While organizing the nursery closet before Weston’s birth, I emptied out a small diaper box and decided to challenge myself to fill it up with clutter throughout the day!

While putting away clean dishes, I took a few extra minutes and went through the cabinets and drawers finding cookie cutters, baby spoons {we don’t need 10}, skewers and a creamer that’s never been used.

There were a few toys that Paxton never plays with that were added in and a shirt he doesn’t wear from the boys’ room.

I quickly went through my closet and dresser and I found a sweater, 2 shirts and a skirt that I don’t love and haven’t worn often.

And there were other odds and ends found throughout the house like a water bottle, a lanyard and some yarn.

I really didn’t put much time or effort into ‘de-cluttering’ but another box of stuff is leaving our home!

Living clutter free involves small steps. Start with one box, it won’t take much effort to fill up but you’ll feel great once you see that stuff leave your home!

I love setting goals and achieving them! I enjoy the challenge some goals present as well as the accountability that comes with having them written down.

I’ve been thinking about my goals for 2012 for a few months now. Knowing that I’m starting the year as a mama to two, I didn’t want to overwhelm myself with a ton of goals. I decided to keep things very simple this year but if I achieve each and every goal on my list for 2012, that will still be quite an accomplishment!

Goals for 2012:

Personal:
1. Read 1 book per month.
2. Memorize 1 verse/passage of scripture each month.
3. Write at least 8 blog posts per month. {I want to be more consistent with blogging this year!}

Family:
1. Read 6 parenting books with my husband.
2. Daily family devotions and prayer.

Financial:
1. $8,000 towards the principal of our mortgage.
2. $1,750 towards car savings.
3. Set up a legal will. {I believe this has been a goal for 3 years now! 2012 will be the year!}
4. Start college savings accounts for the boys.

So that’s it, they’re fairly simple this year and completely do-able! The financial goals make me a little nervous. Mathematically paying $8,000 towards the mortgage and $1,750 towards car savings, doesn’t work with my husband’s salary but with my transcribing, selling things and being creative, we hope we can achieve these goals!

One of the ‘nesting’ projects I’ve been working on these past few weeks is organizing the boys’ closet. When we switched rooms a few months back, we had a much bigger closet  to work with than what was in the old nursery. I wanted to maximize the space for storage but not just cram it full of stuff since we had space.

Before:

The day we switched rooms. A blank slate to work with!!

After:

A clutter free, organized closet for our boys! I love that there is plenty of free space, it makes me feel like we have plenty of room and that we don’t have too much stuff!

The bottom shelves contain linens. The top shelf currently holds the boppy, Weston’s bag which is packed and ready to go to the hospital, the basket contains outerwear and Paxton’s shoes! I’ll probably store some toys on the floor in here, after Christmas I’m doing some toy de-cluttering and organizing {if I have the energy and Weston hasn’t arrived yet!}

Weston doesn’t have many hanging clothes at this time since his wardrobe is primarily made up of bodysuits, sleepers and gowns. I do have a few of his new outfits hanging up though just because I love to look at sweet baby clothes! The only clothes of Paxton’s that I hang are his khakis, button ups and sweater vets and jackets.

The top shelf contains newborn diapers, baby slings and wraps, swaddle blankets, educational games and disposables for Paxton {for Sunday mornings!}

My wonderful hubby built an additional top shelf so we’d have room to store clothes:

On the left side I have Weston’s clothes that he’ll be growing into.

I purchased 4 sweater boxes {2 for each child} and that’s how I’m storing these for now. I also have a medium size tub that contains Paxton’s clothes he wore from 8 to 16 months, once Weston grows into the clothes in these boxes, I’ll rotate the clothes in the larger tub into these.

I’m trying to keep clothing fairly minimal and for the most part, the contents of these boxes are enough to fully outfit him through each of these sizes. And I know the sizing seems odd, 3-4 months and 5-7 months but that is based on the age and season that Paxton was when he wore that size. If Weston is smaller or larger than his big brother those age ranges definitely won’t apply…we’ll see soon!

On the right hand side are clothes for Paxton to grow into. I haven’t done much buying ahead but we’ve been blessed with hand-me-downs that we’re storing for him to grow into. He’s currently wearing some 2T items but most are too large and I’m anticipating 2T to be his size in the spring. We also have been given some 3T, 4T and even 5T items which we’re storing for him too.

The boys’ closet is neatly organized and should be easy to maintain!

Last weekend, we did some room swapping! We moved Paxton to the room we were using, we moved into the master and the guest room/office into the old nursery.

