Toy Closet

Our living room has been stressing me out lately. No matter how often I clean, you can always see toys and it looks like a daycare. This picture was taken five minutes after we got home from school last Thursday.

How crazy is that?

So, I started thinking about where the toys could go. Preferably somewhere that I didn’t need to look at them.

Suddenly I saw this.

It’s the closet under our stairs. The door opens into our living room, but it’s really deep. One problem.

Completely unable to get inside it due to crap.

But, I had a mission.

Last Friday, I cleaned that closet out. Eight bags of garbage came out of there, plus recycling.

We were left with this.

Next stop, Dollar Tree for toy organization bins. They have awesome bins for $1 a piece. I spent $20 on various small bins. Perfect size for toys.

Came home and put toys away. Right now the closet looks like this.

And like this.

The girls can find all their toys with ease. Also the novelty of putting their toys away hasn’t worn off yet.

Best part for me is this.

Nice and clean. Doesn’t look like a daycare anymore. ALL of the toys fit in the closet and I can shut the door on them. It’s wonderful.

Cleaning and Organizing

For the past few days I’ve been in a cleaning and organizing mindframe. I’m hoping it sticks around for a while. Most of my other tries at organizing this place have failed, so I’m hoping I have much more success this time.

Today, my goal was my kitchen counters. I hate seeing so much clutter in them.

Here’s a before.

Not happy with that at all. Too many things, not enough space to work. Ok, who am I kidding, there’s no work space there.

So, everything off and only the essentials back on.

Much better. The basket is all of our chargers, as we always have something charging on the counter. The paper bag is recycling. It’s a system that works for us (bag gets full, it gets thrown in the outside recycling bin). The binder is my everyday recipes. One white basket is measuring cups. The other is everyday medicines and toothpaste. The crockpot is tonight’s dinner 🙂

Where did everything go?

We had a full two door cabinet that was filled with junk and cat food.

Cleaned it out and adjusted the shelves. Three garbage bags later, we’ve got this.

I’d say this wasn’t bad for thirty minutes of work this afternoon.

Things That are Found

I’ve been cleaning out our office this week so that we can convert it into a bedroom for Allie (she sleeps in our room for now).  I’ve found many things.  Here’s a sample:

1. A bakery receipt from 1999.
2. Tons of bills from 2000-2005 (enough to fill 2×56 gallon rubbermaid containers).
3. High school graduation gifts.
4. Undeveloped 35mm film (Where can I get that developed?).
5. Pictures that are so dark you can’t tell what they’re from.
6. Several AOL cds.
7. Floppy disks (5 1/4).
8. User manuals for electronics that we haven’t owned in years.
9. Cables, cables, and more cables.
10. Six pack of little Coca-Cola bottles.

It’s just crazy, what is in there.  I can’t wait until it’s all cleaned, thrown out, donated and recycled.

Working Around the House

This past week has been fun.  I went to John’s cousin Christina’s to visit with her and her new baby girl, Gia.  Gia is super sweet.  I held her for probably close to two hours and she barely fussed at all.  It was great for getting my “baby” fix on for right now.  She was great and I can’t wait to see her again at her Baptism.  Chris and I had a great time catching up too (We don’t get to see each other too often, but I do really enjoy spending time with her).  I also went to the Flower Show with my MIL, Toni, but that will get its own post soon, instead of being cramped into this one.

Tons of new photos up on our sharesite (PHOTOS)

I have managed to finish cleaning up the office.  It went from a space that looked like this,

The messy old office

to a space that looks like this:

A nice neat office

And another view, showing a nice neat bookcase and a useable elliptical trainer (well, useable for something other than just being an extra clothes closet).

The rest of the room.

I’m still not happy with the carpet and we would like to replace it with a nice berber carpet.  I’ve looked around and I’m not happy with the prices I’ve been seeing.  There’s two carpet companies I plan on trying this week.  Basically, I need to find a remnant of the right size.  It’s not a huge room (12×13) and I don’t think it should cost close to $500 just to carpet the room.  When we redid the carpet in our bedroom when we moved in, we only paid a little over $200, and it’s a bigger room.  I’m pretty sure I can get this room done for under $250, I just need to hunt around.

What else have I done this week, well, the fabric on the bottom of the ottoman was completely destroyed.  This is the fabric that protects the inside of the ottoman (the works) from being exposed.  Our little black cat, Sophie, thought that this was the perfect cat scratcher, so she’d been getting rid of the fabric for a while.  It’s been over two years that we have had absolutely no fabric on the bottom of the ottoman.  Two years ago I picked up tapestry fabric at Joann’s on the cheap.  We’re talking about 50 cents a yard.  Why was it cheap?  Because it had Santa with Teddy Bears on it.  I didn’t care as this was going on the bottom of the ottoman and would never be seen.  Why did I want tapestry fabric?  It’s really nice and thick.  It’s a very strong fabric and could probably withstand Hurricane Sophie.  Although I bought the fabric two years ago, I hadn’t done anything with it, until this week.

I finally redid the bottom of the ottoman.  Here it is before the new fabric was placed on it.  Notice that you can see straight through to the inside of the ottoman.

And, here is the ottoman with a nice new bottom fabric added.  Perfect.  Sophie can’t scratch the underside of the ottoman top fabric anymore.

Today, while watching some movies rented from the Redbox (Public Enemies (yuck, two thumbs down) and Zombieland (funny so far, but we’re not done yet), I decided to recover the dining room chairs.  This was yet another project that I had bought fabric for several years ago.  Our dining room set is Queen Anne’s style and really not our taste (we are much more Craftsman and Shaker).  But, when I bought it years ago for my first apartment it was extraordinarily cheap.  Especially for a table that had two leaves!  I had picked it up at the Raymour and Flannigan Clearance Center for a steal.  I thought I could easily change out the plain white chair cushions for something that popped.  Here are our chairs with the original seats.

Original white chair cushions

And here are our chairs with the new fun fabric with which I replaced the original chair cushion fabric.  I love them.  They are so much more fun and not at all what you would expect to see when looking at a Cherry Queen Anne’s Dining Set.

What’s on tap for this week?  Well, I plan on working on our guest room (It hasn’t been touched since the wedding and I’m pretty afraid to even step foot in there.  It is so freaking messy.  Hopefully I can sort through a bunch of the stuff in there pretty quickly.  I’m heading up to Valorie’s to visit with her and her daughter.  Haven’t seen her since before Christmas so this should be a lot of fun.  That’s about it.  Other than that, just continuing to look for a new job.  I’ve been applying for just about everything I can find.  Hopefully one of the companies will bite soon.