Project Simplify Week 3

For the month of April, I've been working on Simple Mom's Project Simplify.  I've already done shelves and drawers and that "pesky" closet.  This week the assignment was piles, and boy did I have them in our bedroom - partly as a result of the clean-out in the office and closet the weeks before.  

Before: Here's the corner of the bedroom beyond my side of the bed.  None of that stuff belongs there, and some of it went to Goodwill this week..

After.  Ahhhhh.

Before: My vanity table had a bunch of receipts and Matt's swim goggles in addition to a mess of jewelry.

After.  Again, ahhhh.

Project Simplify, Week 2

I'm working on decluttering and cleaning out our house this month with Simple Mom's Project Simplify.  You can read about Week 1 here.  Week 2's task was "that pesky closet."  Well, ALL the closets in my house are pesky (ahem), but I had to choose mine.  Well, technically, mine and Matt's but his side didn't need any work.  Mine was a mess.

See?  What in the world?

Our closet was added during the renovation before we moved into this house.  There were no closets upstairs before, and ours fits into an alcove under the roof slope.  So it's a walk-in - no, maybe we could call it a step-in.  Because if you stepped further you'd hit the ceiling.  Anyway, I couldn't walk in at all because of all this stuff on the floor!

After!  I got rid of 6 purses/totes, still leaving me with 10, which is probably too many still.  At least now they all sit or lay nicely.  I had the brilliant idea to put my little clutch size ones in that magazine holder (emptied during last week's desk cleaning) in the middle.  I moved jackets and sweaters from the other wall shelf to this side so I could put my plastic shelf drawer thing-y where I could access it straight on when I opened the closet door.

I got rid of a decent amount of clothing and took the opportunity to switch out seasonal stuff.  The heavy sweaters and boots went into a rubbermaid tub for their summer hiatus.  And I got out the sandals and shorts.  Not that I've needed them this week.

If you look closely you'll see evidence of my 3/4 sleeve cardigan addiction.  And 4 pairs of colored ballet flats up on the shelf - the brown, black, and grey ones are on the rack on the floor - totaling 7! So clearly I have a problem there too.  

Project Simplify, Week 1

Simple Mom is one of the blogs I enjoy reading regularly.  There's a spring cleaning series going on there now called Project Simplify.  Now, I totally believe in decluttering.  One of my favorite aspects of my library career is what librarians call "weeding" or "deselecting" - basically getting rid of out of date, unused, or, especially with children's items, ripped or otherwise trashed books and other stuff from the shelves.  I also believe that my stress level goes up exponentially when I'm surrounded by clutter and too. much. stuff.  

That said, in this house I've had a lot of trouble with clutter and things being out of place or having no place at all.  Matt would say we also have too much stuff.  I agree!  I don't think we adequately downsized when we moved from the 5 bedroom, 2.5 bath house in NC to the first house here in GA or to this house, which I estimate is half the size of the aforementioned suburban dream house.  And we've since added a kid and about a bazillion more toys and clothes.

I'm so happy to be living in a small house now.  But a good spring cleaning and decluttering has been long overdue - I know we have been holding on to things that need to go, and that could do someone else good.  So I'm doing the Project Simplify task with joy.  This first week's task was shelves and drawers.  I decided to work on our office/craft space upstairs.  It was a disaster, partly because I'd just switched a bookcase that was up there for a cabinet that had been in our dining area and nothing had found a home there yet.

Before - the cabinet at the top of the stairs and a lot of junk on the floor 

After - just the cabinet - no junk!

The desk/shelving unit in the center of the space.  Yikes!

The desk/shelving unit after.  Much better. 

 I did not have adequate time to go through these boxes and sort and get rid of stuff.  

Thankfully, they were fairly organized to begin with, and I can go through them later.

My sewing area before.  

Matt had just added the black shelf above the sewing machine.

Sewing area after.  

Cadence sorted my buttons by color and I put them in old baby food jars.  

I spray painted the jar lids white.

