New Home Cleaning & Organizing Plans

Confession: I am a pathological procrastinator when it comes to BIG jobs. I put them on a list to do and maybe get them half done and then just stop and move on to something else (maybe it's ADD...who knows?), but one thing that I'm ALWAYS doing this with is decluttering our home. I'm always SO annoyed at the clutter we have in the house and how it just get shoved in different areas and then just stays there. I feel I've had no time to clean it out with everything else we have going on, so I decided instead of doing our normal house cleaning on Sundays, we'd use that time to start cleaning and organizing a room at a time. 

I've actually felt really good with what I've gotten done so far. I've already finished the Pantry (other than the boxes of kids papers from school we want to keep), Kitchen, Mud Room, Dining Room, Main Bath, and Activity Closet and I'm LOVING how the house is turning out. I have also been sneakily cleaning out Cara's hoarder piles in her room while the girls are in school and I've got more time on my break to use up. 

I've really liked finding new things to help us keep things cleaned up. I found, and ended up getting, some new Mud Room baskets to control all the papers that the girls bring home from school that always end up on the counter and that's been SO nice (such an easy but big change):

They are so pretty!

We also changed out our dining light, because the Death Star one was driving me nuts (we moved that to the front/play room for the kids to enjoy, because I'm all about repurposing rather than wasting/throwing away, if possible) 

I also decided I wanted new bar stools and dining chairs, because our old ones are just SO dirty and I can't find a good way to clean them. That was MUCH more difficult than I anticipated, but eventually I found bar stools on Amazon (well I found 2 sets, one turned out to be not the right color and would've driven me nuts, and apparently I accidentally ordered twice as many as I needed. Returning those was FUN. Thank goodness Amazon offers to do a pick up return service through UPS) 

This coloring is just TOO different
It would've driven me nuts

All the returns we had to have done

I made sure to leave thank you gifts to the
UPS drivers that had to grab the boxes

I also found some dining chairs at Ashley Furniture that are almost perfect in color (they are kind boring, but we can't have fancy ones with such young kids that are still very messy)

Darker, but much better options!

I think one of my other favorite updates is the new sheet organizers I got. We were putting our sheets in BIG bags (they kind of were the same idea as the big bags bedding sets come in at the home stores), but those turned out to be too big and the sheets would just flop around. They weren't as effective as I had wanted. The new ones aren't as big and will help us store them in a much cleaner way and are so aesthetically pleasing

The activity closet got a major makeover (I'm proud of how it turned out...this one is my monster and usually de-motivates me once I get to it)

Before

After

Overall, it's been fun to get things done. I've got a long ways to go still (kids toys, books, games, and rooms are always HUGE ones), but I've made such amazing progress so far I'm excited to see it all when I'm done.