NOTE: This post is both embarassing and fulfilling. I can’t believe we were living in such a cluttered mess!
About a month ago, I got bit with the cleaning bug. Not just the ordinary, dust and vacuum kinda bug, the serious one. The one where I empty everything out, declutter, scrub down, etc. I entered my MAGDA mode and am loving the results. Now, I didn’t clean every single day this past month, but sometimes, it sure felt like it.

I started with our “office” area, dining room, kitchen and living room. Papers were shred, old toys put away, countertops cleared off, etc. However, I didn’t clean out the pantry or all the other cabinets, not yet anyway. Still, it’s nice to be able to see the dining room table and shiny countertops and the house not looking like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse all the time.

I moved on upstairs to our bedrooms. We only have a 2 bedroom house, but it still took forever to clean them. I had to keep reminding myself that it didn’t take a day, a week or even a month to pile up the mess, it’s not going to get all nice and clean and pretty in a day or week either…But, I do believe I did it in less than a month so that’s got to account for something.

I’m actually embarassed to post the BEFORE pictures, but I feel like they will make you feel my pain even more

See this mess? This is the girls’ room.

They “share” a room. And by share, I mean they have their clothes in there. They don’t sleep there…all 4 of us sleep on our bed (no comments about co-sleeping from the Peanut Gallery. It’s what’s worked for us so far). So, what happens when summer’s over, birthday presents pile up, Halloween costumes need to get put away and you’ve got 2 girls’ clothes to sort through? This…where you can’t even see the floor anymore.

And this, after weeks of sorting and piling and hanging/folding clothes and organizing…this? This looks so much better! I can even see the floor! However, no more mess = more obvious that the furniture is all mismatched. Hey, at least we have some, right? The closet still looks messy, but believe me, that’s TONS better than it was. AND, all their socks are organized and paired up (except for those stragglers probably stuck in the washer/dryer somewhere).

Beans LOVED it when she saw it and now has been sleeping there again! Who knew that’s all she wanted? Just a side note though, Beans stopped sleeping in her room BEFORE the mess piled up so it’s not that we were trying to make her sleep and find her way to her bed by going through an obstacle course. I think what happened was that she got sick and wanted to just lay in bed with us and then that was that.

Now, see this mess? This is our room. Bins have been sitting in there where we switch out our summer/winter clothes. Once the switch was done, the bins were supposed to go in the attic. However, they’ve just been sitting there and next thing you know, it was time to switch the clothes around again. They became permanent fixtures in our room and we would throw our clothes on top of them b/c our closet needed to get cleared out/organized or we were in a rush when changing or whatever.

I decided that with organizing, you need to spend money. The economy sucks, we got a 4% reduction in our pay (pDaddy and I actually work for the same company), but to get organized, you need to spend on organizational what-have-yous. As for us, I hit Target and got a couple of 3 shelf cabinets we could stick inside our closet for more room to store clothes, sheets, etc. I assembled the cabinets myself, thank you very much.

It’s still not where I want it to be, but I’m waiting for the cabinets to go on sale again and we need to take another trip to the attic to put up the rest of the summer clothes I found. Still, again, I can see the floor!

I’ve also decluttered and scrubbed down the bathrooms. Next stop? Kitchen pantry and cabinets!