This is the random leftover stuff that still needs action.  The blue box in the front with the pictures on it?  That's the working pile for the girls' baby books.  I've been trying to finish them FOREVER.  I think that will be my task for week 4 of Project Simplify: That put-off project.

Chores

I've taken on a bit more than I could chew this fall - I've been tutoring 3 nights a week, babysitting (and delivering to school) a six year old several mornings a week, subbing as a dorm parent occasionally, doing a homework-heavy weekly Bible study, and doing all my usual mom stuff while Matt has worked the last 6 weekends in a row.  (Yeah.  6.  In a row.)  And of course, what's fallen by the wayside is chores.  Our house has been a disaster, which doesn't bother anyone except me, but it really bothers me. I'm changing my schedule to free up some time, but I also needed to implement some structure and accountability to my cleaning chores.

Enter this cute customizable chores printable from my3monsters, which I found via Pinterest.  I thought about what I wanted to get done each week and divided it for the weekdays.  My3monsters also has a chore chart with her chores on it, but it was CRAZY extensive.  Like washing the walls crazy extensive.  I don't have time for that - but my props to anyone who does.

I edited the blank chore chart in picmonkey, then printed it on photo paper, stuck it in frame from the Dollar Tree, and hung it up on my kitchen wall.  Accountability.

A Flash of Genius

Like many people, I have a lot of ideas.  Some better than others.  Some of my worst ideas - "After we move, let's buy a house!" or "Don't worry about directions.  I remember how to get there." 

Today I had a good one!  We had a little adventure yesterday visiting a waterfall (see pics below) and stopped at a local store selling yard art.  We saw these beautiful but uncomfortable swings that Matt mentioned would be cool hanging from the big oak tree in our yard.

 Look at that smile!  Those curls over her ears!  (She's about to get her top two front teeth too!)

Suddenly this morning, I had a flash of genius.  Why not hang the old porch swing languishing in the grass behind the garage from the tree?  We've been trying to make use of this swing for awhile, ever since we lived in the house next door to this one (when this one was empty - before the remodeling began) and we snuck over and stole it.  We tried it on the porch at the last house and I was always too nervous to sit on it.  We thought about putting it on the porch here once we moved, but to have room to actually swing, we wouldn't be able to have anything else on the porch. 

All that said, it works great hanging from the tree.  Matt found some S hooks somewhere and just hooked up the swing chains over a large and sturdy tree branch.   This is terribly exciting.  The big oak means the swing will always be shaded, and there's a nice view of the mountains and the rest of the yard, particularly "play park" where all the girls' play equipment is. 

I can picture us swinging here A LOT while the girls play.  And, swinging here A LOT with the girls.

Scenes from the New House

laundry on the line - I can't tell you how excited both Matt and I are about line-dried clothes, sheets, and towels

a tomato!  it's getting picked tomorrow!  and destined to become part of a taco salad...

mountain view from back door

that's 7 kids on a very old swing set that we inherited with the house

sidewalk chalk time!

Starting to feel like home...

Cadence loves her big girl "princess" bed.  No problems at all with the transition from her crib-turned-toddler-bed to this full size bed.

Rainey is doing great making the transition to outdoor cat.  His food is set up in the garage and he loves this spot on the back steps. 

Squeezing in...

For the last couple weeks, our house has looked like this:
I thought I had things in good shape and then we got the last of our stuff from the house in NC...and I feel like I'm starting all over again.

We've come to the conclusion that we're going to have to get rid of some things. Which is fine. I already have a box and 2 bags of giveaway stuff ready to go. There's no reason for a house with 1 bathroom to have 4 toilet bowl brushes - which was true until I realized that yesterday and threw one out and put one in the giveaway pile. Now I have to decide between the 2 that are left. But I digress.

The other conclusion we've come to is that we need to buy some things, which seems crazy when we are downsizing. But the lack of storage (there are only 5 closets in the house, and two of those are quite small) means we need to start collecting shelving, wardrobes, bookcases, etc. The point is that while this house is plenty of space for us, some of our things just don't fit.

