Children's Closet Before and After

I finally finished my youngest son's closet. I had bins upon bins of clothes that we literally tore through as he grew into the baby giant that he is today. I got rid of (donating and selling) three full trash bags full of clothing in the process. The rest was just a little reorganization.

As a reminder, here is the before:

And the After:

I moved the little armoire (which, by the way, I got for $64 at K-Mart on clearance) into the closet.

I still have way too many baby things, but this is a good start. I worked on it in bits and pieces and am finally done with this project!....for now.

Happy One Month Anniversary, 10 Things!

Yeah! We made it through one month on the 'Our 10 Things' blog!

While I have not followed through every day, I have on most days. If I had to guess, I've gotten rid of about 1,000 items in my house (most from cleaning closets and the garage). Unbelievable. What's even more unbelievable is that there is plenty more to go!

I've made a little money ($340) on Craigslist and eBay and have begun to see the difference in my home. I'm looking forward to another 300+ items in the next month and some extra cash from our garage sale!

Keep up the great work!

Ixnay the Lanpay.

That's Pig Latin for "Nix the plan".

I had planned to work on the attic yesterday and today. I had planned to take a couple of hours off from work to take advantage of the unseasonably cool weather to work in the normally sauna-like attic. I had plans of grandeur.

Fast forward to yesterday. My husband had to unexpectedly, get this, practice taking over ships in the ocean leaving me as a single mom with no time. So, no attic. But, wait. It gets better! I had organized my work week/day today so that I could spend a couple of morning hours working up there....only to find that both of our cars had been broken into overnight. As a result, I spent the morning filing police reports, working with credit card companies, working with my company (because mine is a company car), etc. instead of working on the attic.

BUT, I did manage to make it up there for a few minutes today and grabbed some give-aways/donations/trash/garage sale items.

Behold my loot:

This pile includes, but is not limited to, a high chair, stuffed animals, a Christmas tree skirt, a tube TV, an inflatable headboard (probably my favorite item du jour), a pillow, and toys.

So despite setbacks, I was not totally defeated.

As I have said earlier, the attic will be my epic "10 Things" event. I am waiting to post before pics until I have successful after pics. This may not occur for many, many months!

I don't suspect there will be much attic action again tomorrow since my husband is once again taking over ships. But hey, someone has to do it, right?

Slacker

I've been a major 10 things slacker lately. There are so many projects looming over my head too that I want to tackle so I need to get my butt in gear. Today I cleaned one of my kitchen drawers. This one holds measuring cups, oven mitts, pot holders and cutting boards. I needed to go through my cutting boards because I have some wood ones in there I never use because wood cutting boards skeeve me out. I got another plastic one this weekend to urge me to start this drawer. It was a quick and easy project. Before: everything shoved in there (are you surprised, this is me?!! I am shover!!!) I desperately need new oven mitts. I have non matching old ugly stained ones.
and the after. I can open and close it easily and don't have to push stuff down to close the drawer.

Stuff I threw away

1-2. Two wooden cutting boards

3. Louisiana pot holder I had forever

4. random mini spoon

5. clips for who knows what?? It's amazing I never stabbed myself with these!

6. random tupperware top

7. tiny measuring spoon I never use

8-11. LOL seriously. This wasn't in this drawer but I found these in a random drawer in my bathroom and they needed to go. It's tubes of vaseline from when my son was circumsized....um yeah he's FIVE. WHY are they in there still? WHY WHY WHY??

So in order to not be a slacker anymore this is my next goal-my bedroom dresser. AH. It gives me heebie jeebies thinking about it. It has 6 drawers, 5 of them need major work. Guess what??? All my clothes are shoved in all the drawers. God I thought I was semi neat before this blog! So my goal is one drawer a day for the next 5 days. I can and will do this. I want to get some of this stuff up on e-bay too or donate it. So now that I told you, hold me to it. I will start with drawer one tonight.

I am also listing 3 pairs of shoes on e-bay that I got rid of when I cleaned my closet a few weeks back. I gave them to my sister thinking they'd fit her and they don't. I can't wear them and the sandals are basically brand new so I will sell them. I'll be happy w/ the extra change in my pocket and to not have to look at them anymore.

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.

Amidst the Chaos

It's been one of those weeks. Since Wednesday, we put our St. Bernard down (my sweet Oscar), had to travel to NYC on Thursday and Friday for a benefit event, had my youngest son's first birthday, celebrated Mother's Day, tended to an ear infection, had a dentist appointment, made it to a one year well-check, etc, etc, etc. Did I mention the full-time job on top of it all? You get the drift. Well, the good news is that I made it through to the other side! And despite the chaos, I managed to not forget about our efforts here at Our 10 Things!

No big before and afters for this post. Just a pile of trash, donations, and a couple of garage sale items.
The weather will be relatively cool for the next couple of days. As a result, I will re-arrange my organizing plans accordingly and venture up into the attic (the attic is not temperature controlled and gets quite steamy). I figure my days are limited up there and I therefore need to take advantage while I can. The attic will take many, many, many hours. I'm just hoping to start chipping away at it while the going is good.

Desk take 3

I spent about a half hour at the desk last night dealing with this stack on the top shelf. It was not something I'd planned to do yesterday but my husband needed to hook up our new-to-us (used) printer! So I needed to clear everything off for him to get to the old one and set up the new one. This one has a SCANNER feature, oh baby! I spent a lot of time going through the papers, deciding what was worth keeping or trashing. I ended up with a decent size trash pile. Among it all, I found missing CDs. Nice to know they aren't lost for ever. I added them to my binder promptly instead of setting them somewhere else to be forgotten. Overall, still a slight stack of things that just don't have a home elsewhere, but I'm really pleased with the results! Lots gone and what's there is stacked in categories instead of just being a heaping pile!

Before:

And after!