Just a lil' post with a few pics to show off the proof of our blood, sweat and tears over the 2 weeks of our summer 2010 declutter event. I'd like to say I'm pleased with the resulst, but the sad fact is it looks like we hardly touched the house. It still feels overrun with toys, clothes and paperwork :( We probably needed like 2 mos instead of 2 weeks! But, Kev the eternal optimist assures me (the eternal pessimist) that we did good and it's better than it was and we should be proud. Not so sure about that, but I love the guy so I'll partially agree :) Anyway....above is our kitchen...probably the cleanest it's been since we moved into our house 8+ years ago. I decluttered the counters and went as far as to get down on my hands and knees to scrub the floor with a toothbrush. Now that is something I haven't had time to do since I had Dylan! It felt good to possibly be able to eat off the floor! :) As you can see Ash was excited about the cleanliness of our kitchen too...or maybe she just wanted her milk out of the locked fridge! :)
I don't remember if I ever showed off our new dining room table! Is it not the most beautiful piece of furniture!? I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! It's nice and tall (counter height) and my fav. dark wood and seats 8 and is just pure beauty (not that the 30 year old hand-me-down dog chewed one we owned before wasn't the cat's meow)...but this one is just slightly more awesome! And I love the simplicity of our dining room now. Just some artwork and my cuties on the wall! That's all I need to eat in peace! :)
I finally hung all 4 (hand/feet) wall plates in the kitchen (made by my sweet kiddos). I love them! I'm definitely thinking I need a window treatment though...and to repaint my kitchen! It needs some color!
Proof of our now clean (usually messy) tupperware cupboard, silverware drawer and cup cupboard! Not as clutter-free as Nina tried to make it when she visited in April, but it's not too shabby either! :)
I should have just made the above pic simply a pic of our junk drawer (far left)...check it out...it's sooo organized now. I should have taken a before pic of some of this stuff, but I was honestly too embarrassed...we could hardly open this drawer cuz it was so crammed full of pencils and pens and junk and we had food falling out of our terribly small pantry.
Our "keep on truckin" lil' old 13 year old fridge. It's been a trooper and this is probably the cleanest it's been in 8 years too! It's hard to keep a clean fridge with kids who love to spill and hate to clean up! :)
This is probably one of our best "clean-up" solutions! A bigger garbage can...and one that slides out! I love it! If you know our home you know we have a lot of trash with 6 people living here...and we were living off a small office supply garbage can (which my mom has hated when she visits...she has not hidden her opinion on that!)...anyway...this is the biggest we could fit in this small space, but it's been a ton better for our overflowing trash problem! This might very well be a gift for Nina too! :) You're welcome, Mom! :)
Ok...here's a few "before and after pics". Our spice/sprinkle cabinet (yes, we have A LOT of sprinkles!)...a terrible mess....too much junk.....
So, we invested in a tiered spice rack....love it! Kev even alphabetized it all (we'll see how long that lasts!) :)
And I love this idea....if you ever need more storage and have a small house (with lots of kids and stuff!) like us...use these over-the-door hangers for EVERYTHING! We already have them on all the doors for shoes and gloves/scarves, etc....but this time we used them for school supplies (just nailed it the wall)....so the kids could get stuff out easily....love it and it left us with a much less-cluttered coat closet with also doubles as the kids' craft supply closet!
The kiddos playing with all the Little People stuff that we've had in storage for probably 8 years. It was like Christmas in July for them! :) We put a new shelf up in the "cat room" in the basement just for them to store all this. Did I mention we have every Little People toy imaginable...we went a little crazy when Hailey was 1 and 2 years old! :)
In the midst of our declutter, Hailey had 4 double headers! CRAZY!
We thought this would be her last game, but turns out she had 1 more tournament game. Now the season is over...it was a great chance for her to try a new sport...but not sure it compares to ballet?? Her team and coaches were great though. Go Storm!
The only thing Dylan wanted to do on his first weekend home after our cleaning escapade was to find everything with a road on it and put it all together. You know our boy and his cars and roads!
