Pantry Purged!

 The pantry, our land of plenty, closet for beloved kitchen appliances, and the quickest spot in the house to become an absolute MESS! I spent about two hours in here tonight, purging, cleaning, stopping a sugar ant invasion, and organizing what had fallen into chaos.

Ummm, I don't know what to say.

But look at this, FLOOR!!!

 Now before ya'll get all crazy on us about the amount of food we stock, just know that we do eat it and we do rotate it each time we purchase. In fact I only found 4 items that had passed their expiration date. Woo Hoo! My mom always had a FULLY stocked pantry, fridge and freezer when I was growing up ( she still does), so this seems "normal" to me. We could eat out of here for probably 4-6 months. So if a Zombie invasion happens, we at least know we won't be eating the dogs. *grin*

Slightly Sleeping with the Enemy-ish, but we can see what we have without searching.

And yeah, my kitchen appliance and tools stock is pretty well full. In fact I actually told me mom tonight that I didn't want the newest must have from William Sonoma. I could do without it. I think she thinks I lost my mind. :)

Finally, the kid plates are up on a shelf and I only have a small corner of floorspace occupied.

 The only thing I can say about this massive pile of kitchen purge is, well, it seems so so so wasteful. It IS wasteful. And I am sorry about it. We have had many of these items for years and years, some are duplicates, some are literally hand me downs that date to the 70's ( hello yellow salad spinnner), but none of them get used .

Insane Kitchen Overload.

So into the car these will go tomorrow morning to be dropped off at Good Will with the rest of my donation collection. I know I have purged well over the 111 item goal for the challenge. I know I could purge MORE if I look in certain places in our house. I also know that this month long project has really made me think about what we have, what we use, and what we really need. Thanks Jenny for such a great growing experience!

Dust Bunnies Attack!

Casey casually mentioned a couple days ago that our curtains in the bedroom could use a turn through the washing machine and then he noticed the dust on the blinds and before he could actually LOOK at more dusty places I distracted him with talk of Fried Egg Sandwiches. ( which are my new favorite obsession right now, ever since I woke up in the middle of my sickness and wanted a fried egg that was runny. I never eat runny eggs, but that egg was heaven. Bliss!)

So today while he tackled the lawn ( we seed with winter rye which means the lawn is brilliant green all winter long and needs to be mowed), I tackled the mentioned curtains and blinds. Which led to the windows, to the baseboards, to the bedding, to the mattress, to the area behind the bed, to the ceiling fan and its dirty glass globes, to the bookcase, to the dresser top, to the vanity, to my makeup brushes, and finally the carpet. Whew!

Hey, where did the chair go?

I found more dust then I ever imagined I would. The hordes of dust bunnies breeding behind our bed was the stuff made of nightmares. The sheet of dust that came off the top of the ceiling fan blades was shocking. Let's not even talk about the dust that was behind the books in the bookcase. So now the new air purifier is cranked, the light is twinkling through clean glass and the bed is ready to be remade.

Mid cleaning, but most of the dust is gone at this point! Hooray!

I took a turn through our master closet since it is on my radar for the 111 item purge and all I came up with was a pair of pants and one shirt.  Casey sides is off limits, unless I can talk him into purging all the shirts he never wears and the overflowing sock bins could use some work. I think I need to get in there and really contemplate the items of clothing hanging from the bars. And of course start digging through the giant green tub hiding in the back corner... but a couple weeks ago I did purge our toiletry tower and trashed a huge bag of old cosmetics and body care items. Progress!

111 in 1/2011 Catch up

Finally after close to two weeks sick I am able to post an update to the 111 items in January 2011 challenge. I immediately dove into my office closet, which is probably the worst offender on my goal list. I pulled everything out and took down the folding table that was really just giving me more space to junk up. I still want to sort through this closet, but the bulk of the purge is done. Now I just need to organize and shift through the small piles for more donation items.

Estimation of items Donated : 40

Estimation of items trashed: 100

The bookcase is looking a bit better, there is actually space on it now. I removed all my yarn except for two bins of in progress projects. The more I look at my books the more I want to purge, so I know this bookcase will get another sort through in the final week!

