De-cluttering in 2016

Last year I participated in a 34 week home de-clutting/cleaning.  The weekly challenges were just what we needed to make some great progress around the house.  I wasn't able to finish the challenges, but knew decluttering is a process that needs to be done regularly.  This year I am going to attempt joining a 91 Day Declutter Challenge.  While I don't plan to blog about it each week I am looking forward to seeing how much I am able to tackle just by doing a little bit everyday.  I'd encourage you to tackle the clutter in your home and free up some space that you've been finding annoying.

34 Weeks of Clean - Weeks 21-26

I'm still here plugging slowly away at the challenges that Michelle has given us.

Week 21:  The Hall Closet/Bathrooms --  I finished washing our winter coats and put them away.  The kids helped attempt cleaning the bathrooms.  We tried to make sure the counters were extra clean, the toilets were scrubbed, and the floors were swept.

Week 22:  The Laundry Room/Mudroom --  I worked on making the shelves in the laundry room more efficient for now.  We also got 4 laundry baskets of different colors to help the kids sort their laundry and keep the mess of dirty laundry piles out of the main hallway through the house.  We are really liking this system.  We bought a pink basket for fancy or special wash clothes, a white basket for white clothes and linens, a green basket for colored clothes, and a blue basket for jeans or heavy duty dark clothes.  The people who are assigned to bring the dirty laundry to the laundry room sort it into the correct baskets and I can see at a glance what laundry is needing to be washed and dump it into the washer and move on.  Kent also helped by sweeping the laundry room floor.

Week 23:  The Linen Closet -- Since I rearranged the linen closet when we did the master bathroom I took the week off from the cleaning challenge.

Week 24:  The Porch and Deck -- Kent needed something extra to do, so I had him sweep the front porch, which had collected a lot of grass from some birds that were building a nest.  It looked much nicer after he finished.

Week 25:  The Yard -- The week this was assigned we didn't do anything in the yard, but I had a few things I've been wanting to do.  When my Dad and Mom came my dad mowed and mom and the kids weeded the front flower bed, and Jeff, Mom, and the kids weeded my gardens.  I went to Lowe's with Jeff, Dad, and the boys and picked out some marigolds, a tomato plant, and a basil plant.  Then Mom and the kids planted them they way I'd been wanting them to be planted.

Week 26:  The Storage Room/Attic -- I didn't do anything with these areas as we don't have a designated storage room and the Attic stores the Christmas tree and a wading pool.  The week before I did work on finishing the guestroom for my parents arrival.

Since I apparently didn't take many before and after pictures I'll leave you with this cute Quinn face.

Week 27's challenge is Clothes Storage:  I definitely have some work to do in this area, but I'm hoping the twins will be born very soon.  My mom and I did put clothes into the dresser for the twins yesterday.

34 Weeks of Clean: Week 20 - Bedrooms 3+

This week has been the week to work on the other bedrooms in the house.  I helped Kaomi and Katy go through their drawers and take out the winter clothes so they have room for their summer clothes.  Now when I walk into their room if I see their drawers left open I know they didn't close it, rather than not being able to close it because they had more clothes than fit.

I decided to work in the nursery.  Clark helped me pick up the toys and I sorted them into go upstairs, put away downstairs, giveaway and of course left what was staying in the room for now.  I have a whole reuasable grocery bag full of items that either belong upstairs to other people or are being re-homed with like objects upstairs.  Then I vacuumed and Kaomi helped to move the furniture around.  I moved Quinn's bed to the other side of the room and grouped the nursery items more together.  This is still Quinn's room.  I had planned on him moving upstairs to adjust to Kent and Clark's room this month, but even though he sleeps fine in his toddler bed he still gets up at least once a night.  I don't want him to fall down the stairs when he is trying to come to visit Jeff and I in the middle of the night.  He hasn't slept through the night very often since he was born.  Maybe he'll learn eventually.

My nephew also came over and helped pull weeds from my gardens.  I'm beginning to think I won't get anything planted, but I don't want them to be full of weeds either.  Kent helped pull the weeds, too.

Week 21 - Hall Closet is the next challenge.  Since I already did our hall closet I'm supposed to clean the bathrooms.



Bonus Picture:  My husband and his helpers who set up the porta-crib a few weeks ago in our bedroom.

