Merit For Moms! A Clean Slate

Finally, after who know HOW many 30 minutes sessions, I got my craft room clean!!  It's so inspiring to not only have a clean space, but to have unearthed all my cool stuff that I forgot I had.  I really want to craft all sorts of things, but I also just want to sit on my spinny chair and stare at the one uncluttered, organized, all MINE room in the house without messing it up.

Remember that craft table before?  The one that held all the crap that I had NO idea what to do with?



Well, here she is now!



And I didn't just shove any of it into the cabinets either!



Now I have a nice place to organize all my batting, interfacing, scraps and random 'not pretty enough to display' fabrics! (Notice my brand spankin' new Silhouette that doesn't work :(  I'm waiting for a reply from tech support.)



Fabric shelf pretty much looks the same



All my photography stuff tucked away waiting to utilize that blank wall at a moment's notice



I'm not used to having an organized closet, so I just couldn't bear to shut the curtains!



My little helper Georgia guarding the door from room trashing munchkins!



Are you sticking to your 30 minutes a day?  I'm thinking of moving on to my laundry room since it will probably provide me with MONTHS of 30 minute sessions :P

Merit For Moms! Purse Clean Out!

 {What I had}

What has 29 receipts, 2 packs of gum, 9 lip glosses, 2 granola bars, 3 suckers, a first aid kit, $140 that I didn't know I had, a pound of change, wet wipes, a tape dispenser, recipe cards, and an emergency peanut butter cup?  My overstuffed purse of course!!  The funny thing is you don't know HOW MANY of those things I've wanted but "didn't have" since my purse was so messy. 


{What I needed}

Target won the award for oldest receipt from 11/16, and I had coupons for shampoo that expired on 10/30.  I'm still missing a $30 Target gift card that I'm hoping will turn up, but it's so nice to want gum and to actually know where it is!


{All tucked away!}

The Proof Is In The Pudding... Mmm, pudding!

I was tired and grumpy, and I didn't want to do it, but I got my goals accomplished last night after my kids went to bed. I got the counters cleared off and cleaned, folded laundry, picked up clutter in the dining room and living room, and did all the dishes.

Excuse the phone pictures- my camera died 5 pictures into a photo shoot with my kids that I've been planning for weeks!

Dining Room before:


After:


Kitchen before:



After:


Living Room before:


After:


We'll see how long this lasts!

Today I will:
Wash, fold, and put away the kids' laundry
Organize the messy bookshelf in the dining room
Keep dishes and counters under control

Before & After!

I'm so lame today that I'm posting an OLD before and after... maybe it will inspire me to clean something. Doubt it, but it could happen! I was really inspired to clean today when it was sunny- I even made my bed today! Now the clouds have rolled in and my motivation has packed up its crap with the sun.

These photos are from the end of May right after this post. Sorry, no exciting photos of the garbage collection or phone calls!

Here's my entryway a few weeks ago before cleaning:
(It's like an I spy! I spy a clorox mop, backpack, 239843 shoes...)


And here's my entryway a few weeks ago after cleaning:
(Ahhh! The same amount of light is coming in, but it just looks lighter and brighter!)


The entryway currently is in between the two, but thankfully closer to the second than the first.

Wait... maybe I'm starting to feel a little inspired. Maybe? Yes!...uh...maybe?...nope. It's gone now- Whew! That was close!

Pain In My Back

Now I'm REALLY cranky, and tired, and wishing that I could afford a maid, but my kitchen is clean!

Here's the before and after:




And my dining room got a cleaning too!



I also bleached the bathtub and all the kids tub toys, vacuumed and steam mopped the bathroom, dining room, and kitchen, did 2 loads of dishes, cleaned off the counters, washed, folded and put away 4 loads of laundry and made dinner. Now my back freaking hurts and I'm going to need to medicate it with Easter Bunny Kit Kats... and York Peppermint Patties... and maybe some Resse's Pieces. What? I had a hard day!

Before & After!

We're all home sick today so my progress has slowed to a... uh, stop. Since I'm not getting anything done today I wanted to share some progress that I made on Tuesday. I have all the kids' clothes in one closet as it makes it easier for me to put clothes away and I pick Boo's outfits anyway so it doesn't really matter where I get them. This leaves an entire closet open for 'overflow' toys. The idea was that I'd lock this closet and put extra toys in there to rotate in and out. Unfortunately it ended up just being a pile of junk that I didn't want to sort through and that we obviously didn't really need.




