Organization is not my strong point! And it's funny because anyone who's ever worked with me, or gone to school with me would think the exact opposite. When I was in college I had a binder for every class, and the binders were color coded to the most prominent color of the textbook. When I work outside the home I am one of the most organized employees you can get. So why I can't get that to translate to my own home I'll never know. When Steven and I first got married we had a two bedroom, two bathroom condo. It was 5 rooms total and I could clean it top to bottom in 2 hours. We lived there for the first 5 years we were married, even brought Brianna and Jonah home there. When we built this house I went from 5 rooms to care for to 12 rooms. I was in my last semester of college, which meant student teaching and in the middle of it, we found out we were pregnant with Micah! To say I was overwhelmed is an understatement! Not too long after Micah was born I started my first really bad battle with depression. And by the time he was a year old I could barely function. My housekeeping skills absolutely fell apart! And it's taken me forever it feels like to get it back! A few months after Eli was born my mom looked at me and said "It feels like you've found your stride!" and I feel like she's right! Baby #3 knocked me flat, but it feels like baby #4 has brought me back. I feel like I'm in control again. Now it's time to get my home back under control.
Our house is a two story (actually a three story if you count the basement). We share the main floor with my mom and then all of our bedrooms and bathrooms are upstairs. As is the laundry room. One of the places that gets the most cluttered is the stairs. Growing up I always remember having stair baskets. And we had one too, but it seemed like with 5+ people with stuff that ends up all over the place all day long the basket quickly overflowed. And the kids never thought it was their job to do anything about it. My mom and I must have been on the same brainwave because we ended up pinning the same pin on Pinterest for crap baskets! (I just love the name! And we end up with so much crap around the house!)
Well, one day she showed up with 5 baskets. One for each of the kids and one for Steven and I. This is what our stairs look like now.
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| Our crap baskets, labeled for each of us. |
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| The contents of Brianna's basket: 1 pair of tennis shoes, 1 pair of boots, 1 library book |
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| The second set of steps leading to the upstairs hallway, and our vintage stairs basket. |
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| I kept this one to put things in that make their way upstairs that belong |
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| The view looking down the stairs. |
The other place in the house that tends to get uncontrolable very quickly is the hallway and linen closet. We have one solitary linen closet. That's it! And oh how I hate our linen closet! It's totally builders' grade, nothing special, not functional.
One of my goals is to make this closet work for us. Of course Pinterest holds lots of inspiration like this:
And like this:
And one of my goals is definitely to keep the hallway free and clear like this:
For some reason the hallway always tends to get cluttered. And then toes get broken and curse words get thrown around. And heaven forbid we ever had a fire! A cluttered hallway could be deadly! Definitely an area to focus on this year. Plus, walking out of our room and seeing this in the morning, it kind of starts the day off peacefully!
Conquering the clutter...it takes awhile but I finally feel like we're on the path to getting there. One room/area at a time!
2 comments:
I so need to declutter. It seems like we have so much STUFF!
Kari is was so fun to watch the transformation of the hallway. Since I hardly ever come up to the thrid floor it was fun to see it all finished.
Now we start on your laundry room, giving you places to put things so it will stay organized for you :-)
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