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!!