Little By Little

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
-Henry Ford

This may be a small and pretty insignificant project today. But, hey, at least I committed!

I had a crazy day involving a big interview that was 2.5 hours away (5 hours round trip). In between I had to take care of two little boys---in particular, a newly 3 year old who wants to prove to mommy he doesn't have to do anything she says. Being the sole parent is particularly stressful when interviewing because when the interviewer says jump, I have to jump. I get crazy trying to make back up plans in a pinch (the boys are in daycare on a military base and you have to have a military id to get on to base---so I have to jump through rings of fire to get anyone else to be able to pick them up as backup). So, when the interviewer asked me today what my greatest accomplishment was, I was wishing that I could have been really honest and told him it was getting out of the house today instead of the corporate mumbo jumbo I spoon fed.

ANYWAY, my whining aside, I cleaned out under the half bath sink this morning while I was drying my hair. The clutter was mostly just packaging from toilet paper, etc.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Now, I know it is not much, but it does help to restore order in my otherwise chaotic life. Every little bit counts.

Bathrooms

I'm not all together sure how this happened, but I ended up in both bathrooms tonight giving them a big purge! I forgot the before pictures be/c I wasn't really planning on doing so much. I had toothpaste to put under the sink and it was TRASHED so I sat down and got busy. Here's the after, left side and right side.

nAnd here's the crap that leaves my house... the box has nothing but trash in it. wrappers and empty boxes of old junk. Expired meds, SUPER OLD (like from high school) perfume that smells gross now, cough drops from who knows when be/c I don't remember ever buying that kind...

the funniest thing to me though was the lipsticks.
WHY do I still have them, when they look like this?

OLD MEDS

I don't remember ever seeing this basket under the sink either. I wish I would have had it OUT and used cutely over the holidays. I'll be relocating it now. Thank you so much.

And then something weird happened. I moved from the master bath to the hall bath... and started over. Again no before pic be/c I wasn't planning on pulling it all out, but here's the after.

Here's the crap that is expired and hitting the trash can.
(NO Clue how old that bleach is,.... ew)

And then somehow, I scooted over and opened the linen closet and went "ACK!" so here's the before pic since I was with camera in hand:

And the after!

So there you have it... my bathrooms. Whew!

Back to Basics

I’ve been down right lazy and have not tackled a single project on my large organizing to do list. I was feeling guilty about it and even more so as it meant I had nothing to contribute to the blog. But yet again I remembered the idea behind Our 10 Things was to maybe make being organized and clutter free something you don’t have to stress about.

So I got out a giant garbage bag and took it upstairs. I cleaned out a jewelry box I had put away in my night stand and not opened for at least two years -- I dumped a lot of cheap nasty jewelry no one would ever want to wear, and put away the more quality pieces in my primary jewelry box. My husband and I then tossed out at least a dozen empty soap, shampoo and conditioner containers from the shower. It wasn’t hard work and it didn’t feel very gratifying until I got in the shower today, looked around, and thought, "Wow, it looks tons better!"

The garbage bag is sitting in the corner of the master bathroom waiting for 10 more things tonight.

linen closet

YUCK. Okay, here it is. I was hoping to get to this Friday, but it didn't happen until today, Sunday. But that's okay. At least it's done. Too bad it was AFTER our house guests were here three days and opened this thing up. Bleck. Oh well, it's clean now. I realized in this picture, you can't see the shelf, but believe me, it's a wreck too. There are three shelves you can't see, but the top two are towels and linens that actually despite how this looks, stay neatly folded and in their places. I try to ignore this mess but it really was bothering me. It was something I KNEW would be tackled with this project as soon as I posted my first posting. Here you have it, the linen closet. This closet is actually inside our hall bathroom.

See on the right side... the box there? Yah, we moved that box from our apartment to our first house, to this house... never opened... it's one of those neat organizational shelf things for around and above the toilet. Wouldn't that be helpful to actually USE instead of just sit in the closet? Oh well, that's for another day.


Here's the after:

10 things:
-1 bar of dinosoap (one of a two pack, we used the first it was a nasty soapy slimy mess, don't know why the other bar got kept)
-1 basket's handle. Don't know where the basket is, but it's metal handle was in there.
-2 old lotions
-2 old face creams
-1 old moisturizer
-2 old suntan lotions
-foot cream that looked old and never used
-a mask thing that had been never used
-really scary old nail polish
-the plastic wrap from toliet paper rolls
-empty boxes of trash
-grocery sacks that still had the products bought in them (apparently it takes too long to empty the bags and put the items in the closet, I was just throwing bag, stuff and all, in)
-I found our sling for the baby bathtub, that will be relocated to the baby bathtub.

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.

Master Bath

I thought the master bath would be relatively painless. I was wrong. It took FOREVER to go through everything. But, as always, the end result is worth it!

Under sink before:

Under sink After:

Some of the things I threw away (old toothpaste, soap, travel items, mirror, makeup bags, stainless steel lotion pump, etc.)

More crap (old perfume, lipsticks, makeup brushes, an empty ink cartridge---not sure how that ended up there---and all sorts of other lotions and potions):

Before:

After. TA-DA!:

NEXT PROJECT: My closet. It's a doozie.