Domestic Pride

When packing up my Christmas decorations, I had a "I'm as good at packing boxes as my mom is!" moment. It's similar to the feeling I get when Philip says, "Where are my sunglasses (that you've never touched)/screwdriver/extra deodorant?" and I know where it is somehow. I'm definitely growing up! Although not in every way, I'm still not the best cleaner.

Anyway, time to wrap up the Christmas posts, in talking about the packing up of Christmas decor around here. 

In preparation for take-down, Philip and I went to Superstore and purchased two Rubbermaid bins. I had hoped for red or green bins for easy identification, but they cost more and I figured I could just as easily make cute labels so I went for blue. Also we don't have as many decorations as we might some day - we only needed to buy two bins for now - and this makes it easier to buy more bins that match later on. I figure, if we want we can always buy green bins in the future if we see them on sale or something and use the blue bins for something else. You can never have too many Rubbermaid bins (that's what I tell myself anyways). 

So I got to work taking down decorations. I started with ornaments, putting them into some old ornament boxes that I had inherited, since the ornaments in them weren't as fragile and special to me, and then I put those ornaments just carefully in a box. Luckily there's nothing too heavy in my Christmas decor collection, so I feel like everything should be safe till next year (unless I get my hands on it - I definitely broke 2 ornaments in about 10 minutes while taking down my tree). I was pretty tempted to introduce the red solo cup/cardboard ornament holding contraption into my box, but I wasn't sure if all my ornaments would even fit in cups and then I'd have some odd men out, plus I just didn't get around to it - did anyone else do that? Would you recommend it? Anyone want to try it with me next year?

So genius. Okay, putting this picture into the post sold me on this idea for next year, definitely going to give it a go. (someone remind me next year?)

I put my recent 1 am purchase star in its original box, as well as the white Ikea trees. Some other things like homemade pine cones just got put in a big freezer sized ziploc. I also put my homemade-from-old-Christmas-cards gift tags in a ziplock and tucked them safely inside. Some other odds and ends got added too: Christmas lights, Philip's new pancake pan, some cookie tins, and our stocking hangers (except we don't have stockings at our house...so they just hang nothing). 

Once it was all packed in - and like I mentioned above - I did a better job packing these boxes than I ever have in my history (is anyone else a bad packer?) - you can see my history here if you don't believe me - I stowed it all in the basement in a place I thought was safe. Until we gutted our bathroom...it is now covered in bathroom plaster dust, but that's a story for another day.

All of our Christmas gear hanging out under the stairs. It says "do not stack" because I'm nervous about if another heavy box was put on top some ornaments might squish. 

When Philip got home we took down the tree after some struggle of figuring out if we could get it downstairs and keep it together so we wouldn't have to put lights on it again next year. We failed at that attempt, so the lights came off and down it went in three pieces. 

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.