Mother's Day

I am going in to cleaning and cooking mode this afternoon.  We decided to have my in-laws over for dinner tomorrow night for Mother's Day.  This includes Jake's sister, her husband and 2 kids!  I don't think we have ever had them all over for dinner before.  The kids are going to be so excited, they don't know about it yet.  I am going to have to put them to work cleaning too.  I have their lists all made out!  

This is what is on the menu

• Chicken Fried Chicken
• Mashed Potatoes and gravy
• peas, corn and green beans
• Homemade Texas Roadhouse hot rolls
• Strawberry/Blueberry Shortcake with homemade shortcake and whipped cream

I wish I was one of those moms who always had the house ready for company but I am SO not!  I can barely keep up with the kids mess most of the time.  It's actually pretty clean right now, just the usual stuff to do like vacuuming, mopping, etc...  Most of the time will be getting ready for dinner I think.  I love to cook though so that's always fun for me!

I picked out a couple of my own Mother's Day gifts today...that was fun!  We are doing pizza for dinner then we are going to watch this when the kids go to bed...

Trying to keep going

I have been trying to keep pace with my cleaning and organizing despite the events of the past week.  I keep thinking that if I keep going I will get it done and then I will feel better.  If I stop I will lose my enthusiasm and I am afraid I won't get done at all.

If we aren't friends on Facebook I will tell you that our house was broke into this past week.  A window was broken and we had some things taken from our home while we were out grocery shopping.  We were gone for less than 2 hours!  Among the things taken were both my cameras so my organizing pictures this week were taken with my phone.  I will keep up with the phone pictures until I am able to replace my camera.

So, I started with my bathroom on Friday afternoon.  We have a really small bathroom so it didn't take too long to get it done.  I had a lot of junk crammed in there though!  Other than the size the other think I hate about my bathroom is that we have no storage space.  There are no drawers and the counter top space is really small as well.  Here is my before and after shot (pardon the grainy camera phone shots!)

This is all the storage I have in there!  I think I did a pretty good job getting rid of stuff though.  I got an over the door shoe organizer and hung it on the closet door.  It's holding all of the things we use everyday like hair products, deodorant, perfume, etc...I will get a good shot of it and post it tomorrow.

Here is what my counter top looks like, hopefully we can keep it like this for longer than a few days!  I think it will help to have a place for everything though.

Here is a shot of all the makeup products that I had stuffed under that sink.  Seriously SO much junk!!  I got this pared down to just a small bag of the stuff I use almost daily and a basket of other eye shadows and lip stuff.

Here is all the stuff I am getting rid of and I threw a TON of it away.

It feels really good to be getting rid of so much stuff!    I know it's going to be a pain to get all this ready for a garage sale, but if we can make even a little money off it will be worth it.  The money we make will be applied to home projects, hopefully in the form of an entertainment center!!

I spent ALL DAY Saturday on my closet so I will post about that tomorrow when I get home from school.

Happy organizing!!

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!!