Around the house

Now that I am home more, I am beginning to see areas (both big and small) that need updating, cleaning, organizing or a combination of all three.  Also now that I am home more, Will and I have significantly less income; so those bigger projects and/or areas needing updating will have to wait a bit and I am learning to focus on the smaller less costly areas to attack.

Recently, I decided to organize our cookbook shelves:

I weeded out the duplicates and the few we don’t anticipate using:

I know, I know; hardly any change.  But it made me feel better!

I also hung up the New Yorker cartoon (a gift from my mother) above the stove in the kitchen instead of hiding it away on the shelf:

There's nothing like a little perspective when you are having one of those days.

Will has been installing much more user friendly shelves in our mudroom/laundry room.  While the room itself is small, the ceilings are incredibly high, so Will (all 6’5” of him) decided the shelves could go as high as the ceiling for storage space.  The lower shelves are for me:

We still need to figure out exactly what to do with all of the dog stuff (I was looking for a better term than “stuff,” but really there is no other way to describe those objects is there?):

I have also been organizing my bedroom drawers (clothes, make-up, lotions, soaps, toothpastes, etc.) and closet, but won’t bore you with those exciting pictures.

Up next?  I am determined to figure out something nice to put here:

It’s an awkward wall space in our kitchen that has always housed Will’s college bookshelf.  The space is very narrow and is hindered further by the kitchen light switch halfway up the wall.  If anyone has seen any tiny, preferably white bookshelves or free-standing cabinets recently, please let me know!

I am also going to reorganize our two kitchen pantries—one we use for food and one we have always used for kitchen wedding gifts (trays, bowls, pitchers—things not used every day, but still nice to have handy). 

The bottom part of the second pantry has always been a dumping ground for gift bags, tissue, wrapping paper, holiday decorations and any other oddball object that has no home.  And it Drives. Me. Nuts.

I recently posted that I am a clean freak, but I need to revise that statement.  I am actually a neat freak, which I have determined (through various conversations with Sara this past weekend – our wild and crazy Reunion talks!) is the step before you can achieve true clean-freak status.  As a neat freak, I insist that all objects have a place to land and that they stay in that place unless being used at that time.  I also enjoy (maybe too much) recycling, donating or (last resort) throwing out things on a regular basis that we don’t use.  Will and I have an ongoing “Goodwill” pile accumulating in our garage that he surveys each night when he gets home from work to make sure I am not giving away anything that he truly still wants (the rule is I have to wait at least one week before taking anything to Goodwill.  So far, so good).  While I would love for all of my decluttered space to actually be clean too, I am still a work-in-progress on that front.

Organizing, decluttering, categorizing and (to a lesser extent) cleaning relaxes me and makes me feel like I have some control over my life (or at least my house) when the truth is both are completely overrun by my loveable toddlers. 

But, at least they are learning the tools of the trade: