Playroom

Over the Christmas break Craig and I got a TON of stuff done around the house.  Upstairs we have a great open loft space that was previously just used as a dumping ground for junk that we couldn't quite find a space for.  Natalie got a ton of great toys for Christmas and we had to find a spot for all of them.  Here is what we came up with..........

Grand view of the playroom from the top of the stairs.  Craig's mother bought Natalie the floor mat that is made of different "puzzle" pieces stuck together.  All the numbers and letters come up out of the rug so that will be perfect for learning the alphabet and how to count.  We moved the entertainment center to the corner so that it would block the internet cable cord and the outlets from little hands.  The four drawer small dresser used to hold almost a hundred of our DVD cases.  We emptied those out, tossed the cases and stored all the discs in a large CD case downstairs.  I did keep her Disney and Harry Potter movie cases stored in one drawer. 

View from the man cave door - once Natalie gets bigger and is drawing things for us, I'm going to hang some lines of string over the couch with some laundry clips and it will be her own personal "art gallery."

For Easter Natalie got a few different Easter baskets and up until now they had just been sitting in her closet taking up space.  I rearranged her bookcase in her room and took out the small board books that she can get her hands on......and not ruin by tearing or eating the pages.

Another view of her toy storage area - complete with a tub full of stuffed animals.

Her walker and basketball goal - the basketballs are mostly used to chew on (either by her or Angie) and the walker has only facilitated a few steps as of right now.  She'd rather just take the flaps off the front.

Her Little People toy center - the zoo and the home.  Favorite parts?  Chewing on the ostrich's head and flushing the pink toilet.

Downstairs in the Living Room we still have a basket of assorted toys down below and then some stuffed animals up above.  She really leaves pretty much everything else on our entertainment center alone.  She knows where her toys are and what she is allowed to play with.

The activity table, ride on scooter and rocking horse that she received for Christmas.  She rides that scooter all over the house now.  Much faster than crawling and it supports her to "stand" and be able to try and reach things on the kitchen table.  Yes.  The kitchen table - she is tall enough that her little hands can reach all the way up there.

  

A view of Natalie's "corner" of the living room.  I've really tried to keep all her stuff organized and in one location because I definitely don't want baby toys strewn throughout the house so much that it doesn't feel like a place where grown-ups can hang out as well.

So there you go!  We really got so much done over the break - I was nervous about the amount of toys that she was going to receive and having to find a place for all of them.  But we worked together, cleaned things out and still have room for all the toys that she'll be getting for her birthday in a few months!

Cleaning Out My Closets...The Finale

Entryway Closet

I love, love, love this closet because it isn't just a hall closet to store coats, but it goes all the way underneath our stairs and provides us with A LOT of extra and necessary storage.  If we didn't have this, Craig would not be a happy camper because he'd be the one hauling all this junk in and out of the attic!

Right when you open the door are all our jackets, coats and Craig's hats.  And our vacuum.  And Craig's ice machine...that's broke...which can probably be put in the trash bin now.

Further in...oh...hello pillows and blankets that I threw in there during tornado season.  As you can see, this is our tornado and severe weather bunker where I spent many nights this spring curled up with Angie and Natalie surrounded by pillows and blankets.  Looking past those, we have our safe (shh...don't tell anyone) and two (yes...TWO) sets of crutches because in our family you can never have too many crutches.

Okay.  I know this looks like a jumbled mess, but I promise you that there is a method to this madness.  This is way under the stairs and on the left are all our Christmas decorations including all those red boxes that house Craig's Christmas village.  I say "Craig's" because I'm not really into holiday decorating.  I could survive happily with just putting up a tree and stockings and being done with it but not my husband.  He LOVES his village and if I let him he would put up tacky Christmas decor everywhere.  Ugh.  On the right are all our various suitcases and travel bags.  See?  These are all things that typically are up in the attic but since we have this great storage space they get to hang out here and we don't have to lug them down the crickety ladder that leads up to the attic.

Pantry

I really wish that we had more of a walk-in pantry but our will do - it serves it's function and holds our food.  It isn't very well lit so my mom and I bought those push lights and hung them on the sides of the shelves so I can see all my food.  I just realized that I don't really have a lot of food in my pantry but thinking back, neither did my mom.  She always only kept enough food to get us through the week which probably was a good thing - we never had a lot of unhealthy snacks lying around for us to chomp on.  I didn't post a close-up of the top shelf, but if you look at the top I have our party supplies (plastic plates, silverware and cups) in a basket on the left and all my pasta and rice is in jars in the middle with my napkins, baggies and foil on the right.

