Busy busy busy

Yeah, I know I keep promising to put up after photos of the living room! It's just not quite done! Almost! Just have more pressing issues right now! Oldest daughter was doing a craft show and needed me to embroider some stuff. Had 2 birthdays last week! My 2 youngest boys! One turned 8 on Thursday and the other was 1 on Sunday! I promised the 8 year old almost 2 months ago that I would make a place for him to play Legos as his birthday present. I started and finished that the day before his birthday. Of course I forgot to take a before picture, darn it! He loves it! I spent all afternoon Monday turning 2 bushels of apples into apple cider! Tuesday was errand day. Worked on one shelf in the living room this morning. I'm also tackling another project, the school room! The half of the basement that flooded in the spring. All it's salvageable contents tossed into the playroom, until I made the Lego area, and then it got tossed back into the still trashed out schoolroom! My wonderful hubby built 2 eight foot long, floor to ceiling shelves for me to store school items on. Now to sort through and get rid of all the unnecessary stuff. I did take before pics. I don't know if I want to post them, they are really bad! Now to get to work!

Almost there

Well it's almost 11 and little man wanted his mommy so he could go to sleep! So no more cleaning today. Was going to watch a Netflix but its "unable to connect at this time" even though its working on the iPad, it won't work through the wii tonight. Bummer! So we got most of the living room done. Will have to take pics tomorrow, too dark right now! Still have to go through a lot of junk but at least the furniture is moved, and we updated the outlets. Also cleaned and reorganized the towel closet in the hall? I wish I did a before picture because it looks awesome now! Now it's Sunday! Was too busy yesterday to get anything done! Our group had a used stuff swap and I got rid of a lot of stuff! Most of what is in this picture is now gone! LOL! We kept the children!

Getting back

Wow can't believe I've been away over a year! My little one will have his first birthday next week! Time flies too fast! Since my last post I have added a son and two grandsons to the family! Plus we had a flood in the basement in the spring, so there has been a lot of messes and rearranging going on here! I'm going to really get into deep cleaning, decluttering, purging, and rearranging of rooms! These babies are on the move and we can no longer contain them in a small area! So, here we go! We spend most time in the living room, which I guess is why it is called that! We live there! And boy can you tell it is lived in! It's quite the sardine can! When the babies are all here we toss stuff in laundry basket and stick them in another room! Well, today we are going to purge, clean, and rearrange to give babies a bigger place to play! It's a big room with lots of stuff so it's a hefty goal to get it all in one day, especially with 2 babies underfoot! But today we only have 1 outside activity and its only an hour! Tomorrow is everyone going different directions all day long, and Sunday is The Lords' Day! So why am I typing instead of getting busy? I'm feeding the baby! Ok! Time to begin! Here is how it looks (beware! It's bad!)

Sept. 17, 2012

well I am 10 days away from the end of my "40 bags in 40 days" clean up! I was way ahead, but now I'm falling behind! But, I'm not worried! I have not been counting any of the stuff I have put aside for the annual homeschool swap, because it is not out of my home yet! But I know it will be gone soon (just not before the 40 days are up!) So it is day 30 and I have removed 22 bags of stuff! YAY!! I am able to notice a bit of difference. I have some room to organize some things. It is so nice when I need __, I can say "that is in this spot." It is incentive to continue and do it throughout the house with everything! Definitely has made it easier to part with other things, too. I just say "I'm getting rid of ___ which I have stored for many years, there is no purpose for it, and with it gone I will be able to use that spot for things I do use and want to be able to find." I'm getting there.....slowly!

I think I can, I think I can.....

