Day 2 of Cleaning, More about my 30-Day Challenge

I’ve never been so excited about cleaning! I’m absolutely giddy. I can hardly wait until it’s all finished.

First off, let me just say that the kid’s bedroom is STILL clean, they LIKE having it that way (remember that comment about “liking it dirty” – which was really just an attempt at getting out of cleaning?), and they haven’t minded when I have asked them to pick up the few things they’ve pulled out to keep it from getting dirty. THAT. THAT RIGHT THERE is a huge blessing.

Now, for more pictures.

It isn’t finished yet, but you can already see the difference! My sister-in-law and I started by pulling everything out of the baby’s closet that didn’t belong there and moving his dresser and the 2 tubs of off-season and hand-me-downs in there, as well as picking up the floor and consolidating everything into boxes to get rid of floor clutter and extra boxes. Next we moved the little bookcase in there and transferred the books from the big bookcase so we could move it to the other wall. After shuffling the dresser and the desks around, and moving the bench toybox to my room, all the furniture was in place. As we cleaned we did some generic sorting, books to bookshelf, games to closet, etc. That helped decrease the amount of stuff I’ll have to go through in the pile. Here’s what it looks like now:

See the floor? Cool!

Starting from the door..

Here’s the new bookcase for all the reading books. There’s is a basket on the bottom for all the tiny little board books that don’t “shelve” properly. Think I can teach my one-year-old to “read” only those books? 🙂

On the right is the school ‘corner’ – I’ve got the chalkboard up (figured it was better to put it up than add it to the pile since I aready knew where I wanted it to go) and the school desks in place. The guitar and pretend refrigerator that you can barely see can’t go in place until “the pile” is put away. That big brown box?? FULL of organizational containers ready for use!! 😀 Behind the desks is the tall bookcase which will house all the school and craft supplies. It is only organized in a very general way. But after I purge “the pile” (there are crayons and flashcards, etc, in there) I’ll have a better idea of how much stuff I need to organize and come up with a detailed plan.

The closet has made a phenomenal transformation already. The dresser fits nicely. There will be plenty of room to store what I need to store and have breathroom. There are 3 boxes of fabric and materials, but I think I’ll have one storage tub leftover that will contain all of it. Love it!

The main thing now is just the pile for purgingand putting away. There are all four toyboxes full of stuff, a laundry basket and a couple of boxes. Most of it is toys, but a lot is also misplaced items. My plan is to take all four toy boxes to the living room, dump everything in one pile and circle the four toyboxes and the trashcan around the pile and then just dig in and start sorting. Then I’ll go back for the rest and repeat. I think that will be the easiest thing to do. The rest of the organizing will be “all down hill from there!”

Oh yeah… there’s one more litte catch. When I am all through with this, I have to clean up the mess I made in hubby’s room. I sorta got “in trouble” for piling a bunch of stuff in there. Check this out:

All of this stuff came out of the baby’s room and mostly out of closet (everything except the chair and the propane tank.) Partially explains why everything was so overcroweded, huh? Well now it’s all in a pile in his room. I’ve promised hubby I’ll go through it and organize it all…just as soon as I’m through with my project. 🙂

I have to warn everybody. This is kind of addicting. Organizing, I mean. It’s like an itch. I have a feeling I’m not stopping with the kids’ rooms. 😉

To start at the beginning, start here:  The Mess That Lies Within; My 30 Day Organizational Challenge

To read the next post: The 30 Day Challenge Results