To make the master closet work for us and hold everything, John David had to build some shelving. There were already two shelves in the closet so he had to make 2 more {which you can see in this before shot since they’re unpainted!} He knocked this little project out in about 30 minutes and then I spent an hour painting the shelves the next day.

It’s amazing what simple shelves do to a tiny closet! They not only give you more room, they give the closet a ‘custom’ look, all on a budget!

Here’s the after:

Painted shelves and an organized closet!

This closet is actually a few inches smaller than our previous closet which posed a bit of a challenge but it was nothing that couldn’t be remedied with a little bit of de-cluttering! We both got rid of a few clothing items that were ill fitting or worn out.

I can’t help but love the fact that we have a teeny, tiny closet {compared to most folks standards} yet it has ample room for our minimal wardrobes!

For comparison, here’s the bigger closet in our previous room. They’re very similar but if you look closely you can tell the size difference in the two.

How big is your closet? Do you have a walk-in that’s full of unworn items, a teeny closet that busting at the seams or a neat or a closet that is just the right size for you?

I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s been somewhat quite around here these past few weeks. Other than Our Financial Story and Cloth Diaper videos, there haven’t been any posts!

Honestly, this is a busy season in my life and unfortunately this blog has been neglected. Of course, my family always comes first so I think neglecting the blog for the sake of my family is just fine!

Somehow I’m already 30 weeks pregnant! This pregnancy is absolutely flying by and I suppose I’m in a bit of denial that in 10 weeks or so we’ll have another baby.

Hitting the 3rd trimester caused my energy level to decrease and I’ve been struggling a few weeks with this. I want to get things done, I feel like there is so much to do to prepare for this baby but I really just want to nap or sit and relax. Thankfully, I noticed a slight boost in my energy level over the past week! I’m hoping it stays a few weeks so I can get our home in order and feel somewhat organized before Weston arrives.

Another thing that has kept me busy, after realizing that two cribs, a dresser and a changing table were not going to fit in the nursery, I had the brilliant {or crazy} idea that we’d do some room swapping. So, after talking it over for a few weeks with John David, we decided that we’d move into the master bedroom that was formerly the office/guest room. We moved the nursery to our old room and the office/guest room to the former nursery. Basically we moved, just within our house. We did the major rearranging just last night and still lack some settling in, organizing and decorating but I’m looking forward to some of these little projects!

Of course Paxton has kept me incredibly busy too! He was 18 months last week and is so much fun. He’s learning so much and turning into such a little boy and he has quite the personality {and style…he loves shoes, especially his boots!} I’m savoring our days together, just the two of us since I know they’re numbered. I’m taking time to snuggle and play and give him my undivided attention since I know things will never be the same. This is definitely a bittersweet thought. Just last week he fell asleep while we were reading and I just held him {and then fell asleep myself!} He also has wanted to be rocked the past two nights before bed and I just savored every moment of it.

I’m hoping to share some of my organizing and baby preparations during the course of the next few weeks! Right now we’re planning on building some shelving in our closet, I’m going to be organizing the boys closet and dresser and hopefully figure out a good baby clothing storage system {right now all the newborn-18 month clothes are in one large tub that won’t fit in the closet!} I’m also trying to decide the right number of cloth diapers we need for two and the best diaper pail for us! And of course, some simplifying around our home since I’ve found that the less stuff we have, the easier our home is to maintain and keep clean.

Thank you for continuing to read even through the times when I’m not posting much! I’m so blessed to have such amazing readers!!

This is our closet. We have a small closet, at least compared to the closets we’ve had in our other homes!

By most people standards, it’s way too small! {In fact the previous homeowners were using this closet and the closet in the guest room for their clothes.} We weren’t concerned about it when we moved in since we don’t have many clothes!

What’s hanging up is all of our clothes! We also have our winter coats hanging up on the ends. The only clothes that are in ‘storage’ are my non-maternity pants and winter shirts {which you can see stored on the top shelf!}

We did have a walk-in closet in the last house we owned! It was huge, at least by our standards! This is just a glimpse of the back and all of our coats! {We had too many coats!} The two sides were filled with clothes. We’ve definitely minimized our wardrobes since moving from this house!

Part of the functionality of this small closet is all the shelves! John David added this high shelf a few weeks ago so I’d have a place to store my non-maternity clothes!

If you have a small closet that is busting at the seams and unorganized, I challenge you to do a thorough de-cluttering of your clothing! If you haven’t worn something in the past year, let it go! Also, if it’s uncomfortable or you don’t feel confident in it, let it go! You’ll be much happier to have a closet that is less cluttered and only filled with clothes you love and that make you feel good!