Jumping on the organizing train!

I started off with a bang today.  I got a lot done, but the rest of my house doesn't look like it!  I made my to do list last night and got started at a decent time this morning.  I decided to start with the laundry room.  We have a pretty small laundry room and it's the walkway between the house and the garage.  We don't actually park in the garage right now, it's mostly used for storage and all the junk we are saving for the spring yard sale.  There is a lot!  We haven't had a yard sale since we moved here and that will be 5 years this summer.  

I started by putting all the clean clothes away, the I tackled the cabinet, then moved on to the floors.  Here are my before and afters.

I threw a bunch of stuff away, mostly cleaning stuff that was almost empty, etc...  I have all my cleaning rags in the basket at the top.  The box on the bottom shelf was an amazon.com shipping box that I covered with Duct Tape!  It is holding smaller things so I can just pull it out if I need it.  Everything is so much easier to get to and I have a little extra room.

Then I moved on to the linen closet.  This is our only linen closet and it's TINY!  It's usually overflowing with stuff, most of which is never used.  Here is what I did.

Look at the difference!!  I kept 2 towels a piece for the kids, beach towels, the hand towels (most of them are in the laundry right now) and 1 extra set of sheets for each kid.  I also put my cleaning supply bucket in there, my foot bath and a basket for clothes to get rid of.  Up top I have an afghan my mom made and a fuzzy blanket that I have had for over 20 years and a tablecloth.  In the box I have candles and a flashlight in case of a power outage.  I started covering it with duct tape and ran out before I got done so I am going to have to get more!

This next picture is all the stuff that I took out of the closet that I am going to get rid of!  Old towels always sell in our yard sales, guys buy them for shop towels and stuff like that.  I always get rid of sheet sets pretty easily too, I think there are 3 king sets and 2 girl twin sets.  I think I did pretty good and I have lots of extra room! 

Then I moved to the living room desk area.  It's always a mess and I have been wanting to move it for a long time.  Here is what I did here.

Please ignore the spots on the carpet!  That is one of the reasons I am moving stuff, I am going to clean the carpets this week.  Probably tomorrow night since I have to work tomorrow.  So basically, I just moved it from one side of the room to the other.  I also brought in my file cabinet so I would have somewhere to put the printer.  The only thing that bothers me is all the cords.  I need to come up with a good solution for those.  I also don't know that I love those little pictures there, but I am going to leave them for now to see if I can find something I like better.  I even cleaned out the desk drawers!

Lastly for today I decided to update my picture wall.  The pictures I had there were from when we first moved here.  Bailey was in 2nd grade in hers!  They really needed to be changed out and I have had these pictures for a year now.  I added the one of all 3 kids and moved a couple letters around to make it flow better.  I still have a couple more pictures to hang, but I need to get some more frames.  I like it though and sadly it's the most decorated spot in the house!  Most of my walls are still bare.  I really need to get on the decorating ball!

Well, I feel pretty good about my first day of cleaning and organizing.  I have to work tomorrow all day and then again on Thursday and Friday.  I still have plans to tackle some projects on those days, but it just depends on how things go.  I will definitely be working on something big on Wednesday though.  I am thinking about working on my closet and bathroom.  I need Jake's help with the closet though since half of it is his.  I am going to make him get rid of stuff too!  Hopefully that goes over well!

Happy Organizing!!