (it’s going to be the L shaped frame that’s on the left side of the patio). We’ve got trellis and soil bags ready to go with the L shaped garden box once it’s completed… and yea. It’s just kind of a big mess at the moment. But, fun fact! The front lawn looked nothing like this when we first bought the house! We added in the paved patio and extended it further past where the porch originally stopped … we also added in the paved pathway leading to the front door .. replaced the fence… obviously added the porch furniture and the herb box/flowers that you can see off in the far side of the photo. So the space has come a long way!

If you want a closer peek at the garden, it looks something like this right now:

Next up is our backyard, which, to its credit is VERY spacious and large but also half-finished. The only thing in here that was here when we bought the house is the (very old) pool. It’s actually crumbling and falling apart so that’s next on our list of house renovation projects to tackle. Here is the a view of the back half of our backyard … You can see we added a half-court and paved over part of it. The remaining dirt will most likely be turfed over at some point … at least that’s my vision for it right now. You can see that J’s golf toys and hex bar (weight lifting) are all just haphazardly strewn about the basketball court 🙄

And then here is the view of the other half of the backyard, where we spend most of our time when we’re outside. We just had this entire area repaved this summer … before, it was all janky concrete from the 1960s that was lifting and cracked. Now it’s nice and smooth and the kids love to rollerblade/ride their bikes all around the pool!

So … as you can see … there is absolutely no organization LOL. I do have some random shoeshelves placed next to access points into the house but clearly, they are not being used 🙄

A random mini fridge that actually was in my husband’s office pre-COVID (like, actual office, not home office) and has since been moved to the backyard. There’s nothing in it as it doesn’t really keep things cold but … it’s there. And we use it as a weird outdoor shelf and store our outdoor speaker and some bubbles on top of it HAHAH. So fancy, guys. So fancy.

The main patio door that we go in/out from does have some chalk set up in bins and bubbles/rollerblades/etc but … honestly, it’s not really an organization system LOL.

I have random pool stuff scattered all around my backyard in random spots … case in point:

I’d say that probably the ONE and ONLY piece of outdoor organization I have set up is this little box where my kids keep the smaller pool toys and goggles …

And last, we do have this pool shed that was built in who-knows-when that holds our pool equipment. This rickety structure needs to be torn down and rebuilt eventually too but in case you saw it in any of the other pictures and wondered what it was. Here it is.

Anyway, as you can see from the Costco Tommy Bahama foldable chairs, I don’t even really have proper furniture out here other than the umbrella/patio table set that was actually sent to us by my father-in-law HAHAHA. This backyard has great potential but it’s gonna take more time and $$ to really make it live up to all it could be.