Changes for the girl's room

I hope everyone is had a wonderful weekend!  I ended up getting food poisoning on Friday (that's what I get for splurging on pizza and hot wings ;-) and slept all day!  The good news is that I woke up with so much energy to get things done on Saturday. 

One of my lovely friends dropped off a huge amount of hand-me-downs for my daughter, which proved to start a very big project.  Charlee loves her clothes like no one else, especially when they are hand-me-downs!  This is what our front entry looked like after Charlee examined and tried on everything...



I am so grateful for these adorable clothes, but I had no idea where I was going to put them!  My girls have been sharing a room since we moved and that makes storage much tighter.

Luckily one problem turned into a solution for another...

Recently Colbie has decided that she doesn't want to sleep in her crib any longer and has been waking me up at 3am each morning not wanting to go back to sleep.  I decided I couldn't take it another night, so I decided it was time to switch it to the toddler bed. 

Here is another classic case of my brilliance.  I have had the instructions to this crib under the bed for 4 years (and of course in all that time I have never needed them) and when we moved I put them in that special place so that I would not lose them. 

So began the one hour search...not in the well organized "owner's manuals box," not in the closet with the extra bed rails, not in the other closet with the extra crib sheets, not under the bed, not in the garage...

Frustrated and feeling the day escaping me I decided to just wing it and try to take the bed apart by myself.  Well, no luck with this either because I did not have the right type of screw driver to get the project done.  At this point I gave up and let my dear husband rescue me once again.  Seriously, it is so frustrating sometimes feeling like I can't accomplish the simplest task! 

Brian takes apart the bed and tries to put up the side rails and guess what? Those darn special screws for the guard rails are sitting in the same special place as the instructions.  I convinced him that she doesn't need those silly rails, the bed is practically on the ground as it is.  Besides, she has a bear that is bigger than my husband thanks to my sister that we can lay next to her bed :-) 

Well low and behold, the first night in her new toddler bed she falls out!  Don't worry the over sized bear did it's job, but she was over her new bed.  From then on she has been sleeping with her sister in the big bed.  The funny thing is a few days ago Charlee decided that it is much more fun to sleep in the crib...there was something seriously wrong with this picture when I would come in in the morning and the toddler is in the big bed and the 4 year old is in a crib!

Needless to say the crib just had to go.  It is bitter sweet for me because I hate to think that I don't have a baby left, but it just melts my heart when those two sleep together and cuddle up at night and now I have a spot for this dresser!  I convinced my husband we should sell the crib instead of the dresser it's a win - win right?!

Oh yeah, back to my point earlier...now the clothes have a home inside the new to me dresser instead of my entry way. 

I still have a ton I would like to do to this room, but for now it is so much better.




before - don't judge it didn't always look this bad ;-)

 




after

 

How to declutter your home in minutes

On the journey towards having a clean house with less stress and getting rid of my perfectionism I am on the search for easy decluttering ideas...

Have you ever gotten the call that someone was on the way over and you just about died because your house looked like a bomb just went off and you only had 5 minutes to clean?  I have some quick decluttering ideas to help you clean on a whim and to help keep your house looking picked up.

Today I am going to start with kids toys...

I always had this fear that once we had kids our house was going to look like one big play room. We don't have the luxury of a separate playroom in our house and I definitely wanted our house to still feel like adults live here.  I used to try to get all toys picked up and out of the living room so that it looked adult friendly ;-) but that is down right exhausting.  I have since decided that the best solution to a clutter free home is to incorporate some of the children's toys into our decor. 

I hide some of the unsightly, but often used toys, such as the blue one you see in the corner ;-)  Then for the million little toys and puzzles that get used often, I use a big red tub that we just throw everything into. 

It isn't the prettiest arrangement, but it is certainly better than toys all over the floor and easier than putting everything back in it's place.  The key for me is to have everything be simple for putting things away so that my girls can help as well.

My goal is to replace this entertainment center, since we don't need it any longer, with a cute dresser.  That way I will be able to hide even more toys.  My girls are currently sharing a room, so the more space I have in their room the better!

How do you all avoid clutter and the kid's toys taking over your house?

Doing laundry naked

I bet I got your attention now ;-)

Don't worry I'm not really doing my laundry in the buff, but I have a confession to make...I could definitely relate to how this woman felt when I read this story.  I have the same mentality when doing laundry and cleaning my home.  I want things to be perfectly clean and stay clean!  I hate the day after cleaning because you would never know that I spent 5 hours deep cleaning and doing laundry.  This is completely ridiculous and unpractical especially with 2 kids and 2 dogs; I am setting myself up for torture each week! 

It never really hit me that this was a problem (having a clean house is a good thing, right?) until I looked at it from the perspective of doing laundry naked.  The amazing part is when I first started reading this story I thought for a minute, "how smart!" when I should have been thinking, "how ridiculous!" 

I usually deep clean my house on Sunday (I want the laundry basket empty, the dishes clean and put away, the floors mopped, toilets sparkling, etc.) so that everything feels like a fresh start on Monday.  This has always seemed like a great idea.  However, what I failed to see in my perfect planning, is that come Monday morning there will be clothes in the hamper, toys on the floor, dog hair collecting on the ground, dishes getting thrown in the sink, and Heaven forbid if someone used the toilet!! Instead of feeling like Monday's a fresh start I feel like all my hard work has gone down the drain. There is no end to the messes in life, they just keep coming...

The more I visit blogs and admire other's homes this problem is only going to continue to worsen.  I am nipping it in the bud right now and I am going to focus on having a clean, but liveable home. I am going to make sure my priorities of God, my husband, my girls, and the rest of my friends and family are on the top of my list. 

This doesn't mean that I am going to boycott cleaning since things will get dirty anyway, but it does mean that after I clean my house I will not allow the crankiness and frustration of the clutter and laundry to follow ruin my day :-)  I am also going to start emplimenting easy solutions for a tidy house that will give me more time with my family (I will start sharing some of these soon).

Something I need to always remember is that some people would give anything to trip over their child's toy just one more time, pick up their beloved dog's hair one more day, or clean their departed husband's dirty socks just once more...instead of sitting alone in a clean house. 

God has blessed me with a wonderful family and from this day forward I am vowing to keep a tidy home, full of life's beautiful messes!