I picked a morning that Mr. Wright was home to distract Boo and Little Man and started sorting into baskets. I didn't get pictures of the 1 bag of garbage or the 3 bags of donations yet, but I did take the 'afters' of the closet!




I'm linking up this post to Org Junkie's Org Challenge!
1. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and were you able to overcome it?
The hardest part was getting rid of stuff that I've been hanging onto forever. I had to overcome the fact the "because I've had it this long" isn't a good reason for keeping something. Another challenge was letting go of a lot of baby toys that I've held on to despite my kids having NO interest in them.

2. Tell us what kind of changes/habits you have put into place in order for your area/room to maintain its new order?
I kept some open spaces for the future, and I have a new view of what I actually "need" to keep. Luckily this closet stays locked from little helpers, so it won't get disorganized unless I let it get that way.

3. What did you do with the “stuff” you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?
Some of it was donated, some was given to friends, and some was just plain garbage.

4. What creative storage solutions were you able to introduce in order to create additional space as well as establish some limits and boundaries?
I had some ancient Yaffa blocks that came out of my laundry room before that happened to be perfect to divide up some of the stuff that I needed to keep in the closet, and even created some free space for the future!

5. Why do you think you should win this challenge?
Because I'm straight awesome, first off, and secondly because I let go of things this time that have made it past multiple purgings. I now have an orderly space that has room to grow, and doesn't make me scared to open the closet doors!

My New Craftopia!

I've been so caught up in actually using my craft area that I had totally forgotten to share my awesome space! I'm back to reality now (only for a few minutes of course) and I'm so excited to show off my new favorite corner of the house.

Here's the before picture in case you missed it, and it was actually worse than that before I actually got around to organizing it:



And here's the after!



What a change! These are the awesome cabinets that my sis gave me FREE because she rocks and I've packed them full of fun sewing goodies.



Here's my felt in the left cabinet, and all my cottons and flannels and fleeces in the right. I didn't really realize what I had even though it was organized before just because I couldn't really get to where it was. It was like a shopping spree once I saw all my fun stuff that's been MIA for a few months.



Here's my giant drawer full of patterns I'll probably never use. I'm addicted to buying patterns at those $.99 sales that Joann's has and I've only hit one or two of those to collect this stash!



And my notions boxes for all my velcro, elastic and other sewing junk. I haven't gotten around to labeling them yet, but I stuck some cute scrap paper in there for right now just to spruce them up a bit. These were on sale at Joann's for $2 each, and the $12 I spent on them was the only money I put into this makeover!!



Thanks for stopping by my craft nook- I hope you like it! All I needed was one more thing to distract me from all those dishes!! :P

Day 94- Organizing Roundup!

It that time of the month again... no, not that. It's Org Junkie's Monthly Organizing Roundup! This month focuses on our vehicles. I have to say that I was dreading this challenge as my van normally looks (and smells) like someone just fished it out of a dump... and then sprayed it with flower deodorizer, and then a nearby french fry factory exploded.

Here's the scary before... note Boo screaming at the top of her lungs, the happy meal collection, and hey- there's that roll of paper towels I've been looking for! It's like an Ispy! I spy a goldfish cracker bag, a sock, 345 french fry stubs...



Here's the nifty organizer thingy in the back that I didn't even KNOW I had! It already had the tools and crap in it (Mr. Wright must have known all along!) but I put our 'emergency' Capri Suns and DVD player in and got rid of the bag that use to hold that stuff. I left the right compartment empty so I can put snacks, wipes and other stuff in there.



Airing out the clutter free van!



Boo looking for all the snacks that she had previously shoved down the side of the seat...



My minivan... 10 pounds lighter, and smelling a whole lot better!



I sprayed half a can of smellies and shut all the doors- hopefully I'll be able to drive it in a few days without passing out from the fumes. On second thought the fumes of the dirty van weren't that great either... thanks for joining me for another edition of Org Junkie's Monthly Round Up, and check out what everyone else did with their vehicles on the I'm An Organizing Junkie Website. I always find great ideas there! Next up I'll be tackling hair and makeup supplies. I guess I should get mine out of the garage in preparation :P

To see more of Mrs. Wright's before and after posts click here!

Day 91- Double Trouble

On Friday I went to town to run some errands and decided to hit a garage sale near my house on the way home. It was one of those dream sales where they were in it to get rid of their crap, not make money. I found a super nice heavy glass cake plate cover (the bottom had been broken) for a dollar and I started dreaming about all the cute stuff I could put in it on my counter. I also found an adorable white scalloped shelf that would look darling in one of my girls' rooms and a few shirts for Sweetie Pie.

