Week 3 Goal

Well, the camera seems to have been misplaced...again. You'll probably notice that this is a recurring theme. One of these days my organizing goal will be simply to find a good home for the camera to live in. That's not this week, though. My goal is going to be my mudroom. It's right next to the mudroom and has piles of, well, crap in it. (Now no one call DCFS, it's not literal crap! I'm not that bad!) It has become the home of the unused laundry cart (which some of you may remember from week 1) and numerous diaper and church bags, not to mention craft projects that were waiting for a home while my craft room had lighting installed. Ah, but you haven't heard about that project yet...we'll get to that tomorrow. Meanwhile, we're going to be focusing on the mudroom...as soon as I find the camera to take a before picture. I know it's here somewhere...

Find your Style

So, I'm not good at figuring out which style I like. I'm kind of a it's-comfortable-and-the-kids-can't-kill-the-fabric kind of decorator. Unfortunately, our last couch set was not so kid-friendly as it turns out, so it looks awful now. Oh, well, now I can move on and figure out what I'd like better next time.

So I took a quiz that my friend had linked from on her blog. It turns out that I am 50% Cottage chic, 25% Nantucket Style and 25% Rustic Revival. Now the next trick is figuring out what that means! :) I'm just kidding.

According to the quiz, Cottage chic is lighter colors, with intimate seating arrangements and somewhat ocean-inspired. Well, I agree with the last two, but I definitely do not do light colors with kids if I can help it. Maybe someday when I have no kids at home...nope, grandkids'll ruin it too! Oh, well. Nantucket Style doesn't actually seem to be that different from cottage chic, so maybe the two would've been better combined, but either way, light, airy and intimate seems to be the running theme. Rustic revival is a combination of city and country, bringing together the best of both worlds, but also very light colors. I'm not sure it knows me very well! ;)

Check out how well it works for you here.

Yay for comments and a preview!

Thanks everyone for the comments you're leaving! I love knowing that other people are looking at this blog. My other blog doesn't get many comments, but it's mainly for journaling purposes so I don't care, but I'm grateful that other people get to see this one. So thanks again and feel free to leave as many comments as you'd like. I love 'em! :)

Meanwhile, here are some befores from some projects I'm working on. Hopefully I'll have afters up on Saturday, at least of the desk.

Week 2: The cabinet

The cabinet really should be followed by some eerie sound effect from a horror movie. A good "dun-dun-dun" would not be uncalled for. Every time we had family or friends come over, my husband would shove stuff that was cluttering the counter into this lovely box that fit right into the cabinet. Granted, it kept it close and easy to get to, or at least that was the thought. I think he figured that if we needed it on the counter that it should go someplace close. But most of the time, it wasn't anything that we really needed in the room to begin with. So, we had lots of things shoved in there, including a sprinkler for the kids to run through, jewelry boxes, etc. Well, without further ado, here's the before:

And here's the after:

Anyone who paid close attention last week will recognize the file box from the laundry room. The stuff on the top shelf is filing stuff. The red binder has medical records in it for our information. Unfortunately there's a whole boatload of papers between the binder and the file box that need to be filed and there's just no more room in the file box. It might be time for another. I started to go through the original file box, but a lot of it is stuff I need to go through with hubby, and he's out of town, so it'll have to wait. The boatload of papers consists of stuff for our new house, including inspection info, paperwork, floor plans and manuals from the old owner (which I was very grateful for the other day, when the oven starting beeping at me for an unknown reason...still unknown, but at least we got it to stop!). The green card file boxes are actually quotes that my hubby's grandmother collected during her life, and I have an ongoing goal to put them all on the computer and get a cd of them to her grandchildren. I think it'll be nice for them to know what kinds of things their grandmother thought were important, and since I never met her (just her husband), it's been kind of fun for me as well.

