14 Week Challenge: Week #4 Launch Pad & Week #5 Living Room

We don't have a launch pad so I skipped this one.  Anything that would go on a launch pad goes upstairs in the "office".  We do have an issue with stuff that needs to go up there getting piled up on the stairs so I got these little baskets from Target to keep on the stairs to contain all the crap.  One is for Jordyn and the other is for me.





Our living room is pretty small so there wasn't much to do in here.  Like I said in my last post, we are going to do be shampooing the rug and furniture once it warms back up then Scotch Guarding the rug and getting pet covers for the sofa and chairs.

I spent all of 20 minutes in here and I forgot to take a before picture but here is the after picture.





We keep a little diaper station and all of Jordyn's little toys in the entertainment center so I cleaned it all up and refilled the diapers and wipes.  The two cabinets by the fire place hold our cook books and photo albums but since we just got those they didn't need to be organized.

14 Week Challenge: Week #8 Kids Closet

Our kids will be sharing a room while we live here so they got the larger room with the larger closet.

We just moved Jordyn into this room so the closet needs to basically be completely emptied and start over.








There was still some stuff from the guest room/office closet that was in here so I cleared all that out first then dealt with all the clothes.  She hit a growth spurt recently so a lot of what was in her closet didn't fit anymore.  I keep a laundry basket in the closet for things that don't fit and it was about full plus everything that was hanging up that didnt fit so we ended up with a full 30 gallon trash bag of clothes.

They are sharing the dresser too so I got both sides organized then started on the hanging stuff.  Jordyn's clothes are up on the top rack and little dude's will go on the lower rack.  He doesnt have much yet plus I havent washed any of it yet so I just left it all where it was but I got Jordyn's organized and hung.

And I'm done and we have plenty of extra storage for down the road!

Sneaky Monkey!

14 Week Challenge: #6 Master Bedroom & Week #7 Master Closet

I knew that I would destroy our bedroom while I was working on our closet so I decided to start in there then do the bedroom last.  The closet was a disaster.










We had stuff piled on the floor, shoes crammed on shelves, shirts to wear again before washing piled on a shelf, big mess.

We both went through all our clothes and got rid of a fair amount.  I was a little more limited on what I could get rid of since I'm pregnant and nothing really fits at the moment.  I'm also not sure what size I will be back down to after he's born and I'm able to start losing the baby weight so I've got things like the exact same jeans in like 4 different sizes.  Since he is our last baby, I'll be able to get rid of my maternity clothes and my larger size clothes once he is born but we made some good progress.  I got a shoe rack and we had enough room to put up some hooks for Beau's shirts he wants to wear again and his hats.

We also got some canvas bins from Walmart (we got these to fit in Jordyn's new cube storage but they were too big) to contain some of the little stuff that was floating around.


After I finished the closet, I started in the destroyed bedroom.  Pardon our crazy wallpaper.  The people we bought the house from didn't prep the wall before they installed it so when we tried to get it off, this is what we got.  Once the weather warms back up we are going to figure out how to deal with it (or hire someone to do it) so we can paint it the same grey as the living room.






I got all the clothes off the bed, washed all of the bedding, re organized the dresser and the chest at the end of the bed.  The dresser under the TV is going away soon and we will have a floating shelf under the TV.  We don't use it in here and the dog beds need some more room.  The one by the window is almost over the air vent and the dog lays against the curtains so they always stink.

Here is the (almost) finished product.






The duvet cover and sheets were still in the wash but everything was put away.

Next the bathrooms and laundry room!

We Are Having a Little...

Jordyn has an announcement!!

14 Week Challenge: Week #3 Dining Room

As of right now, we don't have much in our dining room except our table so this one didn't take me more than about 2 hours to do.  I scrubbed the table completely, washed Jordyn's high chair and place mat and mopped the floors.  The seats of the chairs are microfiber and a little dirty but we are going to wait until the weather warms up a little to shampoo everything (rugs, sofa, chairs, carpet, etc) because the shampooer is a pain in the butt to deal with so I would rather do it all at once.