The big ticket item was a bunk bed set. It wasn't the bunk bed set of my dreams or anything, but it was $75 and not covered in Pokemon stickers like every other one I've seen at garage sales. I thought about it for a few minutes but wanted to talk to Mr. Wright before making any decisions. The woman running the sale gave me her number and I had to run to the car to get some money for my box of goodies. I gave her the money and walked away... totally forgetting the box of my purchases. It was lunch time and the kids were all screaming so I had a lot on my mind.

Mr. Wright and I talked about the beds but by Saturday I had decided against getting them. $75 is a lot when you don't have it, plus we didn't have a truck to get them to my house either. I was too sheepish to call the lady and ask her if she still had my box of stuff and tell her that we couldn't get the beds, but my mom told me to get some balls (yes, exact words :P) so I called and left a message. She called me back Saturday night and said that no one had bought the beds at the sale and she really needed to get rid of them. She offered to give them to me for $50 AND deliver, so who could turn down an offer like that!?

Short story long, she delivered them yesterday (along with my forgotten box of crap), I pulled 384,985 muscles in my back getting them into the house by myself, scraped the paint off 45 new places on my walls, got them stuck in 4 different doorways, and made 2 kids very happy... that is until they needed to clean the room around their new beds.

Here is the room before (I finally took down the princess decorations from months ago when it was Boo's room) and I totally shoved the MOUNTAIN of toys out of the shot...



Here is the after, and the toy mountain is now g-o-n-e and we all couldn't be happier!



Now poor Sweetie Pie will have a bed to sleep on! She has a bed in her room but 95% of the time she slept on one of those foam kid couches on Little Man's floor. Now all I have left to do is make a chiropractor appointment for myself!

Day 64- Elmo Search & Rescue

I've been trying not to think about it, but I think the time has come for me to acknowledge that Boo's 2nd birthday is on Sunday. I haven't invited anyone, bought anything except the plates, or planned out my week so I don't leave everything to the final hour. In fact, I still have a few decorations from Little Man's birthday up. Yeah... I know.

Like most 2 year olds Boo has quite the obsession with Elmo, or "Melmo" as she calls him. We happened to be at Target to replace my holey sheet when Boo took off screaming Melmo! Melmo! I found her 3 aisles down quivering like the addict that she is in front of a huge display of Elmo cups, bowl, and plates. There's no way that I was getting out of that store without buying the Elmo items unless I wanted her kicking and screaming so loudly that people start to question whether or not she's being abducted. Luckily I decided to forego the tantrum and use them for the birthday party.

Little Man also went through an Elmo phase around his 2nd birthday and I had searched high and low all over my town for one of those Wilton cake pans that makes the disembodied Elmo head. I was hugely pregnant with Boo and the hormones were just adding to the fact that everything had to be PERFECT for his party. My mom could see that my head was about to explode if I didn't get that cake pan in my sweaty sausage fingers asap and sent my poor dad into Joann Fabrics 45 miles away to pick one up. Papa saved the day and Little Man's Elmo cake was the perfect addition to the birthday party that he'll never remember...

That Elmo cake pan sat in my pots & pans cupboard for 18 months. You know, in case I ever got a craving for Elmo cake which I would be too lazy to do the intricate frosting on and just make a totally flat top on... Finally, in a moment of sanity, I cleared the Elmo cake pan out of my cupboard and added it to a box of donation items.

I bet it wasn't a month after that sucker hit the donation box that Boo's love for Elmo came about, yet it didn't cross my mind until recently that maybe I should start looking for that darn thing. Two weeks ago I decided that Boo would love an Elmo party and that I should find that pan. Of course it wasn't until yesterday that I actually got off my butt to do it... I also had some bags of already sorted and marked donation items that never got donated so I figured those were an easy target to make some room in there. A mere 30 minutes later I was holding the forgotten cake pan in my hands.

Here's the before picture of the scary mess that resides under our stairs. The space never got finished so it doesn't have a door, sheetrock or a light which makes it almost qualify for my "never go anywhere that's dimly lit with spiders" mantra. It's a good thing I'll do anything for those little monsters... at least on their birthdays!



The "I'm done for today maybe I'll work on it more again some other day" picture



The bags of crap that are no longer a part of my life!



Is anyone sick of the before and afters yet!? I'm getting pretty tired... and hungry... for donuts.

Day 63- Pantry Party

Guess who has a clean & organized pantry?? That's right, THIS lady! My brother in law happened to want to take Sweetie Pie and Little Man for the afternoon yesterday so I was able to put Boo down for a nap and get to business. I started by eating some nachos because, uh... hello, I was almost alone in my house!

