Sanity Will Return

You might remember a long time ago, as in before Christmas, when we finished our master bedroom and office. They were beautiful! You may also have noticed that I said were. 

Fast forward a few months, and our bedroom has been high jacked by bathroom staging, and our office is where paperwork goes to die. 

Well, since our bathroom is on hold for the moment (due to the insulation in the ceiling needing work, and Winnipeg weather not being ideal for removal of insulation for a few days at  the moment).  I'm retackling these beautiful rooms we created. There are still some decor features we want to add to each, for example I want to make a headboard extension for our bed, hang some hooks, artwork, etc. in the Master Bedroom, but first we have to tackle all this clutter. A lot of the bathroom stuff in our bedroom can't be dealt with until we have a bathroom to put it in, but I can get started on the office. Here's how it looks now (I just took pictures in a circle around the room, moving right for each one, so this is basically a 360 degree view of our office). Excuse the photos, we still need to get a high quality camera - as in higher quality than our iPhone 4's, we don't have a window covering and it was pretty bright, and it's just crazy messy in there.:

The view straight ahead from the door. Here you see the area to the left of our desk,
as well as one end of our desk.

Moving right, you can see the other half of the desk. 

Directly to the right, is the closet which houses our filing cabinet. 

Next up is a console table we inherited from the condo. 

On the other side of the door, is the first of three bookshelves. 

And finally the last two bookshelves. 

It isn't a huge space, but I think we've planned the storage pretty well. Now we just have to get it clutter-free and organized!

Office Sanity Checklist...plus a few extras for aesthetic purposes that might happen down the line (run on sentence alert)
Yes we're list oriented...in case you didn't know.

Create Mail Center/Cass' Area
- Hang White Board  We completed this on Monday night with the help of 4 velcro command strips as you can see in the photo with the console table! P.S. I did this almost all by myself, Philip was there offering guidance but I was in charge. Woot Woot, pink toolbelt here I come.
- Hang Art Gallery
- New Console Table
- Mail/Card Area
- Craft Supplies
- Receipt Inbox

Desk
- Set Up Printer
- New Office Chair
- Hang Art
- Storage Solution for Philip's Drama paperwork, temporary papers

Closet
- Stain Closet Rod & Shelf
- Organize Games
- Organize Filing Cabinet
- Create Warranties Binder
- Gift Wrapping Supplies
- Paint Closet Door

Bookshelf
- Style Empty Shelves
- Go through books for potential garage sale

Other
- Sand, Prime, Paint Door & Rehang
- Window Covering

Some more things might spring up as we go, but this is my initial goal list as far as bringing our once beautified office back to a beautiful state.

Master Bedroom Transformation: Part 1

As you saw here, we're getting ready to start and finish our master bedroom. 

Here's the To-Do list for completing this bedroom project:

• Empty bedroom of all clutter
• Remove old A/C vents in ceiling
• Patch walls and ceiling
• Prime
• Paint
• Trim
• Sand & paint doors
• New door hardware
• New light fixture
• New closet shelving system
• Assemble furniture and arrange room
• Hang artwork & accessorize
• Curtains

Today I thought I'd share some before/after pictures of us emptying a room filled with clutter. We also emptied our office and plan to paint it at the same time but we don't have as many ideas yet about what we'll do, more to come on that soon. 

Warning: This post is photo intensive! There's not a lot to say about clutter removal, but hopefully seeing all this junk everywhere helps you to feel better about whatever room you have that's filled with clutter.

As you'll remember, we were storing all this stuff in the basement when we decided at the last moment to gut the basement in preparation for our forced-air system install.

Philip removed all the doors to enable our trim removal. Turns out it wasn't as necessary for trim removal as once thought, but we're planning to refinish them anyway, and living in a door-free house has it's perks. Like... ummm... less doorknob-related injuries? I'll get back to you on that one.

Why yes, that is a certified flotation device.  Why do you ask?

This is all you need to know about the story of "How Philip lost his new driver's license before it even made it into his wallet."

