Decorative Donations

I didn't think I'd get my 10 Things done today since I am working and then driving to Ohio to help my Dad for the weekend. But I have!

My Dad has recently moved from a four bedroom house to a condo and DESPERATELY needs help setting up a home. He has been a bachelor since my Mom died in 1983. He really has no clue how to set up a household or decorate a home. His new place feels alien and uncomfortable to him and it is my purpose to hopefully help him make it feel like he belongs there this weekend.

I have certain addictions. One of them is household/decorating items. I have an artwork collection, a lamp collection, etc, in the attic. I'm bringing home a few of these things to Ohio for my Dad to help update his early 1980's decor. Hopefully this will be a win-win situation: he can use them, and I can get rid of them!

So, here are my 10(+) things for today:

1-6. Paintings/pictures

7. Round mirror

8-11. Four lamps

12-13. Two complete bed sets.

I hope we can make good use of these. If not, I'll pack them back up in the car and bring them back home!

PS: My maternity clothes on eBay are now up to $84 with nine hours to go. C'mon $150!

more papers

Today, as I've been working on my desk, I decided to tackle the insides of my Bible carrier. I should have taken a before picture, but didn't think about it. However, here's the amount of trash that was pulled out of it. Candy wrappers, old sermon notes, thank you cards to people that didn't get delivered (nice huh?) Thank you cards from people. Notes with people's phone numbers on it, not one but TWO empty note tablets. ...

Here's the after picture, nice and slim, instead of bulging so badly it was almost painful to zip the thing. Not a huge chore, but something that needed dealing with. I'm pleased.

Sayonara, Toaster!

I tackled my 10 things today before I left for work. I didn't plan it this way. It just kind of happened on it's own.

10 things Thursday:
1. Toaster. My MIL broke it on her last visit. One side works, but we are getting our new toaster oven today.
2-3. 2 shower puffs
4. Defunct bottle parts
5. Moldy shower liner
6. Candle that has seen better days
7. Tube of Bain de Soleil
8. Old pens for our junk drawer
9. Easter Lilly
10. Old mascara

Nothing exciting. Just stuff that was cluttering my life.

more desk

Well, here's my ten things for today. This is the top of the computer monitor. The bulk of this stack of cds there were a gift from Christmas. Most of them have been moved to my cd binder, but the stack remained.

Besides the empty cases that were trashed like 12 in all, there was an empty notepad, expired coupons, random stickers, wearable pins... Here's just the cases...

And ta-da! Here's what it looks like without the CRAP on top of it!

the two cards on the top are things I still need to put on the calendar (yah, right there on the wall) but um, you can only do so much before laziness sets in again.

Armoire

I can finally post the before and after pictures of my armoire! I have had it emptied and cleaned, but everything in it hadn't found a home until tonight. I didn't feel legit in posting it until I had done something with everything that was in it.

Back story on the armoire: My husband surprised me with this beautiful antique armoire for my 34th birthday. We had just been married for about 6 months and were living in an apartment. This was our first real piece of furniture.

Before:
After:

I got rid of one full garbage bag of clothes and my box of maternity clothes is currently on eBay (just under two days to go, 6 bids at $46.25 with 11 watchers--how much do you think it will go for???).

I'm still trying to figure out what to do on the left side. There is wasted valuable space!

Tomorrow I return to Z's room to go through some more bins of baby clothes. Hopefully.

The Cabinet

It's not hard to make me happy. Even small things get me really excited. Take my lastest project for example. This is a small cabinet in my kitchen. I never really had a "label" for this cabinet, I just stuck in there whatever I felt like. I knew this would be an easier task because of the size of the cabinet and after my 2 bigger projects, I needed something small! Here is the before pic. Nothing too outrageous but everything is once again, shoved in there (I'm noticing this pattern with myself) I didn't know if I woud be able to even find 10 things to get rid of here. I thought this was more of an organizing project rather than a throwing out project. Turns out, I can find things to throw out just about anywhere!
Here is my 10:
1. A box of generic Stuffing Mix. I have no idea why I bought it or even kept it for so long. My DH isn't a stuffing fan, especially boxed stuff, my kids won't eat it and I'm not even that much of a fan of it. So in the trash it goes.
2. A container of cupcake papers with one left over spongebob paper in there.
3. 3 boxes of Jell-O. Really, I buy the ones already made. They've been in there for a long long time, time to go.
4. an empty box of coffee filters
5. a very old container of green sprinkles, like 2 Christmas' old!
6. One lonely candle
7. an old container of icing gel
8. another old container of icing gel
9. A box of cocoa mix. It's old. There were only 2 left in there, I'm not making them anytime soon. In the trash it goes.

