Busy day!

The week ended up getting pretty busy and as you have seen, I wasn't able to post as often as I was hoping.  I've been waiting to post a few different things so I'm hoping to have time to do it all today.  Yep, that's right.  I'm hoping to post about three different posts in one day.  Ha!  I'm going to start with the one that I've been waiting for... my Thoroughly Clean post from weeks ago.  Last time I wrote, it was about the in door flood we had that destroyed our office area dry wall.  Since then, we have had the plumber come fix the leak (yay!
) and then scrubbed the entire top floor and most of the main level.  It looked great!  The top floor has stayed put together, overall.  At least our bedroom has (until right this moment when Sweet T has decided to build a fort, complete with every pillow, book, and toy from both his room and mine).  I have also made a huge effort to keep the main level picked up.  J has noticed my hard work and I think that my efforts have helped him since his job situation has been crazy. 

I also mentioned last time that watching Hoarders on Netflix has been a huge motivation for me to get rid of things.  We have finished the first season and while I'm not obsessive over getting the clutter out, I'm still on this "get organized" kick!  I have a difficult time figuring out where to put things.  I know everything is supposed to have a home, but where is that home when we have a townhouse with little storage space and four people with tons of stuff?  Another organization stumbling block is the fact that it's expensive!  Those adorable baskets that make things look clean and put together are shockingly expensive!  Between our tight budget and our lack of space, I've really struggled to figure out how to get organized.  I'm starting to get things worked out, though.  We have two walk in closets in our master bedroom.  I decided it was a good decision to just spend the money and get some shelves put in one of them (mine) so that we can use that extra space to store things like future birthday and Christmas presents.  My wonderful sister helped me install them (with pink tools none the less).  Here is a picture of the finished shelves in my closet:

I cannot tell you how excited I am about these!!!  After installing them, I walked around the house looking for baskets or buckets that I could use to keep things in on these shelves, and I actually found some wonderful things that I could use.  I found two very large baskets in the basement.  They are actually laundry baskets, but they work!  I found a few blue baskets that I bought on clearance several years ago, too.  They don't match, but they work and I already own them!  Then for my birthday, my grandma, parents, and in-laws gave me money.  I used some of that to put toward more little baskets that match better (two large cream colored to go next to the large brown, and then three smaller ones to go on a separate shelf, two cream and one brown for the middle).  I still have the blue ones that don't look great, but I just can't justify buying more when I already have some that work.  No one sees my closet anyway. 

In my kitchen, we have two smaller cabinets that I can't reach over the microwave.  They are hard to open and like I said, I can't reach them.  We didn't really use them for much, just stuff that we decided we didn't need to keep.  So now, those cabinets are home to small electronics that we rarely use (think waffle maker, larger crock pot, stuff like that).  It gave us a lot more room in our island, which is where we keep most of our small electronics, so we were able to move some things down there that used to sit on the counter (toaster, kitchen aid).  It's not much, but with the limited counter space we have, it made a pretty big difference.

I have found a ton of ideas on Pinterest that would work in our home.  I'm hoping to organize the home a little bit at a time (because we can't afford to do it all at once :)) and hopefully have this place put together soon.  I'll keep blogging about the things we do that help us out.  I'm excited to see the changes already.  Even just starting the process has motivated me and made me really excited to get it all done.  It really does make our home feel more peaceful and a place where we can just relax.  It's kinda nice :)