Pardon the horrible walls...  This wall had 3 frame things nailed on that pulled off a bunch of the paint when I tried to remove them.  And we also discovered that there was some kind of patch (we think for the laundry room plumbing) that was not primed before it was painted over so the paint just started coming off in sheets.   We are going to be doing the walls the same as the living room as soon as its warm enough to open the windows (is 23 outside right now...).

Since I finished this room so quickly, I decided to go ahead and do our cleaning closet as its right off the dinging room.  I did this closet a few months ago and we have kept it pretty organized so I just did some straightening up in here.

Next is the living room!!

14 Week Challenge: Week # 2 The Pantry

Since our pantry is on the smaller side, I've decided to do the fridge and the freezer at the same time.  Beau cleaned out the freezer a few weeks ago so other than wiping it out a little, I didn't do much on it.  The fridge was BAD.  I started at the bottom and worked my way up.  I pulled out everything we were going to keep and threw out everything else.  We had just let it get out of hand with left overs and almost empty things so it was bad.  I pulled everything out, wiped down all the shelves and scrubbed out all the drawers before I put everything back in.


The pantry wasn't nearly as bad but it was still a mess.  I got some more plastic baskets from Target and got everything organized as I put it back in.

Something I haven't really worried about while doing this challenge was surface cleaning.  We have a cleaning lady who comes once a month and deep cleans so I'm just focusing on cleaning inside or under things that she doesn't clean.

14 Week Challenge: Week #1 Kitchen

Being that I am a stay at home mom and 17 week pregnant (and if this pregnancy is anything like my last one I'm going to run out of energy in my third trimester so I'm trying to get done ASAP), I've opted to not wait until a new week starts to start on the next section.  As soon as I've finished one room, I just move right into the next one.

Week 1 of the challenge is the kitchen.  I'm glad this one was first because I've been dreading this one since I committed to doing this challenge.

I started in one cabinet and just worked my way across the kitchen.  I pulled everything out of the cabinet, wiped out the cabinet, went through all the stuff then put it all back in and organized it.  Just doing the cabinets took me 2 days.  Everything is done except for the toaster oven and the big oven which Beau is going to do later.

Its been clean for almost a week which is some kind of record for us.  We both neither seem to want to let it get dirty so we have both been much better about having it clean at the end of the night.

So far so good!  I'm terrible about remembering to take before photos so I'm going to try to be better about that as the weeks go on.

Stay tuned for next weeks!

A Bowl Full of Lemons: 2016 14 Week Challenge

Hi Everyone!
We are excited to announce that we have decided to participate in

A Bowl Full of Lemons 2016 14 Week Organization Challenge!!!
This challenge is  14 weeks with 1 "optional" week at the end.  The weeks are as follows:

2016 Home Organization Challenge Schedule

• Week 1 (1/9/16) – Kitchen
• Week 2 (1/16/16) – Pantry
• Week 3 (1/23/16) – Dining Room
• Week 4 (1/30/16) – Launch Pad
• Week 5 (2/6/16) – Living Room
• Week 6 (2/13/16) – Master Bedroom
• Week 7 (2/20/16) – Master Closet
• Week 8 (2/27/16) – Kids Closets
• Week 9 (3/5/16) – Linen Closet
• Week 10 (3/12/16) Bathrooms
• Week 11 (3/19/16) – Office
• Week 12 (3/26/16) – Playroom/Toys
• Week 13 (4/2/16) – Laundry Room
• Week 14 (4/9/16) – Garage
• Week 15 (4/16/16) – Car (Bonus Week)

Since everyone's house is different, these weeks topics are more of a guide and you can change things around a little bit as you need to.  For example, I don't think it will take me a week to do our pantry as it is pretty small, the garage is Beau's department so I changed that week to the basement instead, also our dining room is more of an extension of the kitchen then a dedicated room so there isn't much to do in there.  However I expect things like our closets and the upstairs closets to take me a lot longer so I expect it to balance out over the 14 weeks.
Toni also includes a checklist for each week of basic things to do as you go through your week to help keep you on track.  She also has a Facebook group for people to post pictures and help to hold each other accountable.

We will be posting a separate post for each week of the challenge with pictures, a breakdown of that week as well as our opinion of it.

Check out Toni's post on the 2016 challenge here with includes printouts of each week and links to the Facebook group as well!

Happy organizing!!