34 Weeks of Clean: Week 19 - Bedrooms 1 & 2

Last week in cleaning I was able to get the guest room mostly ready for company.  Katy helped me a little bit and Jeff and Clark dusted, vacuumed, and stripped the dusty sheets from the bed.  There are still a few things for me to put away or find homes for, but it could have company at a moments notice now.  We just have to keep it that way.  The girls had been wanting to get Legos out to play with and the condition we have for playing Legos is that your room must be all cleaned up.  They worked really hard are were able to play with Legos several times over the last week.  They also rearranged the toddler bed and some of the other things in their room when they were cleaning.  All the kids upstairs changed their sheets, too.  I went in to help Felicity with some clean laundry in her room and cleaned out all her winter stuff, so she can more easily put her clean clothes in their drawer.



The challenge for week 20 is Bedrooms 3+.  I really need to finish my bedroom and the girls need me to finish going through their clothes and make sure they have what they need for the rest of the summer.  I also need to work in Quinn's room and continue getting it ready for the twins.

34 Weeks of Clean: Week 18 - Half Time = Field Trip

Two weeks agao was half time for cleaning.  I didn't get much done on catching up on anything, but I did get a few odds and ends puts away here and there.  My main cleaning days have been Fridays, so this came at a perfect time to plan an end of year field trip and not feel bad about missing a challenge.

Jeff was able to work extra hours during the week and not have to take any vacation time to have Friday off to go with us to Legoland Discovery Center in Grapevine.  We ordered our tickets online ahead of time for 1:30 pm, so we didn't have to wait in line when we got there.  There were quite a few kids from another school there when we arrived, but they left shortly after and we had plenty of room to spread out.

Everyone enjoyed it.  I think Clark had the hardest time with just not being tall enough or old enough to do a couple of activities that looked really fun to him.  Quinn was happy as a clam to see all the Legos.  The three biggest kids were able to do everything.  Felicity was a little scared, but she still had fun, especially when figuring out how to drive.  Clark and Quinn really enjoyed the build your own car and racing area.  At the end we took a break at the cafe and each of the kids had a cookie and rootbeer, because having a special fun activity isn't complete without a special snack.

Last weeks challenge was Week 19 - Bedrooms 1 & 2.

34 Weeks of Clean: Week 17 - Master Bathroom

This week's challenge was the master bathroom.  I don't have a before picture this week.  Jeff knew that this was in the plans for the week and he was going to clean the bathtub on Tuesday evening.  On Tuesday, after dinner I went for a walk and when I came home it was quiet in the house.  It was almost bedtime, so I thought maybe everyone was getting ready for bed, but they were all in the bathroom cleaning it.  I have a wonderful family!

Jeff and Kids cleaning the bathroom.

Clean bathroom

On Friday, I wiped down the baseboards and straightened the linen closet.  I tossed a few things we haven't used in the giveaway box.  I reorganized our "medicine cabinet" into a hopefully more usable system for us to find what we need and trashed anything that was expired.  I'm going to need the basket that I previously used for medicines as a laundry basket for one of the twins.  I like the stackable baskets we bought several years ago and am glad that we bought several more than we needed at the time for our laundry, because that style is no longer available.  Now when we need one we replace one of the stackable ones with a new basket and use the stackable one for laundry.

linen closet before

Linen closet after

revised "medicine cabinet"

I didn't get to the cabinets under the sink.  I think for the most part they just need a little straightening.

Next week we are taking a half-time for our week 18 cleaning.  Jump over to Michele's blog to see what that means.

34 Weeks of Clean: Week 16 - The Master Closet

Last week I was too tired to do much.  I'm still trying to finish my bedroom.  I had one day to work in the closet, so we worked hard to see how much could get done.  My sister-in-law came over  to help for a little while.  Sometimes having a helper provides the energy needed to work on the job better.

I put a movie on for the kids, so we would hopefully be able to work without much interruption for a while.  We worked together and got a lot accomplished.  We tossed some stuff that didn't need to be kept, almost filled another large giveaway box, condensed a few items into a smaller space, put several things away and put all the photographs into the same container/area in the closet, and straightened up some areas.

There is still work to be done in the closet, but it is nice to have gotten as much done as we did in just a couple hours. 

On the left is the before area of my space we worked on.  Most of what was on the floor has been put in it's place and I now have room to actually walk up to my shelf and closet rod.  I also took several items off the hanging rod that I don't think I will ever wear again for the giveaway.  On the right is where we have some storage.  We went through and removed two large boxes and straightened up this area somewhat.  The things I knew what they were we left for me to work on some other time.

This space is my husbands.  I didn't clean anything in this area, but I did add a few things that were his that I didn't know what to do with.