This week I will tackle the pantry and finish up the Master Closet!

The Art of Preparing for a New Year

Every year like clock work, around 5pm on Christmas Day, I get a strong urge to organize, clean, declutter, plan, prepare, and make loads of lists. This year was no different. My mind has been swirling with ideas and plans for 48 hours, so here is my list of prep to be completed by the New Year, with a grace period of course.

The Prep List

• Set up a new Bill Box, Receipt Box, and Contract Box for 2011
• Organize and prep for storage the 2010 boxes listed above.
• Purge the Pantry.
• Mini Goal: Get everything up off the floor.
• Take down Christmas!
• Organize the storage of Christmas
• Label storage Boxes.
• Make a list of what is needed for Next Christmas and tape to Ornament Box
• Prep Spring decoration box
• Paint fireplace and touch up blue walls.
• Hang Mantel Mirror and setup a candle decoration
• Organize, Purge, and deep clean Master Closet.
• Organize, Purge, and deep clean all bathrooms
• Super clean the Fridge and Freezer.
• Organize and Purge books.
• Take books to resale store.
• Take Donations to Goodwill, AFTER the New Year
• Organize my office closet.

Whew! I am going to be busy.

Clean Sweeping, seriously where did it all come from????

Today I have the biggest urge to purge and clean and organize nooks and crannies in our home. I tackled my craft closet (again) simply because I couldn't get in there any more, and I had three laundry baskets hidden in there holding crap. It still needs a massive amount of work, but it is much more organized then it was. I am continually amazed at how much stuff I can easily let go of or throw away each time I clean it.

I then got picky about my bookcases, so I reorganized them, purged crap, cleared out the drawers and consolidated a mini bookcase and part of my yarn stash into the newly found space. Which left me with one empty bookcase and the yarn rack now filled with works in progress (they had previously been piled in a corner). The Hedgie cage is now out of the way and I can finally access my drawers and shelves without moving him around.

Two bags of trash are out in the can and three bags of donations are heading for the trunk. Yay!

I think I am in full on nesting mode, simply because I know life is about to get more complicated and I won't have time like this to organize when back in school and full time work. Plus I just keep thinking about how much STUFF we have. We trip over it for God's sake! So it's time to purge it all.

Next up:

• Finish the craft/storage closet.
• Organize/purge/clean the holiday closet
• Organize/purge/clean the hall closet
• Tackle Alex's playroom. Lord help us!
• Organize/purge/clean the Pantry and Kitchen. Too many things!!

One Mega May Goal completed

This weekend was supposed to be all about painting the ceiling and remaining walls but that isn't happening yet. :)

Instead I tackled our linen closet and ended bagging up a TON of pillows, old down comforters and a massive feather bed all for the trash. Now before you get all over me about donating them, seriously, NO ONE would want these. I don't even know why I was holding on to them.

At one point the upstairs hallway was stacked with the pile of pillows I pulled out of our tiny closet, 9 of them!! Why? I just keep asking myself that. So I tossed the gross ones, the ripped ones, the uncomfortable ones, and had the guys each pick one pillow for me to store in the closet for future use. I then promptly shoved those "to keep" pillows into a vacuum seal bag with a dryer sheet and stored them away. Yay!

I also took the time to go through all our towels and set aside all the ripped, frayed or stained towels to donate to the Animal Shelter. I would like to slowly switch all our towels over to All White. We are hard on towels and stains are inevitable, so being able to bleach them would be awesome. I figure as we wear out a towel I can just replace it with a new white one from Costco.

I have one non-white weakness though, Pool Towels! These I love to have in the brightest craziest patterns. I saw one at Target a couple months ago that was of goldfish, I still wish I had snagged it up. :)

So one measly mega May Goal down, tons more to go!