Shelf with canned goods, popcorn and breakfast stuff to the left.

Bread basket in the left corner along with our chips and for whatever reason...a huge jug of vinegar.  Curious.

The bottom two shelves are obviously more "storage" areas for extra water, sodas, paper products and dog food.

Laundry Room

Yes.  I have two trash cans.  And they are labeled.  One says "trash" and the other "recycle."  Please follow the instructions and throw your items in the appropriate can.

I love the built in shelves in my laundry room.  On the shelves on the left I have bags, miscellaneous cleaning products, smelly good stuff, cleaning rags and cloths and lightbulbs.  And of course all these things are labeled but what no one understands (for those of you who might tease my labeling obsession) is that I don't label for my own good because I know where everything goes.  I label for my husband so that when he goes to get something or put it away he knows where to find it and where to put it back.  That way my laundry room stays organized, he stays out of trouble and our marriage stays happy.  Ha!

The other side of the shelving unit are laundry supplies and swiffer pads.  A funny story - our housekeeper Martha always puts together a list of things that we need to buy when she is running low on a cleaning product.  For the longest time she would just write "Swiffer" on the list and I kept buying the Swiffer floor cleaner replacements all the while thinking to myself "Jeez!  My floor must be filthy for Martha to go through so many of these things."  I just kept accumulating more and more boxes of floor refills until one day I realized that Martha wasn't talking about the floor refills but instead the dusting refills.  So...if anyone in my neighborhood ever runs out of the Swiffer floor refills, come by and see me because I have about four or five unopen boxes of them sitting on my shelf.

This was the most recent addition to my laundry room - just a simple little hanging thing to put all our brooms, mops and of course...the infamous Swiffer.

That's it for the tour of my closets.  Hopefully you're not scared away by my OCD...or the secret areas in my house that aren't super organized (YET).

Cleaning Out My Closet Part II

Master Bedroom Closets

In our master bedroom we have two closets - one that is directly in the bedroom (Craig's) and then one that is in our bathroom (mine).  They differ quite a bit...see if you spot the differences.  Ha, ha, ha.

Walking directly into my closet.  Skirts, dress pants and capris on top, ratty old sweatshirts on the shelf and then cute jackets and my nice sweatshirts on the bottom.  Yes.  Being a coach, I really have "grungy" sweatshirts and "nice" sweatshirts.  You can't see it, but above the highest rack I have a shelf that holds my two big duffel bags - one is Adidas and the other I got from working as a Lead Lifeguard at NRH2O when I was in high school and college.

Turn to the left and here are my shoes - all my high heels are stored on the built in shelf...sigh...I used to have so many more.  And then I have flats and nice flip-flops stored in the hanging shoe rack that I got for cheap at IKEA.

Here are all my tops hanging from tank tops to cute tees to short sleeve work shirts to long sleeve work shirts and sweaters then to dresses.  Above are my purses on the shelf in the back and my new big Vera Bradley tote bag.

My athletic shoes that I wear constantly.  And that's not even all of them - I think I have a few more pairs hiding around the house in different locations.

Above my shirts, my "cool" sneakers and my more casual flip flops.  The gray Converse get worn the most.

And here is Craig's closet.  I at least have gotten him to hang his shorts and pants on the left and his shirts in sleeve order (short, long) and then dressiness order (polos, button ups) and then finally, all the way on the right are his heavier pull overs that he wears in the winter time.  Down below I need to get one of those shoe racks to hold his sneakers, dress shoes and flip flops.

The Hall Closet

Ugh.  One of my least favorite closets.  It is so small and cramped and all our sheets are white which makes it very hard to distinguish which sheets and pillowcases go together.  Plus...I'll let you in on my dirty little secret - I don't really deal with the sheets because I just let our housekeeper Martha take care of all that.  Eek!  Does anyone know of a better way to keep this closet organized AND how I can communicate that to Martha...or would that be a little TOO obsessive and controlling?  And yes, I saw something amazing on Pinterest about putting the sheets inside on of the matching pillow cases, but I don't know if I could get Martha to do that everytime.  Jeez...I sound really spoiled.

Spare Bedroom Closet

Believe it or not, this looks so much better than it did a few months ago.  At the beginning of the summer I made Craig and myself clean out all our clothes which included all the crap that we had just thrown into the spare closet.  On top you can see what used to be my super organized present wrapping box but has since gone into disarray since I was not the last person who used it and put it away...yes, I'm glaring at you Craig.  Underneath that box, I really have no earthly idea what is in any of that stuff because it's mostly junk that I inherited when I moved in with my husband.  Maybe that will be an upcoming project for him.

