Lately I have been feeling really guilty. I have been planning for a new baby girl (in other words shopping!) and planning for preschool, which has involved a bit of shopping, and a LOT of printing.
I know the organizing rule that when you bring new stuff in, old stuff should go out...and that has not been happening in this house! Some of it is not for lack of trying, I have listed a few things on craigslist several times, but so far as many replies as I have gotten, no one has followed through. So today I went to work re-listing items, apparently if you try to make 4 posts one right after another "craigslist can't keep up" and you have to wait a while...I don't know how long that is as I tried over an hour later and still got that message!
However, that's still no where near the number of things I need to be getting rid of, and so this weekend I am going to start with a small goal to get rid of 25 items. They must LEAVE the house by Monday and items that are already in the donate box do not count.
So far I have collected:
-3 shirts out of my closet that are way too small, which I will be giving to my neighbor's daughter
-3 shirts out of my son's "store for winter" bin that I don't think he will fit in next winter, that will go in the donate box.
I have less than 14 weeks until baby #2 arrives, and I really want to be able to relax and enjoy my baby without the stress of all this clutter and disorganization when she arrives. So I have a ton of work to do in the next 3 months...hopefully that means more activity on this blog and a more peaceful Momma!
PS, you can check out my new pre-school/tot school blog over at http://piecesofparenthood.blogspot.com/
Friday, June 17, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Closet Project (Almost) Complete
I decided to go ahead and post this even though there are several finishing touches to be done. Mainly touch up paint, and some more things to be organized and put away. My husband is out of town this week though, and I had the boys pick up the toys in the living room before nap, so I went ahead and put them away in the closet, and I am loving it! No more stacks of toy bins in the living room and the big toys with no place to go! Now the boys will have to ask for what they want to play with, and I can easily have them pick up one thing before they are allowed to have another bin out.
Now my pictures are not too good because I just snapped some quick pics, but here they are:
Before:
I took the hanging closet organizer out, and it will most likely be going in Baby #2's closet. We keep the dresser in his closet because it doesn't match his furniture, and it will save space once we move the big guest bed into M's room. And yes his closet is packed full of clothes...in my defense...I do keep a lot of long sleeves and sweatshirts even for summer so that on cooler days I have a variety to choose from.
Now for the after:
One of the best things we did, was to move the closet rod down just a bit so we could go from having one shelf to having 2 shelves. I love this so that I can put his big toys on the bottom and I can reach them easily. Yet I will have a top shelf that may be hard for me to reach, but I can store things that I do not need to get to as often. I will probably be storing some of his "to grow into" items such as shoes and clothes that I have as hand me downs from my nephew, that I haven't gotten to organizing yet. Adding the extra shelf is something I definitely plan to be doing in the new baby's closet also!
I used the spot on the right bottom side of the closet to add some more shelves. These will function better for him now that he is older than the closet organizer I had. I can store his toy bins (which I do plan to make labels for someday) and still have a little bit of room left which I am sure I will soon find something laying around the house of his that needs to be put away.
Here you can see the spots that need to be fixed with the paint because initially my husband put the shelves at 18 inches apart and it made them too high so that the clothes hit the top shelf and I wouldn't be able to store anything on it, so he redid them to be 12 inches apart and it works great this way. But he barely finished up Sunday evening and M had to be going to bed so the paint touch ups will have to wait until my husband gets home this weekend.
I am so thankful to my husband for doing this project, I am already starting to feel better now that I have somewhere to put the toys away. I know that as we continue to do these projects I will feel better and better as things start to really have specific homes!
Now my pictures are not too good because I just snapped some quick pics, but here they are:
Before:
I took the hanging closet organizer out, and it will most likely be going in Baby #2's closet. We keep the dresser in his closet because it doesn't match his furniture, and it will save space once we move the big guest bed into M's room. And yes his closet is packed full of clothes...in my defense...I do keep a lot of long sleeves and sweatshirts even for summer so that on cooler days I have a variety to choose from.
