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!