well, I am making SOME progress. Not as much as I would like, of course, but I'm getting there. I hear that clock ticking LOUDLY that I only have about 8 weeks left before my focus shifts completely! The little ones are begging to do school, but I just don't have the time, energy, or space to start on that yet! I really wanted to teach Z to read this summer, but time got away from me. I've decided all this extra stuff in my house is sucking my time and life away from me and my kids, and it's all got to go! I've sold a few books and a couple of other items. Hopefully I can sell some more, at least enough to purchase a new laptop to replace the two year old one that just died on us. I don't "need" a laptop, but I prefer having the kids use that for their homework. so I guess we are going to try having a garage sale next weekend. I've never had much luck with those, barely making back what I spent on the ad (which used to be $5-$10, but are now a whopping $22 bucks) I hate spending that much money only to make a few dollars and all that work setting the stuff up, then having to repack it when we are done. Plus there is all that time you spend sitting out there watching your stuff, waiting for customers. Hmm, maybe I'll set up a little table with my sewing machine and sew some baby diapers while I'm out there! Sounds good to me! So as far as the two challenges go, the simplify for fall, and the 40 bags/40 days: well, the first three days were good. the first I got rid of 2 bags, the second was clothes and laundry - I did get all the laundry washed, but I just couldn't get into going through the clothes, so I worked on the livingroom instead and got rid of 2 more bags from that room. the third day was kitchen and menu day - I cleaned out 2 upper cabinets and condensed all the "two or three of the same kind of opened spice jars" and ended up with a whole shelf and a half completely empty!! All of that junk filled up a bag! the fourth day was my regular "errand" day, so I didn't get much done for the challenges. I woke up and went to check my emails and the internet box wasn't lit up. luckily they have a store in town and I took it in saying I needed a new one. they decided to check first to see if it was the electrical cable that was bad, and it was! GOOD DEAL! the box would have cost $100, but the cord was only $10! So I went on with my grocery shopping and regular Wednesday stuff. Afterwards we put together 2 cubbie shelf units to put our books on in the livingroom. I cleaned in there as much as I could but it was already 9pm by the time we finished putting the shelves together (they didn't take long, we just started late!) so I only ended up with getting rid of half a bag of stuff. Today I had an appointment out of town in the morning. We made it back home by early afternoon, but the 3 hour round trip wore me out! So, I took a nap! Then we worked on some of the routine chores and ate dinner. I've been working on going through stuff in our schoolroom and had the kids try to finish the living room for me. Again, I only got half a bag, but I'm still ahead from the days I got two bags! Tomorrow should be a "stay-at-home" day, so hopefully we will get some things done. Friday is our bathroom cleaning day, so I'll have to do that first before I get to working on more of the challenge. I really want to get this school room done, so we can try to start school and get into somewhat of a routine that hopefully they will carry on and do even if I'm resting with the baby (we've been working on that with chores for the last few weeks.) Once I finish the school room I want to do the playroom - which for now has turned into my clothes sorting area, so the kids cannot get to their toys and they have no where to play! Once that is done I need to get my room cleaned up and ready for baby! And somewhere in there I need to make a bunch of newborn diapers because right now I think I only have TWO!! I don't think it will work to wash one while he wears the other! Gee, I'd better get off this computer and get busy!!

Quest to Declutter!

I ran across this blog that is doing a Simplify for Fall challenge which starts tomorrow! I'm definitely going to give it a go! I'm going to combine it with another challenge I ran across at Clover Lane which is a 40 bags in 40 days challenge. I figure I have around 56 days before my baby comes, so this should be a do-able project, and around the time baby is due, our homeschool group is having a free Swap that I can unload all my stuff I collect to get rid of. Basically, we all take our unused items (mainly clothes, books, and toys) to a church which has graciously offered to let us use their space, lay out all our stuff, garage sale style, but everybody's stuff is altogether sorted by size and gender, and then we "shop!" FOR FREE! There's usually a ton of really nice stuff and it's great to swap out what you no longer use for what you can use. We have been doing it once a year in the spring, but thankfully, this year we are having a second one in the fall! I already have 3 tote bins and 6 large cardboard boxes full of stuff to take. That's not counting the 6 boxes of books! So, while I am doing the "simplify for fall" I will be trying to gather up at least a bag of stuff each day to get rid of. I'm starting the 40 bags today. I got rid of 1 grocery bag of half used coloring books and threw them in the recycling! 39 more bags to go!

Making progress (a little anyway!)

So, while I didn't complete my goal of totally removing everything from the "old" school room, MOST of it is out! We could have had all of it out, but then I wouldn't have room to move in the "new" school room! It's hard enough moving around with this 29 week pregnant belly without having to climb over things! So I had to tell the kids to stop hauling stuff down until I can put some of it away. Hubby moved the small wall shelf down there last night after I had quit for the evening, so I guess that's where I will start today. I'm hoping today to get at least enough put away down there so we can move the rest of the stuff down. As long as we are able to get the room painted by this weekend, I'll be happy! I'm sure Nicole will be happy, too, because then next week she can start moving her stuff into her new room and start setting up her baby stuff. Hard to believe she only has a month left! I guess before I get started on the moving and putting away today, I should get the kids out of bed, eat breakfast, and have them help me make another batch of apple butter out of the box of apples MIL brought over last night. They said this is the last batch of apples for the season. I'd much rather do up the apples than tomatoes - they are so much easier, quicker, cleaner, and smell so much better! Oh well, the tomatoes do TASTE good when we put them in the chili and lasagna!