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One Box of Clutter

January 10, 2012 in organization, simplify with 8 Comments

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!

2012 Goals

January 3, 2012 in family, finances, organization, real life with 13 Comments

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!

Organizing the Boys’ Closet

December 16, 2011 in organization with 11 Comments

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!

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An Even Smaller Closet

October 30, 2011 in organization, simplify with 4 Comments

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?

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