We didn't work on cleaning the shelves, but most of what is up there is labeled.  It is a mixture of storage and items belonging to my husband or I.





This week's cleaning project is the master bathroom.
 

34 Weeks of Clean: Week 15 - The Master Bedroom

Doesn't it look awful?  This was my master bedroom on Monday, April 13th.  My goal is to work on it a little bit everyday this week.

Monday:  I began in the corner by the window, by putting all the misplaced items away.  I moved the infant car seat to the nursery and cleaned off my shelf and washed the baby swing cover and car seat liners.  We have plans to put a portable crib in this corner for the twins for shortly after they are born.

Tuesday:  Jeff and I loaded all the giveaway stuff that has accumulated in our bedroom into his truck for him to drop off tomorrow.  I also worked on organizing the toys from Kent's room.  The kids and I went to Target and bought some plastic lidded containers that can hold the toys and have a label so we know what belongs where.

stuff to giveaway

Thursday:  I continued working my way along the windows, dusting, de-cluttering, trashing, and putting things in a new giveaway box.  I set aside a few boxes to give to a friend who is moving.  I also put the seat cover back on the baby swing.   Jeff was looking for camping stuff in the closet and he pulled out a box of stuff that he doesn't want anymore.  He said some is trash and some is worthy of the giveaway box.  I told him I would look through it tomorrow when I am working in the bedroom.  I let him know not to look too hard, since cleaning the closet is for another week :)

Friday: Friday, I worked a little bit more on sorting through a few things and putting them where they belong.  I found a long lost item of my husbands, which he had been looking for on Thursday night.  We realized it had probably been there for almost three years and we never would have looked there for it.

Saturday:  I had hoped to tackle the rest of the room and get it finished, but I only moved a few things.  The girls and their cousin who was visiting washed some kitchen set toys that I had when I was a girl and I was able to put them into a container that they will be able to play with them sometimes.  Jeff, Kent, and Clark had gone camping over the weekend and I think I lost my motivation.  I also worked more in the playroom, putting the toys in the locked closet, so little people can't get into them and dump them all out at the same time.

Tuesday 4/21:  I worked on it a little more, but my energy levels this week have been on the low side.

Wednesday 4/22:  I had Jeff put the suitcases from our trip in March, back on the shelf in the closet.

I haven't finished yet, and to be honest if I took another picture from the same angle you wouldn't think much progress had been made.  We filled another large box full of stuff to giveaway and several items went in the trash.  I still have a lot of work to do and will continue plugging away at it.  The progress along the windows has been amazing, that has been the catch all for many items over the last few years.  Right now I'm getting about 20-30 minutes at a time before I have to take a rest break or see what our children need.

Enjoying watching Felicity, Clark, and Quinn play with the tool box activity set on one of my breaks.

 This week we are supposed to be working on the Master Closet.

34 Weeks of Clean: Week 14 - Arts and Crafts

Before

After

Working on arts and crafts meant working on my sewing room/office/guest room.  My before and after pictures don't do justice to what was actually accomplished, and I'm obviously not done yet. 

Closet before

Closet After

current fabric stash and patterns

I worked on going through the fabric I had and pulled out several pieces that I had purchased for our previous home and never made the item it was intended for and the fabric doesn't have the same vision in this house.  I put them in the giveaway box.  I went through my scrap box and organized my scraps by color and threw away several scraps that were too small to do anything with.  I was able to put the lid on my scrap box again and still have a little space for any new scraps that may come along.  I worked in the closet and was able to condense my fabric stash into a much smaller space than it had been taking up.  I also labeled the boxes so I will hopefully be able to more easily find what I am looking for.  We are still working on turning the gameroom into a playroom, so one of my chests of craft supplies for school was moved into the office.  I don't need little hands getting into paint and other small items.  I tossed several plastic items into the recycle bin and some patterns and other crafty items into the giveaway box.  I hope to spend some more time in this room getting the bed cleared off this week.

Kent's room rearranged

This weekend we also finished working on getting Kent's room all cleaned out.  We rearranged the furniture and left room for the toddler bed for Quinn to be moved up there later.  We also added a dresser since the drawers Kent has been using for clothes wouldn't work for the three boys.  The drawers in the dresser were broken and Jeff took a little while and fixed them so now they slide in and out easily again.  I bought the dresser used and broken about 10 years ago and it's only gotten worse.  We've talked about replacing it, but now it works just fine.  The plan is to have none to very few toys in this room and the toys will be in the playroom.  Kent even acknowledged that he is getting excited about Clark moving into his room.