Now for the after:
One of the best things we did, was to move the closet rod down just a bit so we could go from having one shelf to having 2 shelves. I love this so that I can put his big toys on the bottom and I can reach them easily. Yet I will have a top shelf that may be hard for me to reach, but I can store things that I do not need to get to as often. I will probably be storing some of his "to grow into" items such as shoes and clothes that I have as hand me downs from my nephew, that I haven't gotten to organizing yet. Adding the extra shelf is something I definitely plan to be doing in the new baby's closet also!
I used the spot on the right bottom side of the closet to add some more shelves. These will function better for him now that he is older than the closet organizer I had. I can store his toy bins (which I do plan to make labels for someday) and still have a little bit of room left which I am sure I will soon find something laying around the house of his that needs to be put away.
Here you can see the spots that need to be fixed with the paint because initially my husband put the shelves at 18 inches apart and it made them too high so that the clothes hit the top shelf and I wouldn't be able to store anything on it, so he redid them to be 12 inches apart and it works great this way. But he barely finished up Sunday evening and M had to be going to bed so the paint touch ups will have to wait until my husband gets home this weekend.
I am so thankful to my husband for doing this project, I am already starting to feel better now that I have somewhere to put the toys away. I know that as we continue to do these projects I will feel better and better as things start to really have specific homes!
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Making our house a home
I know I haven't posted on this blog in a very long time. Honestly, I had pretty much given up with how unsuccessful last year turned out. I had all these hopes of getting organized, and did not accomplish even a fraction of what I had hoped. The few things I did accomplish quickly fell apart without constant maintenance, that I have yet to figure out.
I thought I would give up this blog all together, but a friend of mine found this blog a while back and said that it inspired her to do some much needed organization in some of her kitchen cabinets. Which in turn inspired me to get back on the wagon and try again.
Now I have a plan for the future, I want to buy a bigger house with 4 bedrooms instead of 3 and of course have a bigger yard, etc, etc. I spend a lot time thinking about it and how to make it happen, and in turn I neglect the house I live in. I think "well I don't want to put too much money and effort in here because I would rather save to get our dream house" I realize that this is totally off and I should be making the house we live in our home, instead of planning for something that we will be lucky if it happens in the next 10 years. So I am determined to focus on turning the house we have into something that can feel more like home, and be more pleasant to live in for the time that we are here.
We have several projects lined up for the coming months. Putting some extra shelves in our son's closet, and some extra shelves in our hall cabinet. We are planning to stack our washer and dryer so that we can take the dryer side and turn it into a pantry, and turn our entry closet back into a storage/coat closet since it really does not function well as a pantry. And most important of all, turning our guest bedroom into a nursery for the new baby girl that we are expecting in September!
I thought I would give up this blog all together, but a friend of mine found this blog a while back and said that it inspired her to do some much needed organization in some of her kitchen cabinets. Which in turn inspired me to get back on the wagon and try again.
Now I have a plan for the future, I want to buy a bigger house with 4 bedrooms instead of 3 and of course have a bigger yard, etc, etc. I spend a lot time thinking about it and how to make it happen, and in turn I neglect the house I live in. I think "well I don't want to put too much money and effort in here because I would rather save to get our dream house" I realize that this is totally off and I should be making the house we live in our home, instead of planning for something that we will be lucky if it happens in the next 10 years. So I am determined to focus on turning the house we have into something that can feel more like home, and be more pleasant to live in for the time that we are here.
We have several projects lined up for the coming months. Putting some extra shelves in our son's closet, and some extra shelves in our hall cabinet. We are planning to stack our washer and dryer so that we can take the dryer side and turn it into a pantry, and turn our entry closet back into a storage/coat closet since it really does not function well as a pantry. And most important of all, turning our guest bedroom into a nursery for the new baby girl that we are expecting in September!
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