Ok so that is 9 things but techinically there are 3 boxes of Jell-O! I guess you can also count the dirt I got off the shelves as something that is gone too!
This project took about 10 minutes but I was still SO satisfied with the end result. A nice organized cabinet.

Little things do add up.

I kept opening and closing this cabinet last night, just to take a peek! It was nice. Simple things, they make me happy. Neat things, they make me happy.

I will say again that I never realized what a slob I am. When I first heard of this blog I was like Oh I don't even have 10 things to throw away. Bitch please! I have more and more projects that I keep coming up with. So here's to hoping we keep this blog going for a long time. My house needs it!!!

Kids Clothing Purge

My little preemie (who, incidentally will be ONE next week!) is no longer little. In fact, we nicknamed him Giant Baby. I am buying him the same size clothes as my two year old (26-months). He has BLOWN through sizes. In 10 months, we went from preemie size to 18 months. I'm now buying 2Ts for him. As a result, I have bins and bins of clothes that are unorganized and overflowing.

Today's project was to make it through two bins. I was able to get rid of a garbage bag full! I'm going to shoot for another bin (possibly two) tomorrow.
Hopefully I'll be done with this room in the next couple of days!

Purge! Purge! Purge!

My next project

I think I know what will be next. This should be a quick one too. DH just called and asked if we had green food coloring. He decided he was going to try to make Shamrock Shakes, lol don't ask. So I told him we did and he asked where it was and I told him. He's like WHOA how do you find anything in this cabinet. AHHHH he's right. It's a small cabinet and not used for really anything specific. I keep boxed stuff in there and coffee and other random things. So tonight I will tackle all this randomness that is in there and clean it. It shouldn't take too long as I said, it's a small cabinet!

MIL's Refrigerator

I've been spending my weekend days at MIL's while Chris works on the renovations. As a thank you, I cleaned out her fridge, something she hates to do. It took me almost 2 hours!!

Before:

After:

Our Pantry

I feel like I am finally taking the house back since having Liam. I know, I know, almost 11 months later! Before:

So on Friday night I was cleaning the house and somehow I had some energy left & decided to tackle the Pantry. I even found two opened containers of formula that didn't work. Why I didn't throw them out months ago is beyond me.

This is also where I leave my shoes and Chris hangs his coats. We put away his winter coats downstairs & I organized my shoes to be neater.

After

desk papers

As many of you do, I can't stand the paper piles... our "office" desk is in the kitchen, so it's a eye-sore for sure. I have tackled some of it this morning. The rest will wait.

This is the desk (anyone see my printer under there?)

this is the pile of TRASH

This is what will be dealt with later.


And this is what's better:

Look, I can open my printer now! and what is that? I can get a tissue without having to first lift a pile out of the way! ... oy... This will be an ON GOING battle for me be/c it's right by the door we enter/exit the house and it's my dumping ground. It will be a mental challenge to keep this straightened, but maybe I can make a more honest attempt now, posting it on here.

Pantry Progress

Although we started this project before "Our 10 Things", we just finished it this weekend and felt it appropriate to share here. When we bought this house, there were a few things that the builder never finished (long story). The pantry is one of those things. This is definitely one of those projects where once finished, I can't believe I lived with it in the 'before' condition and didn't see the mess.

Before (Left Side):

After (Left Side):

Before (Back):

Before (Right side. There were no shelves on this side and everything was piled up on the floor.):

After (Right side, with shelves):

We bought the shelving at Ikea for $33/ section (4 sections) plus some extra shelves which were $4 each. Booya!