 Week 15's challenge is the master bedroom.  Mine is in deplorable shape and I've been looking forward to getting a chance to tackle it.  It may take more than one week, but I'm sure planning on it looking much improved from its current state of catch all.

34 Weeks of Clean: Week 12 & 13 - Gameroom and Pictures

Week 12 for the 34 weeks of Clean was to work on the Family Room and DVD's.  Since our main living room is where we spend most of our family time and I went through our DVD's on Week 8 I thought I might get to work a little on our gameroom.  We've been out of town for a couple weeks and when I got back I found that my sister-in-law had come over and worked on the gameroom while we were gone.  She picked up all the toys that didn't belong and set them in groups according to the boys or girls rooms.  She found all the "missing" socks under the futon and put them in the dirty laundry basket and vacuumed.  Since I had plans to work in the gameroom this week and she made a great dent in what was scattered around I can focus better on a smaller, but much needed task as we get ready to do some reorganizing in the next few weeks upstairs.  

Gameroom Before

  I cleaned the corner cabinet and Katy cleaned her desk cabinet.



After the children were in bed for the evening, Jeff and I brainstormed about what we want to do with the gameroom.  We are working to make it into a "playroom".  We moved the TV on top of the corner cabinet and put the xbox and dvd's in the cabinet.  That helps keep them out of sight and raises the TV out of low swinging reach of Clark and Quinn.  The old shelf that we had the TV on became a nightstand in our guest room.  We made plans to move the bookshelves and free up some wall space and we talked about toy storage and how we can help reduce the number of items out in the "playroom" at one time.

Gameroom After

Guestroom, progress made

The gameroom isn't quite finished, but a lot of progress was made toward getting it where we want it to be soon.  Apparently the trains were played with and not cleaned up today before I went to take the picture.  My sister-in-law came over and helped with some of the projects we were working on and her help was wonderful.  We were able to go through Clark and Quinn's clothes and pull out the too small clothes and sort them into the proper storage containers and giveaway bag.  We worked on
moving one of the bookshelves from the gameroom to the office/guest room, and made continued progress on getting the guest room ready for guests again.  We also tackled Kent's room, since we have have plans to move Clark into Kent's room very soon.  We are planning to make the boys room just a room for sleeping and have the play area in the gameroom.  When we started on Kent's room we could barely see any of the floor under all of his Legos and paper trash collection.  We've removed several 13 gallon size trash bags full of mostly paper trash and he will be learning how to better let go of the things he doesn't need to keep long term.

Kent's room in progress

 Week 14's challenge is Craft Supplies, so I'm hoping to finish the office/guest room this week since that is most of what is in there.  I already purged a large bag of fabric that I don't think I will use and my sister-in-law took a few pieces from the stash that she thought she would be able to use.

Week 13's challenge is "Pictures and Scrapbooks."  I only had two days to work on this challenge, so I didn't get much done.  I've learned over the last several years to delete the digital pictures that aren't very good and keep only what I really want.  It cuts down on the clutter in my computer photo program.  So for this week I downloaded the pictures from my camera from our trip and got rid of any that I didn't want to keep.  Hopefully, I'll post some of them on my blog soon.

Week 14's challenge and details can be found by clicking the button below.

34 Weeks of Clean - Week 11: Hall Closet

Last week we cleaned the entryway and since I've been wanting to get the closet under our stairs cleaned out for a while I worked on that the next day.  I know I was supposed to work on the bathrooms, but I'll get to that, maybe the week we are supposed to work on the Hall Closet.

Giveaway

Katy was my delegated helper and of course Clark helped too.  He likes to be involved in whatever is going on.

     We pulled everything out from the closet floor and I went through a couple of boxes of kitchen stuff that had been opened and dug through a few times to find things since we moved a few years ago.  The other things I just didn't use on a regular basis and hadn't ever found a good home for them in my kitchen.  I decided since they had been there for so long without being used that they probably didn't need to stay in our home anymore.  I found a few things that I moved to my kitchen, but the rest went in the giveaway pile.  I contacted a couple people I knew and asked them if they wanted any of the items I wanted to re-home.  They each took a few items and the rest is going in the donate box.  After throwing out the trash from the closet, Katy vacuumed it and then we put the items we wanted to keep in there back where they belonged. 

     The winter clothes all gets washed and placed in a plastic tub in the back of the closet for the next year.  We're not quite ready to put everything up yet, so I will do that in a few weeks when I am sure we are done with them.

