A Needed Break

Well if you have been following the progress in Project Purge the you will know we have been busy people. And because of that I decided I was due for a bit of a "reward" (or a break) for all my hard work.

If you know a lot about me you might know I spend a lot of time on Pintrest (that's where I got the whole idea in the first place for Project Purge), and I pin all kinds of ideas that I want to do in and around the house. So on Monday I saw this idea on that I fell in love with. I knew I instantly wanted to do it. What I also knew that I could do it!

So on Monday I was home with a sick kid and we were watching movies ALL day, and I was playing on the computer. That's when I saw the idea and re pinned it. Then I went right to work on DOING it. I started searching through nearly 6 years of photos in order to find a special 2-4 pictures and edit them. Then in about an hour (or another time through Atlantis I forget) I had the pictures on their way to the 1 hour photo center.

Then a day went by with my sick kiddo home and we didn't get to pick up the pictures till today. So I picked up the pictures and headed over to the frame section and picked out the perfect frame and home I came. Put the pictures in the frame and now it's DONE!

A project from Pin to Product in 3 days. I think it is a personal record for me. And here it is...

 

 

Ok... So it isn't hung on the wall yet. I'm kind of a freak about putting holes in my walls and they need to be in the perfect place and with the right kind of mount and such so I don't end up with a lot of silly holes in my walls. I'll wait for my husband to mount it. But here is some wall art for our bathroom. Some adorable pictures of my two girls S (on the top) and K (on the bottom) swimming in our tub.

 

 

I'm just so pleased with it I had to share it.

Project Purge: Kitchen Edition

While Project Purge Basement Edition had many instalments, the Kitchen Edition has but one. Why because it took one day to accomplish. It was a busy full afternoon and early evening but one day!
So I think my husband was right, the basement was the hardest to accomplish and maybe we shouldn't have started with that but he did make a good point. I'm a, rip the band aid off quick, kinda gal. I prefer to run a full speed and then walk during my workouts, and that's the method I chose for this task.

So now it's smooth sailing. Well... it's easier.

The kitchen is probably the most used room the house (aside from the bathroom). We are in their all the time. However, when we moved into our house almost 6 years ago, I was 8+ months pregnant (and actually had the baby 1 week after we moved in), so I had to rely on the help of family and friends to put things away in the kitchen. And here we are 6 years latter and not much has changed. So I still have problems reaching items I use all the time and have to dig around items I rarely use.

Because of that to start with I reorganized the food cabinets moving items to the top shelves that my husband (who is 6' 2") uses and items that I (a mere 5' 3") use regularly to the lower shelves. We also found that we had 2 open containers of the same bread crumbs and 2 half used bags of powdered sugar. So after some consolidation and reorganizing things make much more sense in those cabinets.

I didn't do as good a job with pictures in the kitchen because I was being productive and I choose to ride the productivity train instead of the make the best blog possible train. That and my husband had the kids outside playing so I had the Pandora tunes cranked, was working at full tilt and I forgot to take pictures.

But I do have some so I'll share them with you.

I did some organizing, consolidating and getting rid of items in my cabinets. The spice cabinet was the most scary to open before this, it was always a guess what would fall on you (so be prepared).


Before

After

The next cabinet I didn't take a before picture of (sorry but trust me it was scary). I also don't understand how a clean cabinet that you put clean dishes in gets so dirty but needless to say YUK was the right word for what I cleaned out of the bottom of that cabinet (and all the others).

After

This one holds many dishes I use a lot and I just love to take all the dishes out to get the bottom dish when needed.... NOT. Now it is much more functional and I only actually took 3 things out of this cabinet.


Before



After

 

Now here is the before and after picture of my kitchen.

Before

After

Some things you may not notice is the decreased clutter on top of the cabinets and the larger amounts of counter space and less wasted space. Believe me it's all there. I implemented "centers" into my kitchen and so far 24 hours latter it has revolutionized my kitchen experience. Before I always did my baking in the same spot (kinda near where my Kitchen Aid mixer is), but kept my flour and sugar canisters on the other side of the kitchen sink. I kept pens and tape (for marking sippy cups and items for school) and some sticky notes in a bin over near my fruit and the "baking" area and the rest of the "paper work" stuff on the other side of the kitchen. Basically my kitchen didn't make sense. So now I have "Centers."

I have a "command center," for phone messages, lunch stuff and bills/mail items.

We have a "cooking center," with easy access to cooking sprays, wines, utensils etc...

And my favorite area in the kitchen the "baking center." Flour, sugar, Kitchen Aid Mixer, and other baking things all in one area. And my Bear cookie jar is the perfect place for me to prop my Nook while I fallow recipes on it.

Completing this project in such a quick amount of time has me so excited to do the other rooms of the house. But they will wait a bit because all this stirring up dust these last few days has stirred up my allergies so I'll be resting for a few days.

Other Purges
Project Purge: Basement Edition
Project Purge: Master Bedroom Edition
Project Purge: Kids Room Edition
Project Purge: Office Edition

As it comes to a close... Project Purge: Basement Edition

The basement of our house had become a disaster. A place we put things we don't need, don't want, don't use, don't wanna see etc... So it had become a place we didn't want to be, or have seen. But I took the risk and posted a picture of what it was at the moment.

Now three months latter we have put an end to the basement purge and organization and will begin another room of the house. Here are some other posts on the basement purge
Goodbye 2012
Slow and Steady Wins the Race
Lost Treasures
Ridding the house of toxins

My husband said from the beginning that we shouldn't start with the basement because it would be the largest task and the most daunting. Oh I hope he was right, cause there were times I thought about just giving up on this endeavor. The thought of still having to do even more rooms and closets after this was overwhelming. But now the biggest part is done and the house feels liter more calm and ready for more purging.

