January

After reading all the inspiring blogs and looking at all the pretty pictures on tumblr I've come to a sort of revelation.

No matter how much decorating or remodeling I do, it won't matter much if we are surrounded by clutter and mess.

It doesn't matter how many boxes or plastic bins we buy, there is way too much stuff around here.

My husband and I are slowly going through the corners and piles of stuff we've aquired in about 10 years....and getting rid of lots. Some is being donated, some will hopefully be sold this spring at a yard sale, and lots is being thrown away or recycled.

I'm still aquiring things here and there at thrift stores, but I'm trying to be a little more selective about my purchases.

With three little kids running around it's sometimes hard to find the time to go through all the stuff, but we are working in little hour long shifts here and there.
I'm hoping by July most of the excess will be long gone.

So after being inspired over and over again by photos and posts about pretty rooms I've realized we'll never get there if we don't starting cleaning and organizing.

Hooray for January and the hopes it brings!

An Organized Closet!

We've lived in our house for over nine years and I've never made an attempt to organize my little closet in the eaves. I finally decided that of all the home improvements that could be made, this was one that might inspire me to do all sorts of stuff!
We have a friend who does carpentry work and he made some wonderful pantry shelves for us years a go. I finally got around to asking him to make some shelves for my closet. So, for a mere $100, he measured and then disappeared for a week, showing up with custom...nothing fancy mind you, but wonderful custom made shelves!
You can see how horrible it was before.
I forgot to take some before photos of what it was like with clothes in there, so the first are photos of a pretty empty closet. Only one lonely shelf just off the floor. I had rubbermaid tubs in there to store out of season sweaters and the like and shoes were just jumbled in piles.

And here's a photo of what it was like with all the contents piled in heaps while he worked:

And here are the newly installed shelves!

So then I set to task getting rid of tons and trying to figure out where to put everything:

I don't think the photos quite do it justice. I am so very excited about this home improvement!

I am still looking for some baskets or nice bins to put on the floor to keep shoes in. I'm also trying to think about what other items I could store in there.

I think in the next year our bedroom is going to get a complete overhaul.

We painted it nine years a go when we moved in and it's feeling a little dated.

It's amazing what an organized closet will do for morale!

An Organized Dream Come True!

I am the proud recipient of a wonderful hand-me-down!
My parents recently moved to a new house and have found that they are no longer in need of a wonderful piece of furniture.
I'm still not quite sure what to call it. A buffet?
I'm not sure that fits, but it's the closest thing I can come up with.
No matter what we call it, it is an interesting piece that's for sure.
My dad aquired it at a university auction. It has metal drawers and we believe it was used to hold seed or some other research project materials.
The best thing about this unique item is that it is a perfect piece to store all sorts of kid things.
I already have four drawers full of puzzles, two full of art supplies like paints, markers and crayons and a whole drawer full of track for match-box cars. These things were previously scattered about the house in various weird locations and I was constantly trying to remember where we had put things and frustrated that there wasn't a central location for it all.

I might have to secure the drawers for a while as my youngest boy is trying to open them and see how much he can take out. But I think it holds years of storage and a centralized location for kid stuff.

A spot to store research project materials indeed!