The Reality of Living with Dogs

Yeah I am going "there"! This is the contents of today's vacuuming session. The majority of that is dog hair from our Cockapoo Betty and black Lab Bella. Those two are lucky we love them so much. :)

PickUps

It's Friday, which is my pick up day. The day that I travel the house, room by room, putting away all the many things that find their way to ports of far. How yarn ends up in Alex's room and fliflops in the bathroom I will never know. But it is the day to return them to they home ports. The day to pick up decide if it really needs to stay, toss in to appropiate piles, put away what is staying and whisper promises to never ever let the scatter get to be so bad again. But every Friday it is the same.

My day is filled with picking up, cleaning, cooking, and organizing. A perfect day.

I want to be ready

The calendar has flipped over to August and I have new routines on my mind. School is in less than 3 weeks and I am ready to get back into a school year routine. I am ready to get back into meal planning. I am ready to manage a bulging calendar of work/school/scouts/family/life. And let me tell you, that calendar is going to be crazy! In order to make sure I don't lose my mind and drive my family to murder, I am drafting a couple lists of things to do.

School routines

• Start easing into an earlier bedtime.
• Re-establish a nighttime routine for Alex
• Start laying clothes out for the week.
• Ease into more substantial breakfasts, no more cereal and yogurt. I need to switch Alex over to his school time eating schedule.

Meal Planning

• Take stock of the pantry and freezer.
• Clean both pantry and freezer.
• Plan a couple weeks worth of school lunches.
• Plan a couple weeks worth of dinners.
• Make and freeze a couple quick meals for that first week back to school.

Scouts

• Plan in detail the next four months of meetings.
• Have our back to school meeting with kids and parents.
• Prep handouts/posters/record tracking forms.
• Make sure all our events are in our family calendar.

On top of all these things that I want to do, I have a new MAJOR HAVE to do change. Alex has recently been tested for allergies and we have discovered that he has major reactions to 8 of the 60 panels that he was tested on, mostly bermuda grass and dust mites. Which means, House cleaning needs to step up. I am a lazy duster, truly only do it when I finally notice it. Eepp! We need to purge the clutter from his play room and bedroom just to lessen the surfaces and items that turn into dust collectors.

And have I mentioned that I haven't finished painting yet either?? Dang, I have alot to do!

Doing what Needs to Be Done

Yesterday, I lolled around being bored. I followed Casey around, I played with the dogs, I zoned on the computer, I ignored many many things around me. Till Casey gave me this sage advice, When you are bored, stop and look around the room you are in, and do what needs to be done.

Well today Alex and I took that into play since Casey was prepping and Alex was spacing out on the TV. We took pictures of the rooms that we were both in and then pointed out the various things to each other about their rooms that needed to be done. Time limit was an hour. Which ended up being extended to an hour and half. :)

And we got so much done!

Alex's Playroom before.

Alex's Playroom After

Alex got alot picked up in his playroom and ended up taking out two bags of donations and a bag of trash. I was FINALLY able to vacuum and clean his ceiling fan. Yes, he still has alot of stuff, but we are slowly working on culling out the junk toys and the things he no longer plays with. Really our main struggle is the sheer amount of Legos he has.

Our Bedroom before.

Our Bedroom Before.

Our Bedroom After.

The other Done side of the room.

My cleaned out and reorganized vanity.

I tackled the mountain of clean laundry that had been waiting for days. Gathered all the random dirty piles and put them in waiting baskets. Made the bed, dusted and wiped down everything, vacuumed and cleaned the ceiling fan. And then I purged my vanity, lined it with drawer paper and wiped it all down. I still need to wash the dog beds, cycle through some laundry, and iron the curtains, but it is so much better than it was.

I have to say that I am continually amazed at how much I can SEE needs to be done when I just look. And then how much I CAN get done if I just do it. I actually have the urge to finish painting the bedroom doors, which have been waiting for 4 years. :)

Grrrr...

Today I did my annual Mommy Dearest Rant. I wasn't expecting it, neither was Alex and neither was Casey. It all started when I asked Alex to clean up his playroom to make room for his new Christmas presents. And hour later it looked exactly the same.