Bathroom Humiliation

We have one bathroom in our house. It is on the first floor just off the kitchen. That means that regardless of if our guests use it they often see it. Since we have only one bathroom and no storage this shelf in our bathroom gets packed with stuff. The same goes for the shower. When people walked in there I would cringe at the idea of what they would see. Some of my girlfriends like it, they go in there and spray perfume and style their hair.

I didn't do a close up of the shelf, because if I did you may have barfed. There was a significant layer of dust that I cleaned off.







Examples of things I threw out

• empty bottle of Aveeno face scrub
• empty bottle of apricot scrub
• empty bottle of shampoo
• empty bottle of conditioner
• old rusty razor x 2
• six caps from Intuition razor replacements
• old perfume that my high school friend got me, while I was in high school (in 1998)
• foundation I bought for my wedding (in 2003)

Here is the shelf "After." It is still cluttered, but thinned out, clean, and organized.

Here is the shower "Before." See those big orange bottles? Empty. The same goes for the bottles in the hanging thing.

Here is the shower "After." None of these bottles are empty.

Closet part 2

Okay, I was too embarrased earlier to put the whole of the insides, and I still have a section to do, but at least I'm still making progress. This will be it for today though, I need to start on dinner and clear up the day's play... But this is a plastic 3 drawer mess also in my closet... and it looked like this this morning:

and this is it now:

Okay part 3 to come at some point this week or next

Today's 10 Things - Clothing

These 10 things were hanging in my closet, because if they were things I actually wore, they'd be in a pile on top of my dryer, or in a pile on the floor. Sigh. For now I am putting them up on the guest bed, then will bag them and off to Goodwill or the trash can.

Long, black, leather jacket ala The Matrix (why do I own this?)
Long, suit type jacket ala The Matrix (why do I own this?)
Three button down, cotton dress shirts
Cotton sundress that ALWAYS looked horrible on me
Two sleeveless tops, one ugly, one with a broken zipper
Pink sweatshirt
Corduroy, structured jacket with arms that are too long for me (why do I buy these things?)

Baby steps ...

Kate's Closet

Oh the shame.... But okay, here goes. If others can do this, so can I. Here's my way too cluttered, too many clothes in there closet. I have way too small clothes. Wayyyy too large (tent-like) clothes. Maternity clothes. Winter clothes... gracious.

The insides.

the floor.

the top shelf.

I started this task by pulling out everything on a hanger and deciding if it was too small, too big, fitting, in season, out or what... I made piles: Maternity, jammies, um ahem nighties, shorts, pants, shirts that fit and the mound clothes that are too small or out of date...

on the trunk are the mounds of maternity clothes that I can't (and shouldn't) wear right now.

the size of this pile is daunting... it's everything that is TOO small and can not fit and shouldn't be in my closet and WHY am I too lazy to have not done this before?! Most of this was on the floor of the closet or hanging with the rest, trying desperately to be a wearable candidate, but alas, they can not, will not fit.

This still needs to be handled but it will be left for another day... this is what's to the right of the shelf thing, behind the door.



And Ta-Da!

Here's the current status:

Only clothes that FIT on the two shelves (lower is jammies and upper is jeans and nicer pants) and only clothes that FIT hanging up in the closet.

Top shelf are all sizes that are too small still, but I things I didn't want to donate, in hopes of getting there again sometime in this lifetime and not wanting to re-buy everything. They are folded and stacked (and labeled) by sizes.

Oh and the floor is totally clean of everything but only shoes.

Stats:
-THREE trash bags full of clothes that are too small to be donated
-TWO trash bags full of maternity clothes (someone had just given me a lot of her things earlier in the year so her bag was still in there untouched) that will go up to the attic
-Two broken pair of shoes, no clue why I kept, that is now trashed
-One pair of heels that are in great condition, just too small to be donated or sold
-About 15-20 wire hangers trashed
-random tags and trash I found on the bottom of the closet trashed
-one really faded old nightie also hit the trash

Whew. I'm worn.