Before

After

  Click the button on the left to find out the details for week 12.

34 Weeks of Clean - Week 10: Entryway

Entry Before

This week was cleaning the entryway.  After having a little snow on a couple occasions the entry had gotten pretty dirty from the snow and grass that had been tracked in from the front yard.  We had used towels as rugs and they helped to keep the mess to a minimum. 

Entry Before

Kent and Clark helped me in the entryway.  They started to put things that didn't belong away, Kent hung up coats and put the dirty laundry where it could be washed.  I put the rest of the activity boxes from upstairs inside the buffet cabinets.  The red basket in the picture above still held the books to donate to our library.  I put the books into a box and we took them to the library later that day.  The youngest three have backpacks that we keep ready to take with us to church or on outings when they need to take something with them.  The backpacks used to be the only thing that went in the cabinets, but they didn't fit there with the activity boxes, so I put them in the blue basket on top of the buffet.  Then I found a crate and repurposed it to go where we keep our library books.  We don't have many checked out right now.  I'm not sure that crate is the best for keeping books in, but it will work until I come up with something else.  Kent and I swept the dirt from the tile and then he and Clark washed the baseboards and tile, while I dusted the picture frames.

When we were finished, Kent also vaccumed the carpet in the dining room and around the entryway.

Entryway after

Want to join us for next week's challenge?  Click the button to find out more.

34 Weeks of Clean - Week 9: Books

This week I've looked forward to working on our books.  I didn't get the shelf in the living room tackled, so I plan to dust it soon. 

Yesterday, I finally had a chance to get some time upstairs and work on the shelves in the gameroom.

Before

We didn't have to work on homeschool books, so I left those alone.  This is what the gameroom shelves looked like.  The shelf on the left hold the children's books and school materials.  The bottom three shelves were what we worked on straightening.  Kent volunteered to help me and he even said he was having fun while we were working.  We took all the children's books off the shelf, sorted them out by size/type and then we weeded through them and pulled out any doubles and torn-up books/magazines that needed to go in the trash.  Then I looked through the stacks and pulled all the books I didn't want to keep and Kent helped me put them back on the shelf the way they belong.  The shelf on the right is "Mommy's Library".  It holds the chapter books for kids.  They don't have a free for all on this shelf and are supposed to "check" the books out with me.  They are only allowed one or two at a time and they have to be checked back in before they can have another.  This system has been working pretty well to keep the books fairly organized and not all in a jumbled mess or lost all over the house.  The top shelf held activity boxes, which I was able to move downstairs into a buffet cabinet that wasn't being used for much.  Jeff installed some baby resistant locks to the doors so that they are only accessible when I get them out.  That left a whole shelf for us to put "new" books on.  I haven't unpacked all the books from our move three and a half years ago, because I don't have shelving for them all.  I was able to look through some of the books still stored and pull out several that I thought the older kids would enjoy reading.  Kent was quite excited to see several new books that he had never read before.  He likes to read and has already read pretty much everything we have out at least one time and some of them several times.

After

While I was looking for books to add to the library shelf I found the one cookbook I have been looking for since we moved.  I was excited and felt a little silly that it was in a box labeled cookbooks.  I thought I'd looked in that box, but obviously I hadn't.  I'm guessing that I had two boxes with cookbook labels and only ever looked in the one.  I found a few cookbooks that I didn't even remember having so I figured I would add them to the donate pile, since I hadn't missed them.

Books to give away/get rid of

Found!

I call this mission a success.










Next week's goal is the entryway.  Click the button on the left to get the details. 

34 Weeks of Clean - Week 8: Living Room

This week I cleaned off the top of the entertainment center and dusted.  Then I cleaned the entertainment center cabinets.  I found several things that we didn't need and could donate, recycle, or throw away.  Jeff cleaned the ceiling fan for me and helped take the curtains down so I could wash them.  I worked on my desk.  It's not finished, but any papers/boxes that were no longer needed are now in the recycle bin.  I had Kent go through the toy basket in the living room and take out all the baby toys.  I weeded out the ones that were to worn to keep and put several in the donate box.  The rest I put away to get out in a few months when we have new babies to play with them.  I also had Kent get out all the playdoh stuff from the drawers in the dining room and I donated about half of the stuff we had.  We never use it all at the same time so I kept the kids favorite stuff and got rid of the doubles and my least favorite stuff and the things that were seldom played with.

Jeff helping with the curtains

Before

After

Ladders are fun

Games before

Games After

 Check out the challenge for Week 9 here.