I am sad because right now some of the things that appear to not be making the cut to stay here are things I really like. My beloved vintage crazy orange chair that we got for free for our first apartment (it went it the Velveeta colored dining room - very cheery) when Miss Fanny died. The odd corner desk with the one leg that always falls off because my Grandpa made it.

Maybe we can make it work. There's hardly anything on the huge front porch - but neither of them would work out there...

How we're feeling

So, in just two days our family will be reunited permanently. We will be offically moved to GA, although we'll have to come back to get the furniture that's left and sign the lease paperwork. Because we're leasing our house! A family we knew from church here is excited to lease and then buy it in a few years! Yay! We're not going to go broke paying for an extra house.

Generally, I've been feeling pretty happy about this. Obviously we want to be with Matt. I'm eager to try to build some friendships in our new community and figure out our new routine with me being a stay at home mom. I've been collecting knitting and craft projects I want to work on. Today we dropped by Hobby Lobby and I got some clearance home dec fabric to do pillows for the sofa and maybe the window seat in our new living room. Cadie talks incessantly about her Georgia house, Rainey the cat, and especially Daddy (also the dorm, that's a little strange, I think). Mostly, we feel like this:

Sometimes, though, I think we also feel a little like this: We were playing in our yard here yesterday and I just got so sad...we had so many hopes for our family in this big house, hosting parties for church folks, making the yard look nice with flowers and veggies, opening up our extra rooms for people who didn't have anywhere else to go...

And then, I've been saying goodbye to people at work, which has been worse emotionally than I expected, and I haven't even thought about saying goodbye (well, see ya later) to our sweet friends here - it's just sad.

But exciting. Because what's going to happen in the little farmhouse? Will our family get bigger? And if it does, how in the world will more than 3 people share a little bathroom? Will Cadie take dance lessons, go to Montesorri school, or learn to swim in the lake? What's going to happen in the community of students, friends, families and colleagues from all over the map literally and ideologically - a community where people get in each other's lives, hang out in each other's houses and break bread together daily? I don't know, but I believe it will be good...

New house

Well, here we are! Living in an 100 something year old farm house, next to the cow pasture.
Rainey the cat is very happy here, back in the land of his birth. He likes to sleep in the window seat in the living room.
Cadie is enjoying playing with Dassa while Matt and I work on unpacking. She was excited about her new bike and our big front porch (even though the porch is covered in boxes).
We were happy to find that there are a slew of blueberry bushes in the middle of the school campus that are free for the taking. We went picking a couple of days ago and got quite a haul. Cadie and Dassa washed them for me, and I've made a blueberry crisp and blueberry muffins and there's still many more to freeze!
More pictures to come soon!

Nursery Tour

(It's 6:35 in the morning and though I'm exhausted, I couldn't sleep, so here I am posting pictures.)The nursery is really the only room in the house that is done - we worked really hard when we moved in to get it together for Cadie. You can see that she has a lot of toys - I tried to corral them all in the basket on the floor, but the blocks didn't fit.
We're really pleased with the pink and brown color scheme. A good deal of the decor came from the Dwell Studio line at Target, like the decals on the wall above the crib, as well as the crib bedding and curtains.
We love the glider for feeding and storytime. The rug is from Target too.
The changing table looks cluttered, but it's very functional.

Moving Pictures

We had a ton of great help loading up the apartment and unpacking the house on Saturday. Unfortunately, it was too busy to take a lot of pictures of the process, but we are very grateful for our good friends who have gotten us this far. Here's some of the fun.
Family Room in the midst of unpacking

Family room slightly more organized

Matt attempts to make sense of the garage

Laundry Room, freshly painted green, but not organized

Matt puts together the crib - finally - in baby's room

Me at 38 weeks

We'll be really happy to have all that random stuff in our apartment put to rights in the new house...

Speaking of the new house, this is it! It's big. Only one more day and then we're officially homeowners again, and baby girl will get a nursery!