Clothes clothes and more clothes

My son has too many clothes. I'll be the first one to admit it. To gear up for the nicer weather, we got our kids a bunch of summer clothes. Great, right? Well turns out my son still fits in some of his stuff from last year. Ok, no problem there; we could always use the extra. Well then my dear dear sister in law comes over with a huge bag of hand me downs from her son, and you know what, they are still in great condition and really nice clothes. So I have way too many clothes for my son. Yeah, things could be worse but I need to get some organization with them and I need to get rid of the things I know he isn't going to be wearing.


My system in his room is to hang all his jeans, pants, sweats, long sleeves shirts, button ups, coats and short sleeve collared shirts. He has a good size closet so this all fits in there nicely. Because of the size of his closet we only got him one dresser. The dresser has 4 drawers. Top is undies and socks, 2nd is shorts, 3rd is tee shirts and 4th is pajamas. The dresser has just been stuffed to the brim with clothes, not including what we bought him and the clothes from my SIL. There is literally no room for me to put any of his newly acquired clothes away. So this was my main project this weekend. I was sick of seeing bags of clothes with nowhere to go. I just started emptying all the clothes knew he wasn't going to wear and putting them in a laundry basket. I filled it and bagged it and will give it to my cousin for his son....who then passes it on to another cousin with twin boys. We don't waste clothes in this family!!

Then after that I combined the new, the old and the hand me downs and folded them up and put them away. I put nicer stuff to one side of the drawer and the play stuff to the other. I still have anxiety over these drawers because they are packed. I can see clothes getting stuffed in there again. So my ultimate goal is to clean out the top shelves of his closet and put his nicer stuff in there where only dh or I could reach. I can’t see hanging his shorts and tee-shirts. So here are 3 of his drawers-shorts, tee’s and pajamas. I got rid of a lot of pajamas!!! Thank God!

(sorry I couldn't get the first pic to turn on blogger, I didn't load it in this way!!)

Then while my kids weren’t paying attention I decided to do 10 things from each of their rooms. I started with my sons. I got rid of 2 empty shoe boxes, a barrel of monkeys (OMG so annoying there are 10 in there and they never play w/ them there is just always monkeys laying around my house. He’s had this toy for like 4 years too and he could care less about them. I have no idea why I didn’t get rid of them sooner) a painting book that is filled up, an old place mat, a bag of straws lol, a stethoscope (we have more than one) a broken slinky, an old play phone and some random pieces of cardboard some w/ stickers on them.
I had a really annoying whistle that actually belongs to my DD in this pile……..but well she came up and stole it and started using it.
Next I went in my daughter’s room and looked for 10 things in there. When I tell you my kids have too many toys, I really mean they have too many toys. They have more than they know what to do with. 10 gone from each room is nothing so I didn’t feel too bad doing this!!! This is my daughters stuff-I got rid of an old boppy pillow-seriously, she is almost 3, why is this in her room? A drum she doesn’t use, 2 stuffed animals she doesn’t care about (actually she doesn’t care about any stuffed animals, these are just what I chose to get rid of because they are ugly and came from a dirty crane game) a pocket book she doesn’t play with along with a wand she doesn’t play with. A balloon I had popped, a random little top that goes with some doll, which doll it is or where she is I don’t know. A remote control car that doesn’t work. Finally there are 3 watch faces to a watch that she doesn’t care about and is lost somewhere in the world. I packed these up and threw them all in the trash before they had any idea

So that was my Sunday. Friday I recycled some magazines that have been sitting on a kitchen shelf for too long. We also have a wall size cabinet in our kitchen that is the kid’s cabinet. It has their cups, plates, crafts etc in there. It’s a big junk cabinet and I need to do something about it YET AGAIN. Things get thrown in there and it’s very unorganized. I took a tip from Morgaine and started small. I can’t imagine just sitting and doing the whole thing at once. So I picked one shelf and cleaned it out. I will do this a little at a time. One shelf down, 4 to go!

p.s. My husband cleaned out his side of the closet yesterday!! Organizing is contagious!