After I finished my greasy treat I got to work by emptying the pantry and sorting the food into groups (baking, snacks, cans, dinner ingredients, etc.). Then I checked each group for expired food or food that we're never going to eat. Luckily (?) my pantry was pretty bare compared to how it normally is so it was easy to see what was in there. Then I played pantry tetris to get the groups to fit together on the shelves.

The longest job was sorting all the confiscated toys and returning them to their homes. This was difficult because if they all had homes then they probably wouldn't have been left out to be confiscated in the first place. I put 2 new containers for inevitable future confiscations but at least for today they'll stay empty. Please don't feel too badly for my children- they only get 10 warnings to pick something up before it gets a week time out. Unless I'm sitting down, then they get 11 or 12 warnings. 13 if I'm on Facebook. Anyway here's my before picture from an earlier post:



The during picture:



And the blessed after:



Once again you can check out more before and afters at I'm An Organizing Junkie's Monthly Round Up.

*I'm not sure what's happening with my pictures but I'm getting frustrated with them being all different crazy sizes and cutting off my hard work!*

Day 62- Holey Sheet!

About 2 months ago Mr. Wright alerted me that there was a tiny hole in the sheet down by his feet. We've had the same sheets for two years and I'm not surprised that he finally wore a hole in them from all the moving around he does at night. I wake up in the exact position that I fell asleep in, but I'm surprised he hasn't started a fire with all his tossing and turning. The hole started about the size of a blueberry, but of course I didn't sew it then. He kept getting his feet caught in the hole and ripping it bigger, but I still didn't sew it. I didn't sew it when it was the size of a cantaloupe either.

Eventually I got tired of hearing him complain about it but I didn't want to spend the money on new sheets. I flipped the sheet the other way thinking that my 25 pillows I need to sleep would cover the hole that was now at my head. They didn't. I've been falling into sleeping on that hole for at least a month and decided that if was finally time to buy a new sheet.

I know I promised in this post that I wouldn't be going to Target for a while, but I couldn't resist when I saw the new ad included a whole bed in a bag for $39! All I really need is a new fitted sheet, but when they're nearly $40 themselves it made more sense to just get the bed in a bag. I woke up this morning and showered, got my kids up early, and threw them in the car. They love eating cereal out of a bag so they had breakfast on the way. I didn't want to take the time to blow dry my hair, so I just turned the air on full blast in the car. I love when my laziness comes off as creativity!

I went early to beat the rush for the $39 bed in a bag since it was on the cover of the ad and when I got there I realized why I was alone in the aisle. I knew they weren't the cutest thing ever, but I didn't expect them to look like something I'd pass up at a garage sale either. As a matter of fact, I'd go all the way to say they we're fugly. I ended up settling on some $24 white jersey sheets instead. I even washed them before I put them on my bed! High class!

Who knew I could write so much about my sheet replacing adventures?

I also have an exciting head injury to share! The head injury may or may not be responsible for an entire blog post about sheets, but I'm still figuring that out. Boo was very cranky yesterday and happened to be throwing a huge fit right as I was about to start making dinner. I tried to pawn her off distract her with the older kids but I ended up just laying her on the floor in Little Man's room where they were playing. She was screaming so I turned around quickly to make a swift exit and then OUCH!! Little Man's door decided to kiss me on the forehead... and nose. I looked in the mirror and my nose was instantly swollen and I had quite a goose egg on my forehead. Perfect... like I couldn't get any sexier than before.

By the time Mr. Wright got home from work about 20 minutes later Boo had calmed down and was laying on top of me while I had an ice pack over my whole swollen face. He was awesome and made dinner for the kids while I layed on the couch wondering if my non existent insurance would finally cover the nose job I've needed since I was 14. I also pondered if I was going to look like Owen Wilson in the morning. I rested for most of the evening which was kind of a bummer since I actually was making progress on some more before and after pictures up until when I kicked my own butt.

This morning I looked more like Carnie Wilson than Owen Wilson due to the swelling, but no one else at Target at 8:30 am seemed to care. My forehead has a little bruise and my nose has a perfect door line across part of it, but other than that I look pretty normal, thank goodness.

Here's two more before and afters from yesterday. As soon as my head stops pounding I'm hoping to finally get the pantry done.

My pen drawer before


My pen drawer after


The kids' computer desk before


The kids' computer desk after


Hopefully more to come!

Check out more before and after pictures at I'm an Organizing Junkie's Monthly Round Up!