Laundry room AFTER

OK so this wasn't a total laundry room makeover, it was just a quick re organizing and sprucing. A "tide me over until I can do more" type of project. I need shelves, and maybe a new light fixture, but all in all it looks much better.

I used only what I had available in my house. I spent nothing. The small paintings are our eldest daughter's paintings from when she was little, and the Mona Lisa is a project Uptown did with his Kindergarten class. The dog crate is ugly, but that's where it lives. I have some fabric, maybe I'll try to spruce it up a bit. hmmm ideas for new projects running rampant through my brain.

Tomorrow or Wednesday we are getting a new puppy and hopefully his crate will fit next to Taj's crate. It looked so plain before I hung the pictures. I don't have time today to paint or else I would have added a fun color or pattern to the walls. I had these paintings just sitting in our basement and it adds a little bit of color to the wall.  Now I'm off to do my scheduled living room/Family room pick up.


Before                                                After

 

Before                                                   After

Need to re organize my laundry room

I walked into our laundry room today and realized... it sucks. Up until Thursday I had our Dryer venting into a bucket contraption like this....

This is what I had when I was living in an apartment and had no way to vent my dryer. When we bought our house, there were/are two washer dryer locations. Since I'm lazy I'm practical I wanted our main washer and dryer to be next to the kitchen, so I didn't have to walk down two flights of stairs so that I could make the best use of my time. So last week I had a fire inspector come to give me the ok to send in my application for a home daycare. I had everything perfect, except for the dryer. So it was time for me to put on my big girl panties and vent that dryer outside. There was already a vent hole cut, all I had to do was buy the venting kit and install it. Easy peasy! UNLESS you have two dryer vents and you are so excited to do a "project" that you don't double check which old vent you are removing. Yeah, I ripped that old vent out with gusto.... and out came a long piece of metal vent. huh? "where was THAT?" I wondered as I sat and looked at the vent pipe hanging out of the back of my house. Then I looked up, and saw the kitchen window, then over to my right.... where I saw the OTHER vent that I was suppose to remove. Yeah I totally disconnected the basement dryer vent. Don't be jealous of my awesome, it takes a lot of skill.  The good thing to come out of this was I got to see the inside of the dryer vent pipe. OMG! Let's talk about fire safety, and how NOT SAFE that vent was! I took that as a sign to not hook that bad boy back up. (We don't use that dryer anyway)
     To make a long story even longer, I fixed the broken vent, then properly installed the new vent in the proper location. Now our dryer vents properly outside and I no longer have a laundry room full of lint. So when I decided to organize my laundry room and started clearing this off the changing table I noticed HOW MUCH LINT was all over everything. So now it's a deep clean and re org.

There has to be a better way. This is the "it gets worse before it gets better" stage.  I'm embarassed that it's this bad, and this is actually light years better than it was 6 months ago. Progress... even baby steps move you forward. 

Hmmmm... wheels turning. I have a lot that I want to do today. I'll post after pictures, hopefully they will be better than the before. lol!

Schedule change.. doing what works for you

     The other day I realized.. my current cleaning schedule isn't really working for me, I mean my house is fairly clean... downstairs. It was Wednesday when I realized I couldn't get to my Master Bedroom/Bathroom that this schedule isn't going to work. See, I am licensing for a home child care, and I'm not comfortable cleaning upstairs while the kids are napping downstairs. I'm afraid I won't hear them or be able to watch them appropriately, SO a change is in order. See, I can do that because it's MY schedule. This is the important part.. so read this...

You make a schedule that works for you! 

      I am loving pinterest, and all of the inspiration I get there, especially the organizing tips, blogs, pictures, etc.. that I have pinned. I use all of those as a starting point. Not all of those schedules work for me, not all of them make sense to me. It became confusing and I had to sort it all out. It was all trial and error. I kept what worked and filed away what didn't. Notice I didn't throw out what didn't work. Why? I file them, because our lives change daily, and they are good ideas, they just didn't happen to work AT THAT TIME. Week by week things change enough that you can see if it will be a long term change or just happened to change that week. For example we just got a new puppy about 3 weeks ago. THAT was a HUGE change. I started floundering, things were all out of whack, I just had to sit back and see how it would play out. It turns out that my nap time cleaning still works, however leaving the puppy downstairs for the first two weeks didn't work. He got scared and barked. He got scared and peed. He felt relaxed and pooped. I noticed he only did this when I went upstairs. SO I shifted my cleaning during the week to downstairs. Between the puppy and the children that will be in my house, this makes sense to me. I can clean our bedroom and bathroom on the weekends when someone can hang out downstairs playing video games instead of helping out around the house and help with the puppy. 