The bottom shelf is not stuff intended to stay there. I think once the kids are older, if we still haven't remodeled our teeny-tiny, poorly laid-out kitchen by then, this shelf will have some art supplies. Right now, with three kids ages four and under, that's just asking for trouble. So currently the stack on the left is computer supplies (which will move downstairs once the basement is finished enough for the computer to move down there), the stack next to that is phone books and the thing on the right is actually an alarm system key pad that kept beeping at me that I was sick of. We don't actually subscribe to that alarm system, so it was a pretty pointless keypad in the dumbest spot to get to. So when it kept beeping, I didn't feel bad at all ripping it out. Currently it's staying under there until I can decide if it's worth keeping it or getting rid of it completely, which will probably mean talking to hubby about it. Meanwhile, it's close to its old home, not in the way of anything else, and nothing else was really going to fit there, so I figured it wasn't a big loss of space. I think I'd like a container for the computer stuff, but meanwhile this works for now. I'm loving this challenge right now, but I'm so grateful I picked something small for this week since my hubby's out of town and Baldy and I managed to get sick. This was just the right sized project! I'll decide tonight what next week's project is going to be and post it tomorrow with a before picture!

Week 1: Laundry Room

Well, Melinda over at Coming Clean is hosting an eight week organizational party. I'm a little late jumping on the bandwagon. We were supposed to post our goal last week and before pictures, but I didn't find it until after that, so I'm hopping in with my before and after pictures now and posting my goal for this week. So this week I decided to go for the laundry room. My laundry room was a bit of a mess, as evidenced by the unfortunate before picture. Here it is (I'll go hide my head in shame while you look...let me know when to come back!)

Oh, you're done! Were you frightened? You should be! My laundry room had clearly turned into a dumping ground. Tools were in there, a cart that wasn't being used at all, let alone to its full potential. The washer and dryer were completely covered with clean clothes (why, I don't know, but they were there...probably out of season stuff waiting for boxes).

Well, step one was to clear the floor. Which took a while. It also meant putting Baldy somewhere else for a while. Daddy had to watch him for a bit. Thank heavens for Daddy being home! Well, we got most of the stuff into the garbage. Some of it was clothes that hadn't been unpacked since we moved in three months ago, so those were unpacked and stuck in the hamper. The tools were moved out to the work bench that my dad brought us for the garage a little while ago. The filebox, unfortunately did not get moved. The next project should probably be the cabinet in the dining room, since that's where the filebox should go, but can't currently fit! Anyway, extra surfaces were cleared and things were put in their rightful places. So here's the after.

I have to admit, the candle falling off the washer this morning was helpful for finishing getting the floor cleared. It's amazing how much you get done when you realize that you'll cut yourself if you walk into the room in bare feet. (We never wear shoes at our house, so this is a big motivator!) In the bottom picture, you'll see the tippy-top of a bag next to the washer. That's in the trash can. Yep, I finally put a trash can in there for just the laundry room. Through that door is a half bath and we kept trying to put the lint from the dryer into the trash in there, but if the bathroom's being used you can't do that. The lint just kept getting stacked on the dryer and then falling on the floor. So the trash can was added. And do you see that lovely table in the picture above that? My daddy helped me with that. I wanted a table in there to fold laundry on (for when I actually get my act together enough to fold clothes as they come out of the dryer), but I didn't want it down permanently, since I have a clothes sorter under it. So that thing can actually fold out of the way. It's great. A little smaller than we'd hoped, but you do what you can. It's become a drop spot, though, so I was grateful to get it uncovered. The towel hanger in the pictures is actually not for towels. We actually have towel racks in our bathrooms (unlike the apartment we lived in when we bought the towel holders) so it wasn't being used. I decided it would be perfect for a clothes dryer, for those pesky line dry clothes. Really, let's face it, I use it for bras. I don't believe in line dry clothes with three little kids. There's just not enough time for that. Anyway, this is a pretty exciting thing for me to have done. It's the cleanest the laundry room has been since we moved in! That's very exciting for me. Now, for next week I should probably just go with the cabinet under the counter in the dining room. It's a little overflowing for some reason and needs to be taken care of. Hopefully it's not too bad a project, since hubby's going out of town for two weeks. We'll cross our fingers. Stay tuned for before pictures (when Blogger's working a bit better for me!).

P.S. I forgot to mention the cost of this organizational project: $0! I had everything I needed in the garage! Yay!