My Journey of Hope: Craft Room Conversion!

Hubby said the sexiest thing to me this past Saturday. He took my hand as I was about to head out of our bedroom, smiled at me and said, "How about on Sunday, we stay home from church, and..."

My Journey of Hope: The Room of DOOM - Before and After

That's right, you heard me.

Doom.

DOOM!

Tertius and Quarta's room has been the bane of my existence since they could pull thing off of the shelves (which coincidentally, preceded walking by a few months). It's messy, it's overcrowded. and it's not being used to its fullest potential in any way, shape, or form. It was less-than-helpful that our cat, Saffron, viewed Quarta as her main competition, and decided to exert her dominance by urinating on Quarta's clothes and belongings, stinking up the joint like nobody's business!

Hubby and I have been systematically chipping away at the mess; reminders throughout the day to "pick up 20 things" are met alternately with excitement, or with eye rolls and groans, but they've been making headway. Very, very slow headway. And as often as not, for all the progress they made, they'd reward themselves by pulling out half again as many toys to play with. So, I was just sick of it; the mess, the smell, the constant roller coaster ride of cleanliness,  and I needed to step in. The end result is that I spent the better part of 5 or 6 hours in there over the last two days, trying to not only tame the overwhelming mess, but also to find the source of the cat urine problem.

This was taken about two hours into cleaning, so it already looks miles better than before

This is what I found when I pulled out the rolling cart that Tertius stores some of his toys in

Quarta's dresser is to the left, with her rolling cart toy storage; the dresser in the center has extra sheets, and costumes stashed away.

In the process of cleaning, I located three sources of the urine stench - in front of Tertius' dresser, under the bunk beds, and in the closet. The room reeked, and I don't know how they could stand the smell. And there I was, without baking soda to neutralize the odour! That red bag you see in the photo above? That's most of the garbage I pulled out of their room. Not just garbage, but anything that had been peed on and was not salvageable.  I soaked an untold number of Lego pieces and Hot Wheels cars to get rid of the stench overnight. Given the number of Pokemon cards I had to toss, I think the kids both learned a valuable lesson.

I had each child help me individually, which I feel worked very well, and together, we got everything off the floor, and even from under the bed. We left it last night like this:

Hey, there's a carpet under there!

you can't see the cat urine, but it's there... but at least the mess isn't!

SOO much better!

The next step is finishing up the closet, then taking the Bissel Little Green Machine to the carpet and try to get rid of the smell.

I'll keep you posted!

My Journey of Hope: The De-Cluttering Continues!

I was at the dollar store with Secunda today, picking up flower pots for a fairy garden workshop we were doing later in the evening. While there, I had the lovely idea of finding a method of better organizing the bathroom drawer that Tertius and Quarta share. Up until now, the only measure I'd taken to tame the chaos in the drawer was to put a narrow plastic tray in there to contain the toothbrushes and toothpaste, which had become woefully inadequate. It seemed that the toothbrushes were breeding (another area that my children hoard items), the most recent trip to the dentist had yielded two new mini-tubes of paste, and the whole drawer was well past due for an overhaul.

My Journey of Hope: Day 28 of 28 - Creating (and keeping!) An Oasis Of Calm, Part Two

Okay, you've been very patient with me, so here are the photos of the front deck at this stage of completeness. I just need to update my chair, the table, and the carpet, and perhaps add some lighting. Then it will be perfect for us!

My own little flower planter! Pansies and verbena

Secunda's birthday cineraria (round pot), and Secunda's' planter full of pansies, heliotrope and verbena

My tea roses from the hobbitses' school (round pot), and Tertius' planter of pansies, heliotrope and nemesia

Our wee strawberry patch!

Enjoying breakfast on a sunny day! Our herbs are planted in the green pots hanging from the railing: lemon balm, winter savoury, cilantro, basil and oregano

My Journey of Hope: Decluttering - It's the Little Things That Count

After dropping Hubby and the hobbitses off at their respective schools, I came home to make breakfast, grab an iced coffee, and head out to run errands. And while in the kitchen, I decided to take of my Lazy Vision™ goggles, and really look at my kitchen.

And when I looked at the point of entry, this is what I saw:

My Journey of Hope: Day 14 of 28 - Before and After

Here is one of the shameful corners of my house. The really silly thing is, it's not even hidden from anyone. It's out in plain sight, but my Lazy Vision sees right past it, multiple times a day. And if I can't see it, it doesn't exist, right?

But today I am faced with an uncomfortable reality. EVERYONE can see it, and it's the first thing people see upon entering my living room. And it's gross. It makes us look like hoarders, or at the very least, crappy housekeepers. We love doing crafts, and sometimes need to pull a lot of items out to do them, but we're really bad about putting it away again. I mean REALLY bad.

