The cabinet

Last night I finally got the nerve to do the kitchen cabinet that holds my kids stuff. I anticipated this to take 1-2 hours. I was sick of thinking about how I had to do it, so I just did it last night. Here is the hot mess before. Here are the 2 bottom shelves aka an embarrassment to post! There are coloring books, crayons, paints, trash bags, plastic bags just everything thrown in there. In my defense I have cleaned out this cabinet many times before but it always ends up like this again. My kids are OK about putting stuff back, just not neatly. I need to stay on top of this!

So 40 minutes and 5 shelves later this is what we have.

Top shelf is all cups, 2nd shelf bowls & plates, 3rd is cards, paints, stickers, tattoo's etc., 4th is coloring books and crayons and 5th is playdoh & bags.

Here are some of the random papers I got rid of. This was mostly from the 4th shelf. Aye! I also got rid of some random playdoh holder that never gets played with.

Here is more stuff I got rid of. We have a million cups, I can afford to get rid of all of these, more papers, random spoons. I put the holiday plates in storage w/ the rest of the holiday stuff. I don't need to see them all year round!

and here is a close up of the bottom 2 shelves that were the worst. I love organization!

So my goal is to keep this as neat as it is now, not easy with a 3 and 5 year old but I have to check this often before it gets out of control like it was. It's SO NICE to have this project done. I am not good at the 10 things a day, but I'm good at bigger projects. I need to get them done and then maybe focus on the 10 a day. This project took less than an hour and I am so pleased with the results.

Next up is the hallway closet which will be my biggest embarrassment yet (even worse than my bedroom closet before!) That will be next weeks project and I know that will take awhile!

p.s. I made 60 bucks off e-bay last week, have more stuff to list and am selling books on amazon!! Yeah baby. My goal with this is to make enough spending money for vacation in July so we don't have to take it out of our own pockets.

happy house

My month of purging is still going well even though I have not written about it. I got sidetracked gather kid items to sell in the church re-sale. In one week over 100 items were ready to go out the door. Thanks to my BFF for all the help pricing them--I don't think I could have done it on my own. I did not make a ton of money, but that was not really the point. I got enough to cover the items I bought--mostly items I needed for the kids plus a few books--and have a little spending money left. I defintely sold more than I bought.

But the real point of this is to say I am loving my house now. Things are cleaner than they have been in a long time. I can walk into rooms and not immediately get upset. This keeps me going. We have been planting our first garden the last few days so purging has been put on the backburner. The fence is all that is left and I plan on making up for these lost days because I will have 300 items out of my house by the end of this month!

pictureless pantry

OMG. My mom said I could tackle a few projects for her... and I say that loosely, be/c actually it's like this: Mom, I'm cleaning out the pantry, kay? Mom there's no room in the fridge for the milk, I'm cleaning out the fridge later, kay? LOL But Anyhow, my almost brother-in-law and I cleaned out the pantry today. Oy. I can't upload the pictures just yet but I have before and afters. We had TWO big black garbage bags full of EXPIRED items. EW. A whole counter top of expired items. It was awful. It looks so much better now, it's insane the difference! I will post pictures when I can.

I Can't Believe I'm Showing This....

This is my shame: The attic. I was not going to post before or progress pictures until I was totally done because I am too embarrassed. I am embarrassed by the amount of STUFF. No one needs this many possessions. It's a battle I constantly fight. As you all know, I'm a sucker for a bargain. This is how my attic got this way. When I finally realized I had too many things, I made a conscious effort to buy less. I'm not perfect, but I have gotten much better. At any rate, since I'm turning over a new leaf in that respect, it's time to organize and purge this mess.

Without further adieu, my attic before (LEFT side):

(And yes, that's an Elvis on velvet on the left near the stairway.)

And where I stand as of this morning. (LEFT side) Before (RIGHT side):

Progress (RIGHT side):

I still have a long way to go, but I wanted show the progress I have made. This project is totally intimidating to me. Little by little, I'm getting there.....

Spice and Booze...

So I got motivated before I thought to take a picture. Oops. Okay, that might have been sorta kinda on purpose. I filled a tall kitchen bag with expired spices. Ew.

