It's Clean!

Remember that time I said I'd clean and organize my house every day 

for 31 days and then quit after Day 2?

Yeah, well yesterday I did about a week's worth of organizing in less than 12 hours. I barely ate or drank anything because I was so committed to the task at hand (I'm pretty sure I was dehydrated by the end; my lips were all shriveled and I felt light headed). Once I get it into my head that I'm going to do something, there's no stopping me. Just ask Tim, who very kindly watched the kids for most of the late afternoon/evening so I could carry on interrupted.

And what is it, you ask, that I was so consumed by? Our Hoarders worthy spare room + closet. The one our baby sleeps in (room, not closet). It's one of those rooms that requires a closing of the door when guests are over or that requires a disclaimer before someone's allowed to enter "Yeah, this room is kind of a disaster, sorry...." Don't let the following images fool you (which were taken mid-purge) - Moses' pack n play is the only livable area in the room. The closet was about three to five feet high in stuff (depending on what you're looking at) and completely impassable. And yesterday, I'd just had enough. It was time.

Again, these were taken after already having cleared out stuff. As you can see, the mess took over most of the apartment.  

Um, we don't normally keep boxes stored in Moses' bed....it was a temporary holding place.

All those empty diaper boxes came in handy for the donations + recyclables!

Tim had to go to a meeting while I was in the thick of it, so Moses kept me company even busier for about an hour before I had to pause so he could nap in the still hazardous room. He enjoyed army crawling from box to box so he could tip them and pull everything out.

Tip: Don't let your 10 month old crawl around in random junk because soon enough you'll find him chewing on a tiny piece of plastic. Then you'll wonder where that penny went that was sitting on the floor next to him. After that you'll have to google "what to do if baby swallows something?" and will be paranoid until said penny is located. 

 Twenty four hours later, I am still dealing with the after effects of cleaning out three years worth of stuff. Things like spare buttons and an old file box that I don't want to throw out/ give away, but that doesn't exactly have a place either. The good news is, the stuff I did put away now has a place and a location I actually know. I also found $15 cash and discovered our awesome, thought to be dead pocket camera has been given a second chance at life. These next pictures were courtesy of it's revived body parts:

The closet: It finally has space to walk! And I actually know what is in every one of those boxes.

Sorry for the terrible yellow hue in all of these pictures - as great as our camera is, it's no match for bad lighting (and I hate using a flash).

I'll be doing a future post on organizing and staying organized, but one of the keys here was getting rid of the desk. This was mostly prompted by the need to reclaim floor space without moving Moses out of the room (I'll talk about why another time) as well as the fact that we don't actually use the desk, except as a catch-all. The only real purpose it served was to hold the printer, which now happily lives on the book case.

We also needed a place to keep the IKEA Poang chair + ottoman, since Jack now has a sweet fort hanging in his room! It still requires a few finishing touches but I can't wait for the reveal - coming soon!

Fast 5 Minute Project

So maybe it wasn't a great idea to start a project like this  the same day my dad goes in for quadruple bypass surgery.... (he's doing great, by the way).

I was at the hospital yesterday from 5:30 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. and was only going on four hours sleep. Needless to say, I didn't get around to accomplishing any projects. So far today has also been mostly spent at the hospital and the kids are on opposite nap schedules which means, yet again, my time is limited. However, I did manage to get one really simple, easy, fast (re: uninteresting) project out of the way: tidying up the coat rack.

It's amazing how unsightly it can become when I try to cram too many coats/hats/scarves/bags on it at a time. The reality is, the only thing necessary on this rack is the coats/hats we wear daily and our super ugly but-can't-be-bothered-to-pretend-it-doesn't-always-hang-there t.v. antenna (note the black cord.)

That's all I got done today. 

But something is better than nothing.

Sorry folks, I promise to bump up the exciting factor a little for tomorrow.

31 Days of .....

 

Last year the author of Pancakes and French Fries joined the 31 Days series and did what she calls "The William Morris Project." It inspired me to simplify my own living space and since she's doing it again starting October 1 (and because my house still needs a lot of simplifying) I've decided to do 31 Days of the same idea, whether you want to call it "The William Morris Project" or simply "31 Days of Cleaning and Organizing". I think William Morris sounds a bit more intriguing though, so we'll go with that. I even made a button (see sidebar)!

The difference this time around is that I now have two children instead of one, which means smaller windows of time to get projects accomplished. And when I say small windows of time, I mean...about an hour during the day. That is all. Of course, there's always the evening. But by the time the kids are both in bed, the last thing I want to do is empty out the junk drawer in the kitchen and put it back together again. So I'm going to keep most of my projects fairly small, simple, and capable of being completed within an hour or less. Naturally, there are one or two projects (like the closet that looks like its out of Hoarders) that will take a bit longer than that and so I'll have to schedule those for the weekend when Tim can watch the kids while I chip away at our disorganization. There are also a couple of projects from last year's list that I never ended up tackling and will do so this time around.

So far, here is my list of what I want to accomplish in the next 31 Days (as forewarned, this list is so not glamorous):

•  Organize kitchen cupboards and drawers
•  Donate/sell unwanted kitchen appliances
• Sort and purge toy bins
• Sort and donate books
• Organize sock drawers
• Sort coat rack
• Pair down shopping bags
• Choose Scripture for display around house
• Hang Scripture pictures
• Recycle endless supply of cardboard boxes
• Sort/donate/purge at least three boxes from basement
• Deliver donations to thrift store
• Organize desk
• Clean cutlery drawer
•  Tackle junk drawers (kitchen, dining room)
• Clean beside/on top of fridge
• Art for reading nook
• Organize bathroom cabinet
• Organize closets
• Tackle spare room closet
• Throw out iris plants (I'll explain later...)

While this isn't 31 individual projects, many of them can be stretched over the course of a few days. Plus, I'm sure I'll think of some more things to do as I go along. Let me know if you plan to follow along or even do a bit of organizing yourself in the spirit of William Morris!