We started out by sorting the items in the rooms. The main categories were items coming back into these rooms, items we wanted to keep but just needed to store for the time being (e.g. memory box items, Christmas decorations, etc.), and last but not least items for the yard sale. We started trucking items downstairs with me putting them into the piles and Philip carrying them up and down the stairs.

The other factor we took into consideration is the fact that all of these items have been moved at least three times in the last six months and we're getting crazy tired of it. We tried to keep as much upstairs as we could, just moving things downstairs that we knew we weren't going to put back into these rooms right away or items that we just couldn't fit anywhere else for now. 

Hooray! From our condo to the basement to the main floor to the basement once again.

Philip's Michael Jordan poster is huge. You could measure heights in "Michael Jordan 'Wings' posters," as in "I am 1.1 MJWPs tall."

Clutter awaiting the Philip train down the stairs.

One day, when all this stuff is cleaned up, we'll marvel at the size of our living room.

For now, we're just thankful for a place to sit and watch Community.

Those are mostly Philip's movies, surrounded by yet more clutter.

This is where we're at now, piles of things in the living room (mainly books we didn't want to carry down or things we still wanted on hand like gift wrap), piles of things in the basement for the yard sale or being stored, and two empty rooms ready for patching and painting!

With this mess, you'd assume we'll be holed in here with the door locked so that no one can see - but we're crazy so we're posting it on the internet and inviting people over for dinner tonight!

Stay tuned as we get ready to patch and paint our bedroom in the next week or so! Can't wait to have a mattress off the floor and finally start decorating! 

Anyone else painting a room soon? Any ideas for us? Take a look back at our inspiration photo post and let me know if you have any accessories/light fixtures/artwork ideas that we could implement in this type of space.

Reminder: This is the last day to add your vote to the poll on the right side of the homepage. Tomorrow we'll analyze the results in what is sure to be a very statistical type way and start a new poll for next week.

Housekeeping at its Finest

This weekend was a very exciting weekend for our family as we welcomed a new sister into the Wiebe clan at my brother-in-law's wedding. It was a wonderful day, but came with the unfortunate side effect of a pile of dishes slowly piling up as we ate and ran continually through a very busy weekend. 

Housecleaning is the death of me, and so I've started the process of creating a home organization binder to keep things under control. I'm a list person, and so I'm hoping these lists will be just the motivation I need to get everything done on a regular basis.

I started by finding a binder in a pretty color to make it a little more aesthetically pleasing. Next up is a cover page, there's a placeholder currently made of a scrap piece of paper and some highlighter...this will be replaced at some point when our printer is properly set up and I don't have to go to my parents to print things. 

In the front pocket, I can keep extra papers that I'm working on. Currently I have a grocery list and a list of ideas for the December version of this binder now that I've learned a few tricks after a month of use. 

The first few pages are calendars of the month used for meal planning, event planning, and blog planning. 

After that I have a page for each week of the month. At the top of the page I have seven columns, one for each weekday, with the list of things I want to do everyday:

Wash Dishes

Make Bed

Put Away Clothes

Wipe Counters

Organize Incoming Mail

Tidy Up Any Clutter

Blog Post

Below that, I have a list of the things that I want to accomplish each week. This allows me to be flexible with which days I do things, but I know that by Friday I want all of the items checked off. 

Change sheets/towels, wash/fold/put away all laundry, clean toilets, windex mirrors, wipe down sinks/counter, clean shower, vacuum house, mop kitchen floors, dust, enter expense receipts in the budget, empty trash and recycling, clean out fridge, windex kitchen table, meal plan for the week.

I also write a few extra items that are specific to that week. I usually work on that Sunday night, or add things as I think of them ahead of time.

The last section of the binder are monthly maintenance items such as vacuuming out floor vents, cleaning out garbage cans, going through the freezer, and flushing drains.

Hopefully this plan will help me to get more organized and motivated on the cleaning front. I strive to be as domesticated as Martha Stewart but I am far far far from it. This whole housekeeping thing really takes a lot of learning on my front, it's not something I come by naturally and before I moved out I hadn't even done laundry. I'm getting there though!

What's your least favourite cleaning task? Most favourite? Any ways of making it more fun/engaging? Anything I should be adding to my list to maintain my home properly?