**Beware Parental Freak Out Forthcoming**

I lost it. I immediately sent him downstairs for a dozen garbage bags and started in on the closest thing and systematically moved around the room. I even tackle the Hot Wheel bin and consolidated it since we are turning his train table into a Lego table for his birthday. Two hours and 3 garbage bags and 6 donation bags later, we have a clean room. Everything has a place, the bin storage rack is gone since it is just a junk catcher and I have spot cleaned his carpets.

I had a moment where I was so mad at myself for the sheer amount of stuff being donated and thrown away due to breakage. It was probably equivalent to one weeks worth of income for Casey. One week away from his family thrown away. I am so upset about that. It is just not right

In an effort to get things in order and par down the amount of stuff in our home, I am going to give each room one month. A month to purge, super clean, spot clean carpets, PAINT, and if needed reinvent layouts and add bits of furniture.

Alex's playroom gets January. His bedroom gets February. Time to look at paint samples!

Oh and he is allowed one gift per person for his birthday.

Pantry Foodie

Tuesday:

Breakfast:
Alex; Cereal and fruit and Vitamins
Casey & I: English muffin with egg beaters, cheese and Canadian bacon.

Lunch:
Alex: the favorited PB&J
Nicole: Cheese toasty and Buffalo Wing Chips
Casey: Leftover 2nd batch enchiladas

Dinner:
Spinach Salad
Pork Chops, O'Gratin Potatoes and Mixed Veggies
Dessert: Must Finish the Pumpkin Bread!
EDIT: Dinner was actually tortalinni, meatballs, sauce and cheesy bread. Maybe Pork Chops tonight!

So I have been reorganizing my pantry this afternoon and let me tell you, I must eat and eat to clear up shelf space for dishes. My mom gave us a set of dishes of hers that I have been eyeing for about 20 years, and with our winter dishes ready to go out, I need space to store our everyday year round dishes. Plus my le Cruset and stoneware cake pan need a home. So shelf space must be made.

My plan of attack is to makeup as many of the mixes, like sauce/spice/baking mixes as I can these next couple weeks. As well as eat the varied cereals we have, do we really need five different boxes? So I have challenged us all to eat cereals for the next week and a half to clear up that space for the dishes currently on the floor. I think I am going to try and score some narrow storage boxes, like Ikea has had in the past to store all the random stuff that we want to keep up on the top shelf. Maybe that will be better visually. Basket shopping galore!

Carpet, glorious clean carpet

This is a sight that has been absent from my eyes for about a year and a half, this expanse of carpet being CLEARED!! I have had a mountain of boxes, bags, and stuff piled in front of my paper racks forever. yesterday, my friend Sharon was over and she casually said that her friend would love to take it all off my hands, she even loaded it into her car, and (most importantly) TOOK IT ALL AWAY!! Every time I come into my space I get a stupid giddy feeling, its CLEANED and CLEAR and I can actually see what I have. Perfect!

I am now finishing up our evening with the menfolk playing a final game of Halo for the weekend, and me snug in my clean space with a cup of suiss and my next pillow design ready to be knotted. Perfect again...

Paper Thin

Their Shaking Hands, their shaking in their shoes, Oh Lord Don't shake me down...

I have been around, just really busy. Here is a list of some current favorite things right now:

• Modest Mouse, Plain White Tees, Frou Frou
• Gaiam, exercise ball DVD, I better have iron abs for how much they ache right now.
• Purlsoho.com
• Dirty Potato Chips
• The Golden Compass on DVD to listen to at night with Alex instead of the random country station.
• Big Love
• " A Well Kept Home", a giftie from my buddy LeeAnn.
• Hot Hot baths with mindless reading.
• My new black slides from Target, like wearing slippers to work.
• Having a new project on my sticks!
• Pedicures, time for another one with my mom.
• Meerkat Manor, where I have been?! Love this show.

