The Great Purge of 2012

You may remember me mentioning a few times how I want to clean out the clutter in my house.  Well, I finally did.  My husband and I started “the great purge of 2012” nearly 5 months ago.  Slowly but surely we have been attacking each room of our house and getting rid of anything we haven’t used or need anymore.  Almost everything we purged ourselves of has been donated to a good home.  Initially I was going to sell some of it on ebay, but gave up on that idea fast.  Donation was a much better idea.  There are so many people out there that could use these things more than we could.

If you remember back to my summer goals from last year, my first goal was:

“Clean out/organize the built in shelving area in our downstairs. It has become a kind of make shift storage area that I’ve begun to cover up with Chinese screens so that I don’t have to look at it anymore. It could use a good purging. “

We started with our bedroom closet and progressed to other areas of the house.  We still have a few places left to work on (mainly A’s closet and his toys) but we've made great progress and I am feeling much better about the house.

What we got rid of:

• 12 huge bags of clothes
• 36 glasses (everything from water to martini)
• 6 glass vases
• 1 table & 4 chairs set (from our kitchen)
• 1 parpasan chair
• 1 (very) old radio
• 3 bags of A’s toys (so far)
• 8 pairs of shoes
• 1 pair of snow boots

We also put a lot of stuff into a storage unit (holiday decorations, winter clothes, baby items) since our closet space is so limited in our townhouse.  De-cluttering was a little difficult for me in the beginning since I’m one of those people who tends to keep things (come on, you know you have your skinny jeans hidden in your closet too) but once I started purging it was like opening the flood gates.  I was tossing things left and right.

Time to go shopping??  (just kidding)

anyone thirsty?  I think I have a glass around here somewhere

Kickin' it old school!!

Summer Goals Update

Considering it is officially fall now and it's currently snowing outside (yikes for October snow!) I figured I owe an update on the Summer Goals I set for myself back in June.

1. Clean out/organize the built in shelving area in our downstairs. 

Cleaning is not my favorite thing in the world.  I did look at it quite a few times (if that counts) and came to the conclusion that almost everything in there is stuff to keep (picture albums, our wedding china & crystal still in the boxes, extra paper towels, toilet paper, our recycling bins, and baby items from A that we’re saving for the next baby).  I did manage to clean out a shelf of old books and throw out a handful of other items.  So much for a big clean out.  Whoops :(

 I don’t have any before & after pictures because I forgot to take pictures before I started throwing things away - plus you really can’t see much of a difference…..

2. Finish transforming A’s room to a ‘big boy’ room. 

This was my best project of the summer.  While I really enjoyed redecorating A’s room, it made me a bit sad to take out all of his baby things.  No more changing station; no more diaper pail; no more glider; no more toddler bed.  They have been replaced with a dresser, a book area, train table and of course his big boy bed.  I just need to find a bed skirt to match the bedding and the transformation will be officially complete.

3. Utilize the pool at our complex more. 

This was an easy one.  Who wouldn’t want to go to the pool more, right?!  We used the pool more than last year and as much as we had free time for.  Between my work and our active weekend schedule it didn’t leave a ton of extra time, but we managed the best we could to fit in as much pool time as we could.  Anthony loved it and by the end of the summer was swimming by himself around the pool(with his life jacket of course).  A huge change from last year when he wouldn't go past sitting on the stairs.

4. Loose these last 10 stubborn pounds!! 

Stubborn was a good word to describe this one.  It was a lofty goal indeed.  Summer time is a difficult time to diet with all of the BBQ’s and vacations going on.  I tried my best and what I ultimately ended up with was maintenance.  So while I didn’t get rid of the weight I wanted to, I still consider it a win that I didn’t gain back anything that I had lost.

5. Take more walks 

On weekends and weeknights when I got home on time, I would take A out to play as much as possible.  He loves riding on his plasma car so I would take him around our complex on his car.  I would have liked to have gone on more walks by myself so that I could have done some speed walking, but some is better than none, right?!  Plus it’s much more fun when you have this face looking back at you.

Simplifying Family Life

Almost a year ago I attended the Working Mother Media Worklife Conference since I am the co-leader of the Working Parents Network at my company.  While at the conference I picked up a TON of information and pamphlets.  My intention was when I got back from the conference to sort through them to see if there was anything useful for me that could help in balancing my daily workload. Well…. 

---- insert busy life here and a sprinkle of forgetfulness ---- 

9 months later as I was cleaning out a drawer in my desk at work I came across these pamphlets and picked up one in particular that caught my eye – Cozi Family Calendar.  This may not be a new site to many of you, but to me I had never heard of it before.  Cozi has a lot of functions - it’s a calendar, to-do list, meal planning organizer, family journal, and more.  Events can be coded by family member and best of all….it’s FREE!  What I liked best is that you can synch it between all of your computers, phones & tablets in the family so everyone always knows what is on the calendar for the coming week.  Gone are the days of hearing from my husband, “I made plans to do xyz because I didn’t think we had plans this weekend.”  Now we both get an email at the beginning of the week with our appointments/events for the week and a text reminder the day before each of our appointments.

We’ve been using Cozi for the past few months and I find it much easier to keep track of our appointments.  For example, rather than waiting until I get home to write down on our calendar a new appointment, I can enter it from my phone as I schedule it and it’s automatically entered into our family calendar.. It’s perfect for keeping our busy family organized!

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Cozi and have received no compensation for this post...just something I found helpful and wanted to pass along. 

What’s Lurking Under My Bed

The question shouldn’t be what is under my bed right now, but rather what ISN’T under my bed right now.  Since we live in a townhouse with next to nothing closet space, no attic and no garage, I’ve had to make every possible available (unseen) space into storage.  So what’s under my bed you ask?  Lots of crap stuff:

-       air mattress

-       shoes

-       luggage

-       my  Wedding Dress & Veil (all boxed up)

-       more shoes

-       serving platters that are used 1-2x a year for big parties/holidays

-       sleeping bag

-       tent

-       covered roasting pan (I kid you not this was the only place to store it)

-       did I mention shoes?

You may be asking, how the heck does that all fit under my bed?  For starters we have a king size bed so that makes for lots of square footage underneath and second, we put bed risers on our bed to lift it up a few inches and give us some extra room. 

I cannot wait for the day that we buy a bigger house and I can have a proper closet (or :::GASP:::  a garage)  to store these things in instead.

This post brought to you by the Working Mommy Wednesday prompt from Julia over at Work, Wife, Mom….Life!   What is under your bed right now?