Kev going through our mounds of cookbooks! We are vowing this coming fall to try one new thing a week in one of our cookbooks or cooking magazines! There is tons of yummy stuff in there! And, yes, the man loves his Crepes!
The kitchen stuff we got rid of. This wasn't actually that tough. There have been a couple boxes of things that we got for our wedding 13 years ago and never really even used. Those went (or are going) to Goodwill! It left us with a little more cabinet space, which is nice!
Some of the 20-30 bags of stuff we gave away to our local crisis pregnancy center, goodwill, backstreet missions, etc. Kev made a trip to one of these places almost every day of our declutter You'd think our house would be empty after giving away that many clothes and toys, but no siree bob...we are still a cluttered mess in Steg-land! :(
Our messy corner by the fridge. For as long as I can remember we have wanted a pantry here. We were promised one when we purchased our house, but the salesman messed up and was fired so we didn't get that promised (much-needed) pantry. And we never took the time/money to order one. Anyway...so this is not normally how messy it looks, but it goes to show that the small bookshelf we had here was not suitable for all our cookbooks and mainly for all my cake-decorating books....this mess coincidentally occurred when I was looking for a recipe during our declutter (all these books fell on me)...lovely!
This is our "new" space! Don't you just love this new chrome shelf?! I do! It's perfect and it got some of my bigger appliances off my counter.
A lil' look into the small amount of work we did upstairs...our hallway (kids') closet/linen/medicine closet is always a mess...it's really hard to keep it clean since the kids are in charge of it mostly...
But, I was proud of my all-day clean out of it....
and even more proud of Kev's awesome idea...to hang another over-the-door hanger behind our closet door in our master bath....to put all extra bath supplies in...love it and it totally cleared out our linen closet! And you never see this cuz it's always behind our open closet door (which is closed in this picture)
We said goodbye to the crib (well, sorta...it's still not out of the house as we haven't had time to post it on Craiglist)...but we moved it out of the nursery and moved Dylan's new bunk bed to the perfect new spot...and moved Ash into her new bottom bunk in Shelby's room. Now it's a shared room. Ash has done great in there and is sleeping like a charm. We are very, very lucky! But, it was sorta sad to say goodbye to our Ragazzi crib that we loved so much and picked out just for our 1st baby over 10 years ago. Even after 10 years and 4 kids it looks brand new. I hope we can sell it and our dresser/changing table to a nice couple expecting a baby. We sold Shelby's old furniture to a wonderful lady who had a little girl turning 2. I loved knowing it was going to a sweet little girl who would love it like we did. We also sold the ol' organ! Good riddens and now Nina can have more space in her basement room!
Here's proof or our 2 days of basement declutter/clothes-sorting...what a chore...a very taxing (and emotional) of a chore for me (and Kev)...
Even after 2 days of decluttering and giving away 20 bags of clothes...we were still left with all this....
And I'm sorta embarrassed to show this off...our master closet...it's the catch-all for...well...everything! I cannot let it get this bad again so I am posting this to remind me! A walk-in closet is really meant to be what it says "walk-in"...and thankfully now it is. This doesn't show off how it really will look since Kev just hung a new shelf in here this week and now I can actually refold all the towels and his t-shirts....but this pic was proof that we actually have a closet floor (haha!) :)
Anyway...so that was that....about 9 days of decluttering (minus many hours due to softball games and running kids here and there)...and we probably only crossed a few things off our list of 20, but like so many of our dear friends say "it's better than it was!" :) I guess that's true and I need to stop being so pessimistic! But, it does go to show that we need to keep doing this kind of thing and make it an annual event or even biannual. And I need to be better about not letting things pile up. This is so hard to do when you are a very busy mom of 4 and you spend so much time immersed in your kids' lives. I'd much rather have happy, smart, well-rounded kids than a spic-n-span house any day. But, I must say...having both happy/smart kids and a clean house for a brief moment is nice too! :)
(Special thanks again to Nina and Poppy Stegs who took such wonderful and amazing care of all 4 kiddos for those almost-two weeks...we truly could not have done this w/o their love and support and generosity...if you don't know them and love them like we do, you should...they are two of the most amazing people you will ever meet and we owe them immensely!)