So LeeAnn and I have challenged each other with a "finish it up" month of projects. Here it is, for the month of August, instead of watching TV or blog trolling or whatever, finish up all those half completed projects. It has been tough, but I have broken my time into one hour of TV time a night, I usually use it for the stinkin' addictive Virtual villager game Alex and I are into. So here is my project list:

• Touch up master bathroom painting and hang cabinet doors.
• Repair the kitchen light
• Finish up the endless Afghan, only three rows left!
• Organize all of Casey's billing with detailed job sheets for each week.
• Streamline our budget.
• Line my dresser drawers with something pretty.
• Pull the small amount of stubborn weeds from the pool, so the liner can go in next week!
• Organize hallway closets. BIG job!

So far, I haven't done too bad, been working on the closets and budget and billing paperwork.

Have you ever stopped and looked at the sheer amount of STUFF in your house, oh my god, it is everywhere... HELP!!!

Visable rooms and the process.

Today I am tackling all the visible rooms simply because a neighbor is coming over tonight. It is amazing what is laying around in them. The front room has become a between trip dumping grounds. Casey tends to leave his suitcase in it when he comes home from a trip, and then leaves the extras that he doesn't take with him on his next trip end up on the floor. The shear amount of laundry laying around downstairs is surprising to me once I actually open my eyes and look for it. That and the shoes, which I am the biggest repeat offender. I think I have about 5 pairs hanging out downstairs right now, ugh!



So what is my room cleaning/purging process. First, I start with two garbage bags, simply so I don't have to leave the room and further distract myself when one gets full. Then I assemble as many laundry baskets as possible. One for laundry, one for stuff that belongs upstairs, one for stuff that belongs downstairs, and if needed one for stuff that belongs solely in the office. I also have about half dozen of those plastic dishpan tubs, I use these for Alex stuff and garage stuff. they are small enough that he can handle them, and the amount of stuff it can hold is not overwhelming for him to put away quickly. And of course I have my bucket of cleaning supplies and a roll of paper towels. I then clear all the surfaces of random junk and pick up all the stuff from the floor. I also take this time to straighten shelves and bookcases, this is not the time to reorganize everything just make it look better then it did. Once the room looks like it should be and is cleared of everything that doesn't belong there, I clean from the top down.



With this mega cleaning I have been fully cleaning the walls, it is amazing how much dust collects on them, as well as little dangley dust strings that hang from the stucco ceiling. Gotta love my Dyson for this job. I next dust everything, wash windows and picture frames, have any pillow covers or blankets for this room in the wash, and finally end up vacuuming the floor boards and floors.



One other things I do to freshen the room is to clean with the windows open, which I have been able to do this week because of the rain, it keeps the temperature and humidity down to a bearable amount. Fresh air is critical to really clean a room. It gets out all the allergens and random stinkies for the room. I can all most see those stinkies shrinking down to nothingness and then pop into a speck of glitter. Ahhhh, clean!



One thing that tends to happen just because we have ALOT of stuff, is my laundry baskets I use for sorting fill up. At that point I take the basket and do a tour of the house to deposit just inside the door of the room anything that belongs there. I will only ever not do this is there is an easily accessible home for the object. I really have to be strict with myself on this one because I am so easily distracted with a "quick organizing" project that pulls me away from the room I am trying to focus on. So i do this as quickly as possible, like in five minutes or less.



As I finish a room I make a mental list of the mini projects I want to tackle later. Things like bookcase regorgs, cabinet purges, drawer organizations, under the sink mass exoduses, etc. These small projects are the one thing that majorly distract me from the overall room cleaning. So they have been pushed to other days. Days when I don't mind spending an hour on the cabinet under the kitchen sink. I just have to remember to actually get to those projects.

So today is all about the entire downstairs, except the laundry room. We have a fairly open floor plan downstairs, which means the mess in the kitchen is wide open to the living room, and if tea time is in the plans then the mess has to be dealt with. So see you later, I have cleaning to do!

I have a confession

I have a cleaning confession that I just have to declare. Remember when I professed my love for Lemon scented Pine Sol? I only bought the pine sol because I saw a very chic and tidy looking women shopping at the grocery store and in the very bottom of her cart I spied the bright yellow bottle of cleaning solution. Next thing I know, my cart is magically in the cleaning isle and a bottle is nestled between paper towels and milk in my very own basket.

