Getting Organized: Part 1

For months, I've been telling myself that we should wait to finish unpacking until we've had a chance to get rooms painted and ready for use.  In my head, it made the most sense to avoid setting up rooms twice while also helping us get motivated to get painting done.  But in reality, we haven't been able to find time for painting, and my inability to find things that are still packed up or have no place has been driving me nuts.  The mission of the last couple of weeks has been Project Unpack and Organize!

Our organization was greatly aided by the fact that we got rid of a ton of stuff.  We must have had four garbage cans full of trash and recycling plus a carload of stuff to go to Goodwill and a box of books to donate to the library.  I just love the wonderful feeling I get after I clear my space of things I don't really want or need.  Hooray for spring cleaning!

Now for some organizing before and afters. . . .

Once upon a time, I had the basement somewhat organized.  But because nothing had a place, it didn't take long before it ended up looking like this (eek!).

It's so nice to finally have things in order!

Our laundry area has been a mess from the start.  After it flooded, we never got it back in order, and it became a repository for paint rags and empty paint cans and yard tools and various junk. Additionally, the floors are pretty icky looking, and I shrieked in horror every time I was taking clothes out of the dryer and something clean fell onto the floor.

 

It's looking much better now that it's organized, and now if some clothes take a tumble on their way in or out of the dryer, at least they fall on our new rug!

Above the stairs leading into the basement, there are some open shelves that became a dumping ground for random things.  These are the shelves after we got them mostly cleared out. . . they were even more of a mess before that!

I was finally able to turn them into some useful, uncluttered storage.

On the right side of those shelves is the wall of our kitchen.  As you may remember, there is an open hole there (which we now think was probably intended for a microwave) that has confounded me from day one of our homeownership.  I haven't really wanted to put our microwave there, so it's just been sitting open (as you can see from this picture from last summer). 

Once I cleared all the junk off the shelves, it looked a lot better.  I intended to put a curtain there to cover it up, but then I realized that it might be a perfect place for our cookbooks, and I must say that I quite like them there!

The other problem with the shelves above the basement stairs is that they are wide open for everyone to see.  There isn't a door there, and though we can add one, we've run into two problems: 1) it's not in the budget and 2) we need the space to be accessible for the cats since their litter boxes are in the basement.  The solution?  A pretty curtain that we leave open just a bit for the cats to get through.  It looks SO much better than having the shelves and stairs in open view, and I always love adding a little color!

I have more to share.  . . believe it or not, after my long drought of posts, I promise TWO more posts this week!

Easter Weekend

Hope that you all had a lovely Easter weekend! We had simply amazing spring weather, and it inspired me yet again to pick up some fresh flowers for our table. Naturally, I have to share. Are these beautiful, or what?

In addition enjoying to the flowers inside, we discovered more popping up in our yard! I can't say that I like all of the "presents" left for me by the previous owners, but I will gladly take these lovely ones.

After church this morning, Dan and I celebrated yet another first holiday in our house with a little Easter brunch. Yum!

As far as house projects go, we did get a bit done in between our Easter celebrations and hours of watching "Downton Abbey." To start, we finished hanging pictures in the dining room. The two new ones (with white mats) are pictures my friend Ashley took and gave us as a housewarming gift. They are gorgeous, and anytime I can have something created by a friend in my house, I am happy!


Dan decided to take care of a bit of spring maintenance. When he discovered that our ladder didn't reach the gutters, he proceeded to scare me half to death by climbing onto the roof and leaning over to clean them out. I realize that being on the roof is probably a normal thing for people to do, but I am a neurotic freak and spent most of the time trying not to imagine him slipping off. Yikes!

He also put together a bookcase for our office. I had hoped to get some real furniture from Craigslist, but I've been searching for a real wood bookcase with no success, and this one was only $30 at Target, so I finally gave up and gave in. It will just match all of our other cheap particle board furniture. :)

For the past couple weekends, I've mainly been working on getting our bedroom organized. I recently realized that I've had some clothes and other items sitting in suitcases and boxes since July, and perhaps they are things I might want to wear. Plus, our bedroom has been unfinished for quite some time (no pictures, no curtains on the closets, ugly plastic shelving rather than any real storage) and had started to become a random repository for things like toilet paper and boxes:

Part of what took me so long to get going with the bedroom is that I really needed to take some time to get rid of things. With this stack of clothes and shoes on its way to be donated, it definitely opened up some more space!

We're not done yet, but now at least we have pictures on the walls, some better storage, and something covering up our closets!

We still have a couple more things planned for this room. One is to get window treatments, though I'm not sure yet how soon that will happen. The other is something pretty awesome that we have planned for the blank wall behind the bed. . . I can't give it away yet, but an Etsy order has been placed, and in a couple weeks something I've been daydreaming about for quite some time will be arriving in the mail and up on the wall. Stay tuned!

We do hope to get to some of our bigger projects--like more painting--as soon as we can, but our weekends have just been too jam-packed to create the space for something like that. We have a series of visitors coming to stay over the next several weeks, so I'm not sure how much progress we're going to make, but we're going to keep trying! In the meantime, it's been nice to take care of some of the little things, like having pictures on the walls. And having a way to "close" our closets. And finally being reunited with all my underwear.