So now I want to share the before and after pictures (the before ones you have seem before) side by side so you can see the scope of our cleaning.




After

Before

The main room still has some piles of boxes around I'll get to those.












Before

After

The shop/laundry area, is also used for winter bike storage so it will look even better soon.

Before

After

The office still has some work to do, but it is mostly my husbands paper work and things to sell that remain in here so I'm moving on while he will still spend  some time working in this area.












The under the stair storage might not look as impressive as it really is, but if you could have seen in the back of it and realize now it is not over flowing and I got rid of about 3 full bins of clothes, then you would be impressed.
















Before

After


















This is the storage closet. Believe it or not there is lots more room in here now



Before

After

It might look like this shelf is more crowded then before but it is holding things that used to just be in the floor in this room and we got rid of about 4 bins/boxes of stuff from just these shelves.




Now after many hours of work it looks better, that's all I will say is better. Not great yet. But I want to point out some of the piles in the basement really are. Then maybe you can get a better idea of the scope.

This pile on the futon is all going to a consignment sale at the end of this week.

This pile is all going to be donated to the City Mission. Understand this is just the stuff we are donating that we found in the basement (and some clothes I'll admit), we still have 5 more rooms in our house to go through.

There still are a few piles in the office area to be taken care of but those aren't really my area so I'm moving on.

I'm so excited that I now have a good little area in the basement where the kids can play with play doh (cause they always ask to do that right after I vacuum the house and I just say no cause I hate the mess) and do other messy activities. They also have room to ride their horse and the little cars or play with a ball.

I don't know if you are inspired but I am. I can't wait to start the next room (the kitchen) and keep going. This summer I plan to repaint the basement and get rid of the ugly wall paper trim. We are also going to redo the basement bathroom, that I spared your eyes the awful sight of (not because it is messy or dirty just UGLY). So right now it doesn't look like whole new room/area  but hopefully soon.

Happy Purging Everyone

Other Purges:

Project Purge: Kitchen Edition

Project Purge: Master Bedroom Edition

Project Purge: Kids Room Edition

Project Purge: Office Edition

 

Ridding The House of Toxins?

***I know you are seeing this post as a March post but what I'm blogging about actually happened back in the February (I'm bad at the blogging on time thing).***


So more digging through boxes and bins stuffed deep in the corners of our big storage closet brought to light an issue we didn't even know about.

Water damage. We didn't realize some boxes had gotten wet (who knows how long ago) in a basement we have have never seen water in.

In the end we found 2 boxes that were damaged and most contents ruined. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise because it made it a lot easier to throw stuff away when the smell was over powering.

We are now happy to have the space back and the toxins removed from our home. And we learned a lesson about proper care of things that are important.

Here are some shots of the basement as it stands when I took these pictures... yup I took these pics back when this incident of the moldy boxes came about.




Even more stuff ruined

Box of stuff ruined by mold (oh my poor puzzle)






Even some empty space!!!

Big improvement in the storage closet



Lost Treasures

NOTE: I typed this blog back in January but never posted it cause I didn't take the pictures off my camera. But I decided to share it anyway.

I know it has been a while (again) since I posted about the basement and Project Purge, but we have been making some progress. It is slow going right now, football playoffs have kept us upstairs on the couch on the weekends and being busy with the kids and other small projects have kept us busy on the week nights. But we have organized the stuff in the main area of the basement and cleaned up and made room to start tackling the closet down there.

So now we are getting a box out of the closet every few days and going through it. Some boxes are easier to go through then others. I have found a few boxes that I have had to put in a "revisit" pile. I don't like that. I don't like feeling like I'm keeping something because I feel I have too not because I want to. I don't like feeling like I can't make a decision about weather I can "part" with this or not.

Here's an example of a box that has been put in the "revisit" pile. A box that contains glass "fruit" dishes with long stems and some brandy snifters that I inherited from my grandmother. We don't drink brandy and have never used the fruit dishes. We don't have room for them in the cabinets in our kitchen (hence the box in the basement), so what good are they to us? They are in the revisit pile because I can't decide if getting rid of them is "throwing away a family treasure," or if they are something we would use if we had the room in our cabinets (cause we may some day.)

Can you see my dilemma or am I crazy? It's ok if you think the second I may be leaning that way.

The more exciting boxes to open are the ones that contain lost treasures that we haven't seen in 5+ years. For example. We opened over the weekend the box that had our bear cookie jar I got at my bridal shower. When we moved to our house from our apartment we had less counter space (go figure we also have less closet space) and therefor kept this gem boxed up. In the same box was also a pretty crystal candy dish that was my husbands great-grandmothers. We got it from his grandmother 6 years ago and it has spent most of those 6 years in a box. Well we have since found room in our kitchen for both of these gems. The bear is on the counter and the candy dish is up on top of the cabinets ready to hold cute little seasonal items like and egg or 2 at Easter and some pretty flower in the summer. There were other items in the box and some got donated and another pretty crystal votive holder made it's away to our bedroom to be displayed.


So the lesson we are learning is there are treasures we have forgotten we have, or know we have but haven't made an appropriate place for in our home. I am also learning that this is hard and that I AM up for the challenge.

Here are some pictures of how it looks today.


Current Basement Veiw

Looking Better

This is the Donate Pile