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!

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!

to do list: the green table

I wanted to complete a small task tonight so I decided to tackle another piece of furniture in the dining room: the green table. Our apartment seriously lacks functional storage space which is why we have so much furniture with drawers and built-in cupboards. This has resulted in us living like squirrels, tucking things here and there, behind things and under things not always out of sight but sometimes out of mind. This probably accounts for why we have double of a lot of things; stuff gets so jumbled together it's easy to miss or completely forget that you already own three bottles of super glue. The drawers below are perfect examples of this. They serve as a catch-all for random stuff we don't know what else to do with: extra headphones, a marker to cover up scratches on a car, a cigar (Tim's), and an empty bag that says "keep this away from babies and children" (did I mention this drawer is at Jack's height?).

I'm amazed at how many loose screws and various wall hanging devices and tools we have. I ended up condensing them into one of Jack's old shoe boxes (it's tiny) since I had absolutely no idea what else to do with them. Of course, now I have to find somewhere to put that box, which brings me back to my point about lacking functional storage space. One of the frustrating parts about this project was just how much stuff I had nowhere to relocate! Some of it I'm ashamed to even say we had within Jack's reach (including a rusty nail and all those bottles of super glue) and though he's learned to leave these drawers alone, I'd rather not risk finding him gluing his head to the floor. So while I'm happy with the way the drawers look now, I still have a box of leftovers that I don't have a place for.

I still feel like the drawers are full of random stuff but at this point I'm satisfied. I also found a spot for Tim's blood pressure monitor (in the CVS bag) which was previously stored under the coffee table in full view. And yes, I do know that batteries are NOT kid friendly, but at this point I'm just happy there's nothing in there Jack can impale himself with. Unless you count that rather sharp edged ruler. Or the screw drivers. *sigh* I'm going to count it as a win for now. When one of the kitchen drawers is free, I'll find them a new home.

to do list: the bench.

Though we thought we were coming to the end of whatever sickness the boys are fighting (two days ago everyone seemed better), yesterday was definitely round two. If the virus had a voice, I bet it would have whispered, "Oh, I'm just getting started" in our ears. Thankfully - all glory to God - I have been spared of anything other than occasionally feeling a little off (my main concern being the baby). While I should have spent the day resting whenever possible or disinfecting the house - I got as far as the door knobs - I was determined to cross at least one thing off my "other" to do list. Well, I'm proud to report that I crossed off two.

We recently moved a book case out of the front room to make space for the new media cabinet, so there were lots of books piled on top of the dining room table and I was starting to feel like a hoarder. It was great motivation to finally sort through them, as well as all our other books, putting aside those that we don't plan on reading again (or ever). I ended up with two bags and a box-full ready to be sold to Half Price Books. In an age of e-readers (of which I'm not a fan) I tend to treat books like liquid gold, so letting go of them was made easier by the promise of cold hard cash in my hot little hand. I went into the store with approximately fifty books to sell and walked back out with $33. Tim had predicted $10, so getting triple that was "better than a kick in the pants" as my dad likes to say.

The project I was really itching to get to though was the dining room bench. That's it above, if you hadn't guessed, complete with that infamous $20 pillow I splurged on. Formerly, the seat cushion was collecting dust at my mom's waiting to be re-covered and the bench top was always littered with papers and random things we didn't have a place for. However, the top was nothing compared to the mess that lurked below in the cabinet:

It's like one of those cliche joke cupboards where if you open the door or take one thing out, everything comes toppling down. I wanted the space to primarily serve as a place to store games so I started by sorting and condensing those. I took out the tea lights but kept the bigger candles, which we rotate on the mantlepiece, and made room for some dvds we needed a place for. I also found a spot for the placemats, which almost never get used except when my mom's here (she's the only one that bothers to get them out). I don't even want to know what she thought every time she'd go to get them out since they were always just shoved in a corner. Hopefully she'll be pleasantly surprised by their handy location and tidy appearance the next time she's in the mood for a placemat.

Not too shabby, considering it took me all of twenty minutes to organize.