We've done well

I haven't blogged because there hasn't been time. Starting last weekend I've been in full on de-cluttering and re-organizing mode. Its consumed my every waking moment, pretty much. The changes have been GREAT.

Although my friend April reminded me, I did NOT take before and after shots because I was too focused on just getting started. Jason and I went through our clothes on Saturday and each of gave away 3 black garbage bags of clothes to Freecycle. It was a massive purge. We had to look at some hard truths and sort accordingly. But our closets are amazingly empty, our floors clear. Its awesome.

After getting that done, I started with our two bookshelves in the living room that have been a catch all since we moved here. We sold 28 movies that we no longer watched. Moved the rest that we thought we might want to watch later or are nicer boxed sets to plastic bins for garage storage. I have stacks and stacks of books that I weeded out. Some were grabbed by family. I went through all the children's books and took out the damaged ones, or ones that I thought were dull. Then I organized them all. Lovely.

Yesterday while the kids were in school I went to Walmart and got two 5x8 rugs. One for our area in front of the TV, and one for the toy area that I created. Everything has been moved around and I think once the other stuff finds its place it'll be awesome. Already Elsa adores the play area and happily plays by herself for quite a long time. Its not even been a whole day, but I can see that my hopes that giving a whole rug just to toys would encourage toys to stay there and not migrate to the rest of the house are holding true. I hope it stays that way!

There is still much to be done, namely the kid's room, which will be a serious headache. However, J and I plan on doing it while they are gone with my Mom at Aunt Daralyn's house this weekend and won't be around to complain about what is being kept or tossed :)

Sorry, I'm sure that my ramblings about my home improvement are not nearly as entertaining as I think they are!

So I will give you a picture that I think is quite entertaining. I present... Elsa's first hairstyle.

Can you see it? Its quite tiny.


This side shot shows it better


It was the tiniest ponytail ever, but it held all day!

Well, that's all for now. Back to trying to put some order into the chaos that I created when trying to make order.

EDIT:

I forgot to put in these two videos I took over the last couple days.

First, one of Ethan and Gwen being silly


And Elly crawling