See?  We did clean out the clothes that were hanging, but we still have a bunch of junk in there that we don't need or use.  Sadly, it probably won't get cleaned out until we need the space for Baby Number 2!  Which, for those of you who just got their hopes up, won't be for a VERY long time.

Natalie's Closet

This is probably one of the cutest and most well organized closets in the house because again...I'm the one who is in charge of it and Craig rarely ventures in here.  I have all her toys stored in the bins in the shelving unit (all from Target) and on either side are diapers, wipes and the pack 'n play (on the right) and then things that she hasn't quite grown into using (bath toys and grocery cart seat covers) on the left.  I hang all her cute outfits in the closet with all her onesies in a drawer in her dresser.  See that big space right in the middle with the extra pink hangers?  To the left of those hangers is everything that she fits into right now with cute one-piece outfits in front, next are tops and bottoms that go together followed by her dresses.  She has more clothes than that but Momma hasn't put away the laundry recently.  To the right of those hangers are all the clothes that are waiting for her to grow into them in size and season order - for example, her more summery and warm weather 9 months stuff is at the front while her wintery and colder weather 9 months stuff is behind it and her 12+ months stuff is all the way in the back.  Now do you see why Craig doesn't mess with her clothes and just lets me put them all away?!

Natalie has a TON of shoes and at they too are organized in size order with her size 1 shoes at the top and then it works all the way down to size 4 at the bottom.  And to be honest, I've only bought her THREE pairs of shoes - all the rest were either given to me at a baby shower or I got second hand from a friend whose daughter outgrew them.

For one of our wedding showers we received this plastic tub that you put ice and drinks into but it's only been used once or twice and was just sitting up in our laundry room while all her stuffed animals were strewn across the top of her shelving unit taking up precious storage space.  So I had Craig bring it up from downstairs and right now it holds all her special stuffed animals that people have given her.



That's all the closets upstairs and my last post on closets will be everything downstairs!

Cleaning Out My Closet

Call it what you will (most people would say OCD) but I am organized.  My favorite store on Earth is The Container Store but I try not to go there too much because Natalie does need a college fund.  Over the past few days and weeks I have been obsessing about cleaning and organizing my closets - I think I've been spurred to action through Pinterest and salivating over all of the immaculately organized spaces people share on there. 


So here it goes...the good, the bad and the ugly of all the closets in our house.

The New Fridge

Okay, so technically I know it shouldn't be considered a "closet" but if by definition a "closet" is a closed place to store things, then the fridge can be considered...a portable closet for food?!  Or maybe I'm just really excited about my new toy and want to show it off.  Either way...

Here she is in all her glory - and don't worry, I have cleaned off all the smudge marks from the front.  We got her on clearance from Best Buy because she (why am I calling it a "she?") was the floor model from last year.  Well...I don't really care if it's last year's model because it looks great and we were able to get a higher end fridge for a lower end price.  Score.  See how beautifully she fills up the space and blends in with the other stainless steel appliances?!  Swoon.

Here is the inside of the fridge and believe it or not, I put a lot of time and effort into deciding exactly where was the best place for everything to go.  And yes, all the labels face forward at all times.

Master Bathroom Closet

I used to have hideous blue buckets holding all some things but everything else was just scattered around.  I wanted some cohesion and everything to look more or less the same so off to Target I trotted and I returned home a few (ha!) dollars poorer, but look how pretty it all looks!

Medicine basket - wow...all I can see is Gas-X, Phillips and even a Tums bottle...maybe I should have turned those things around.

We go on a lot of trips and before every vacation I go to Target and buy travel toiletries and then when I get home and start packing I realize that I already OWN a ton of travel stuff.  So here is the basket with all our travel size lotions, shampoos, conditioners, Q-Tips, toothpaste etc.  I will not have to buy anything for a very long time.  And you can barely see it, but to the right of the basket I have a stored a few of my travel toiletries bags so that when I'm going to pack and grab one of those bags, I will see this basket and be reminded not to buy anymore travel items!

In the back are lotions, sunscreens and hand soaps that I use...but not on a daily or regular basis.  In the front is my collection of hair bands, bobby pins and headbands.

This is a big basket where I store the "refills" of stuff - toothpaste, toothbrushes, razors, shaving gel, deodorant and apparently...we need three lint rollers.

Okay.  That's enough for one blog...this will be continued shortly...and don't worry, not everything in my house is as nice and neat as my fridge and master bathroom closet.  These two areas are just two of the most used and therefore have to be the cleanest.