But here's the after. This is our spice/daily meds/alcoholic glassware cabinet.



And the winner of the oldest medication? Generic Target Robitussin. July 2007. Niiice.



I can now serve martinis for at least 10. And wine for...well, a lot. There are at least 14 other wineglasses in other cabinets in this house.

Who wants a drink?

Attic Progress

I've made the commitment to try to get our attic organized and purge some of the stuff up there. We are planning for a garage sale next Saturday, so there is some incentive to a) get it done in a timely manner, b) get rid of things. This is an ENORMOUS project and I don't expect to get it completely done any time soon (I'm aiming for the end of 2010).

Here is some of the loot I've gathered over the past two days:

Pillows, Christmas wreaths, a flower arrangement, a cardboard file cabinet (new in package), a picnic set, an electric caulking gun, a new Rowenta Iron, a bumper for a baby crib (new in package), drapes, and tons more.

I have one more week until the garage sale to purge. Working up in the attic is temperature dependent, so I'll see how much I can get done in that time!

My dresser is done!!!!

ahhhhhhhhh my dresser is done my dresser is done, ding dong the son of a bitch is done! (sorry for the cursing, let me know if it offends you, I'll do it more often, JK (sorta))
So anyway, the dresser is done!!! YEAH!! God this has been bugging me for a LONG time. If you remember, it's 6 drawers, 5 of them needed cleaning. My goal was to do one a night. Night one I started with the top drawer and got it done. I started my "I need to lose 10 pounds to fit into these" pile, my e-bay pile, my donate pile and my throw away pile. Day 2 came with the 2nd drawer aka the worst bitch in history. I didn't do before and after of every drawer because well frankly no one wants to see 10 pics of my clothes. So here is the drawer 2, the worst of them. This is the before, God help me. I have no idea what shirts are stuffed in this drawer. I feel like a 10 year old whose mother told her to put her clothes away and this is what I did. The pic doesn't do it justice on just how bad it was.
and here is the after shot of drawer #2....ahhhh nice. This drawer is mostly just fitted tee's (Go CUSE!!)

I took a pic of an after shot of drawer 3 because I like my workout clothes. I love buying them, like wearing them and think I should be hired to endorse Nike gear. p.s. see how good my reflection vest works!! I don't care how much of a dork I look like when I wear this, it works!

Here is pile #1 and #2, this is my I need to lose 10 pounds pile and my e-bay pile. This got switched around more after this pic. I gave up some of the I need to lose 10 pounds pile over to the e-bay pile because let's be honest, I need to lose more than 10 pounds for some of this stuff.

This is the donate pile and the trash pile.

I was SO happy about this project being done. I even cleaned out the 2 drawers in my nightstand so I could use them. I realized I had way too many bathing suits (who says fat girls don't like buying bathing suits??) and I didn't want to waste a whole drawer on them. I live in the northeast and am PLUMP. I don't wear them often, I don't want them in my main dresser. So they are in a drawer in my nightstand. I felt SO good when this project was done. It was weighing on me for awhile. I was so happy last night. I didn't anticipate doing this all. My goal was just drawer #2 which turned into the entire dresser, which turned into the night stand. It was a good night. One last pic because I was so happy I kept opening and closing drawers. These are some old tees I didn't want to get rid of because I still wear them around the house with my jeans. Jeans that fit me.

I can exhale. Some of the weight has been lifted off my shoulders!

Next 2 projects are also big ones. I write about it so I'll do it. First is the dreaded cabinet I've been talking about forever-the kids cabinet in my kitchen. I just need to devote 1-2 hours one night and get it done and shut up about it. This is my next project. After that is my hallway closet aka hottest mess ever in the world. It holds pictures and pictures and pictures and vases and door wreaths and easter eggs and other random crapola. Everytime I open this drawer I always kick something back in to get it shut again. AHHH. I dread when I start this project. But next up is the kids cabinet.

I also have to say that since this blog I have been really good about keeping up what I have cleaned out. It's very easy to just shove shit around again but I'm trying really hard to keep the things nice that I have cleaned out. Bye, sorry for the longest post ever!! YEAH it's clean!