My Journey of Hope: Day 8 of 28 - Before and After

Thank you, dear readers, for coming along on this journey with me! I hope you've enjoyed reading some of my reflections on this process, and to thank you, here is my latest "Before & After"!

Today's cluttered area was around the master bedroom door:

To be fair, the baby gate just showed up there today,
as we had a guest and her toddler visiting. But I haven't used my
longbow (on the left) in years. YEARS.

I knew that a great deal of it was mine, from the aforementioned longbow, to the bins of photographs for scrapbooking. But a respectable amount was also just garbage, and the same again was stuff that only Hubby could make decisions about, so guess what he has ahead of him? And to be fair, he asked me to de-clutter this particular spot, so this really is for him.

Down to a box of felt for crafts, and a bunch of paperwork for Hubby to wade through

This photo was taken about 5 minutes into the job. Really, sweeping the dust bunnies took about as long as going through my own papers!

Ahhhhh...

While there are still three things hanging around outside my bedroom, it's more manageable, cleaner, and more likely to reduce my feelings of stress. And it all got done in about 20 minutes, while listening to a TV show. See? Easy!!!

My Journey of Hope: Day 5 of 28 - Before and After

Here's something short and sweet...

As mentioned in my previous post, it took me until around 9 PM to figure out what to de-clutter, but once I decided, it took virtually no time at all!

Here's what I started with:

Messy and outdated. That's a schedule for a school Hubby hasn't taught at for three years...

and in less than 5 minutes, I ended up with:

Much better! Note how my handy-dandy label maker is at the center of all this ;)

Making my house calmer feels good!

My Journey of Hope: Day 5 of 28

Yesterday was a wash.

The school day was swallowed up in doing laundry, waiting at the medical clinic for almost two hours (at least I got some knitting done!), and dropping prescriptions at the drug store.  Adding to that, it was also early dismissal and student-directed conferences at Secunda, Tertius, and Quarta's school (very impressive report cards all around, by the way). The weather was turning from glorious sunshine to increasingly grey clouds, so by the time laundry was switched, Hubby picked up from work and papers picked up for Primus and Secunda's route, I was done. The turn in the weather always brings with it a headache of varying intensity, and yesterday's was a doozy.

Hubby was, as usual, a stellar spouse, and offered to take Secunda on the route (Primus was off on a school thing for the weekend) so that I could let my migraine meds start working. I figured it was the perfect opportunity to settle in on the couch and post about how I wasn't going to be getting any de-cluttering done (turns out I actually did de-clutter something when I first got home - my bedroom door - but that's another blog entry), and the next thing I knew, I was waking up and it was 10:30 pm! I had slept for four hours on the couch! Fell asleep with the laptop resting on my stomach, even.

Which brings us to today.

The headache was mostly gone when I woke up today, and we had beautiful sunshine again. Of course, it didn't last, and by the time we were running errands in advance of our trip to see Star Wars Episode VII at the second-run theatre (Tertius and Quarta had not yet seen it, and we promised we'd take them to the cinema for it, never mind the fact that my parents just bought it on Blu-Ray), it was in full force again, along with nausea. I took something to deal with it, and hoped I could make it through a noisy film. It was mostly gone by the time the show started, and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing it again. Then it was doing laundry, making dinner and getting the kids to bed before I could even begin to consider what I was going to de-clutter. I was washing dishes and glanced over to admire Day 3's handiwork, my kitchen counter, which has stayed surprisingly tidy. A quick look to the left showed me the next target - the side of the fridge. Since the counter area looked so nice, the stuff stuck all over the fridge stuck out like a sore thumb.

So I took care of it, and it feels even better to walk into my kitchen. I'm really liking how my home is beginning to look, and even more, I love how tidy spaces lift my mood!

So, what do you do for your house that makes you happy?

My Journey of Hope: Day 4 of 28 - Latent De-Cluttering

It's a pretty cool thing to realize in retrospect that you have begun to de-clutter without having to think about it.

Even with a horrid migraine, I still managed to de-clutter something, AND institute a new policy about school papers and homemade artwork that come into our home.

When we finally got home just after 5 PM, one of the first things I did was take down the months-old artwork that had been lovingly (excessively?) taped to my bedroom door. Now, here's the thing: I forgot to take a photo before starting because it didn't occur to me that I was actually de-cluttering! How cool is that? So, since I don't have the before photo, I can at least share the after photo with you. Here it is:

De-cluttered, but not yet cleaned.

It's beginning to feel like these small steps are starting to take hold, and I have to say, it feels good.