Gettin' Organized

Have you noticed I am not blogging much? Actually I have barely been on the computer at all. I needed a brain break from all things teaching. Instead I have been reorganizing my house. I know, doesn't sound like a relaxing summer but it was sorely needed and it actually makes me feel good.

You see, I am one of those people who really feel unsettled in a messy environment. I mean literally, I feel agitated. Then, a sense of calm comes over me when I walk in an area and it is clean and organized. Anyone with me or are you saying FREAK in your head? I often get comments that my classroom is kept very tidy and organized and the secret is I need it to be to function.

When I lived alone and even early on in our marriage my house was kept the same way. Everything had a home and it always got back there. There is no such thing as a junk drawer and piles were the enemy.

I would say things started to go downhill when I went back to work 6 years ago. My husband and two sons do not have my clean gene. In fact, they subscribe more to the hoarder lifestyle. And as I let my focus get drawn back into teaching, blogging, and TpT I started losing the battle.

After a particularly stressful year, I decided I need to re-evaluate how I was spending my time. I realized that the home chaos was really getting to me and that this was something I could do something about.

One of the problems is that we didn't have a good home for some items so they just got thrown into our extra bedroom closet. Messy and hard to find things.
Project #1: Extra Bedroom
Solution: I bought shelving and we turned this closet into storage since we never hang clothes in it anyway. Sorry for the poor quality phone pics.

Unfortunately I didn't take before pictures and I am not quite done filling the shelves but it feels good to have a place I CAN put things in an organized way.

Project # 2 THE PANTRY
The pantry was getting completely out of control so I bought 24 baskets at the Dollar Tree and sorted everything into like items. I also purged a lot. It was scary how many things were actually expired.

before

after

I ordered some chalkboard vinyl and plan to cut some cute labels with my Silhouette.

Project #3 The YARD
We have been terribly neglecting our pruning. Our yard looks like a jungle. Here is what we cut down on Sunday and we still are only about a third of the way done!

The boys and I are tackling their rooms today. Time for a MAJOR PURGE!  I am scared at what I might find. :-)