I am a Closet cleaning supple Poser... but my house smells so good right now!

4.5 hours till crash time

In the time left between now and sleep i want to accomplish this...

Clean all hard floors in the house with mega big bottle of pine sol lemon
Organize linen closet and up the blanket storage chest I bought months ago.
Organize yarn stash and works in progress.
Super vacuum bedroom
Organize desk and bulletin board.
Snuggle with Alex to Coldplay.

Ready Steady Go

Color Inspiration

Alex's Bathroom shower Curtain.

It is a bit washed out and transparent, but this is my color inspiration for Alex's bathroom. I want to paint it the dark blue color, with bright white accents. I also can't stop thinking of ripping up the yuck linoleum floor and putting down basic white hexagon tiles and maybe a pedestal sink or new sink cabinet unit. I know Home Depot always has good deals on bathroom fixtures and if our timing is right then I can totally score. And new floorboards, oh for the love of new floorboards!

All this bathroom talk stemmed from all of us sitting down and hashing out a set of house rules, rewards, daily chores and consequences. Today's chore for Alex was trash collection and take out. So it being his first time I showed him the ropes and we used a super big bag since I had been slacking on trash duty. When we reached his bathroom, which is one of those previously mentioned rooms that I haven't been in for weeks, I got fed up and super cleaned, purging under the cabinet, purging bath toys, and disinfecting everything from the ceiling to the floor and back again.

Which brings me to an Aside: PINE SOL LEMON ROCKS. End Aside.

So with his bathroom purged, a better understanding of the bathroom clean up expectations, I now feel the urge to revamp his bath, because honestly bathrooms are meant to be nice places to relax in. Right? Nothing can clench the booty checks together like a yucky bathroom, hence the sole use of the Master bath for the last couple weeks. LOL!

So if you haven't got it yet, I am excited about bathroom revamp possibilities.

The Busy Day

Fridays are the days when everything that needs to get done gets done. My list today isn't daunting or scary, just full, and I am enjoying that. I like to be busy from the first moment to the last moment, well at least once I get started. The getting started part is always the hardest for me. Today my list looks like this:

1. Finish Office paperwork and payment schedules
2. Finish March Budget
3. Update February budget
4. Laundry
5. Get Groceries for the weekend and week
6. Vacuum all the carpet, all the way to the edges
7. Spot clean said carpet, Mr. Muffinator had some issues that I missed apparently.
8. Clean up studio space.
9. Post office!!
10. Clean out the garage, meaning sweep it out, hose it out, let air out while drying. when it houses three big dogs in it at night, it can get funky.
11. Meal Plans for the next week, super important to the grocery shopping part.
12. Have a sugar scrub and super Shea butter treatment, oh my poor flaking skin.

Its 8am and I am armed with my list. Time to get cracking!

Operations Laundry has hit a snag.

Today is a day that I must accomplish some major laundry. Seriously, can't describe the laundry operation that I am undertaking today. Mountain, piles, in every room. Some are clean, some are dirty, and some just need to soak and bleach and become pure if possible. First thing I need to gather together the piles to sort, LAUNDRY BASKETS.I know for a fact that we have three. I have to go on a quest to locate all three baskets today since they went AWOL.


Nope not here, but I can spy some laundry that needs corralling.

AH basket #1 all ready in Laundry process. Love that pro activeness on its part.

Oh this needs basket too, I happen to know this is clean, just didn't make it to its home.


Hooray basket #2, I found you as well as the pile of stuff to sort and put away.

Still looking for basket #3, but I must be close with piles like this spilling about.

FOUND IT!! Tucked away in a closet in the spilling over office. Casey is officially a basket snatcher. But I do think I gave permission for this snatch.

And this just made me giggle. Looks like a baggie of blow but it is actually just Casey's face scrub for the road, baking soda. Cause really we just need a little toot in the mornings, its better then coffee. GOSH I am totally kidding.