     Every once in awhile I can see that I am ready to look at how things are working out, or not working out and if they need to tweaking. Then I'm off to Pinterest to look through all of the lovely ideas I have gotten from lovely people. 

     Has anyone been following my schedule that I posted some time ago? Does it work for you? If not have you changed it? Did you switch up days? Did it prompt you to make your own? I would LOVE some feedback. Are you doing something that you think I would love to try? (No crack please) Talk to me people, I want your ideas and feedback!

Hot technical mess

If you know me IRL, you know I'm a mess with my electronics. My computers are stuffed with pictures, never backed up and on the verge of breaking down. Currently I have a blog post that I want to write, and pictures I want to share, but I don't know if I can upload the pictures to the blog without crashing my computer. So as I am browsing organizing blogs today I came across this GEM! See Jane Work has a blog post about creating a Computer Recovery Box. OMG GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Filing all of your restore discs in one spot, writing down which computer they are for, and the writing down the service tag number or serial number. I would like to tell all of you to make sure you back up your computer regularly, but I can't preach what I don't practice. I have my old imac (which is broken down currently) backed up on an external hard drive, but my laptop? NADA, nothing, vulnerable, ready to breakdown at any minute. So I suggest to all of you that might stumble upon this blog, back up your computer, and then go organize a computer recover box. The See jane Work link will tkae you to her blog post about creating a Computer Recovery Box. Go check her out!

Mood enhancer!

 Five days into the new year.... how are you doing? Me? I've had some set backs, but today I pulled it together and just told myself to go upstairs and do a quick pick up and clean. I finally unpacked the clean clothes out of our luggage.. yeah yeah yeah, I know. I gathered dirty laundry changed the sheets and cleaned the bathroom. I can't believe how much of a difference it made in my mood! I'm talking drug difference! I think I have finally realized that the cleaner/less cluttered my space is, the better I feel. I mean I have always known that, but for some reason it was this big revelation today. So I guess my point is try to just take 15 minutes a day, pick a spot and organize/clean. It could make your day brighter!

Happy New Year! Welcome 2012!

Happy New Year! I am ready for 2012! This Holiday season has been wonderful! I've managed to keep my house MUCH cleaner than usual, laundry is pretty caught up and everyone is happy. We have one more day off from work and school and I'm ready to start organizing toys! I am thinking tomorrow will be a good day to tackle Parker and Paxton's room. Tomorrow is donate and organize day. I am past the "I'm going to have a garage sale and try to make money on all of our unused things" point. Other people can use these things and they need to go. We also have the basement to start cleaning. I have a lot of plans for 2012, and I want to get started right away. With all of that said, our Christmas present to our family is a new puppy. (Yes we are crazy) I am a little nervous about keeping up the house with the dog hair, but I'm sure it will all be fine. It will be even better when Uptown buys me a Roomba to sweep up the pet hair! :)
What are your plans? What are your goals?

Have a great 2012!

Great tips for getting it together

From The Sunny SIde Up Blog:

•  Store sticky jars and things in your pantry on a baking sheet to keep your cabinet shelves clean. <3 this!
• Pre make snack bags and store them in a basket, so when you are making lunches, or running out the door to a double header soccer game you can quickly grab snack bags. (Totally doing this!)

I LOVE those tips! I have a baking sheet that I burnt (yeah I set it on the stove and turned on the burner) but it would work great for catching stickies!

I have been loving my snap and lock containers, and am probably going to get more ASAP. I try to store our snacks in containers, rather than snack bags. I don't like to buy snack bag, and I don't like the waste. My friend Mel uses reusable fabric snack bags. Some day I will get some (or better yet make some) and possibly use those. 

Anyway I was checking out blogs and ran across The Sunny Side Up blog and wanted to share her tips. Hope you liked them! Do you have any tips to share with me? Feel free to leave a link to your favorite organizing/ cleaning/ decorating blog in the comments.