New Year Cleaning & Organizing

My Happy House {one of my favorite cleaning and organization blogs} is hosting a New Year Challenge to get people organized and clean. She has hosted a couple of these sorts of challenges in the past but this was the first one I decided to join in on.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not the best at cleaning or organizing. Yet another one of my New Year resolutions is to stay more on top of cleaning, and most of all GET ORGANIZED! I figured the New Year Challenge would be a great way to kick off this resolution.

The first weekly challenge was to organize and clean the bedroom. I just realized now as I was typing this that she actually said "bedroomS"...as in plural. I only got around to doing the master bedroom though. The guest bedroom will have to wait for another day!

Here's the list of tasks she gave us and how I did {green means accomplished, red means not accomplished}:

Closet & Drawer Systems

• Empty
• Clean Shelves & Drawers with all purpose cleaner
• Sort Clothing- discard any unwanted items, my target number is 10-15
• Put clothing back- I organize my hanging shirts by sleeve length, then by color. Pants go by color. Skirts, suits and athletic pants go in the bottom right hand side. Shirts in drawers get rolled as opposed to folded- fits much better that way! Sweaters are folded and place on the above shelves, again by color.

Emptied out drawer

All tidy and put back in the drawer...rolling the clothes really does make a difference!


Closet Before...cluttered mess!


Closet After...ahh organized and neat.


I made these hangers to divide different types of clothing.


My shoe area looked like a tornado passed through it before. Now it's muuuuuuch better!

Bed

• Remove all bedding and launder
• Remove everything under the bed- sort, giveaway pile, organize {we don't have anything under the bed}
  
• Slide bed over and vacuum underneath
• Dust & clean fan and or light fixture
• Dust entire bed frame
• Move bed back
• Replace under bed items...or not if they found their way to the garbage!

Room- Clean from top to bottom (dust falls...)

• Nightstands & Shelves- dust, organize, purge- keep them simple- treat yourself with a vase of fresh flowers!
• Clean windows- including sills, frame, edges, etc.
• Vacuum

The top of this dresser is a clutter magnet in our house. Now it's cleared off and sparkling!

All in all, I wish I had been able to accomplish everything but we had dinner plans yesterday evening so I was only able to get this far. I definitely plan on finishing what I started though over the rest of this long weekend.

The best part of it all was how I was able to go through and get rid of SOOOOOO much stuff. I'm terrible about purging my closets and drawers with any regularity because I get attached to things. But in this case I was just on a roll and I kept tossing into the trash or "give away" pile. I ended up with 5 bags of just MY stuff to give away...and that doesn't even account for the trashed stuff. AWESOME! So much more room now.

TONS of stuff to give away. Purging feels great!

Clutter-Free is the Way To Be

Today I set about to clean off my dirty, makeup-caked bathroom counters...this is one job that I tend to neglect. I'm pretty decent about remembering to wipe it down with a Clorox wipe every now and again but it still needs a deep clean once in a while.

{This is a side note from the point of this post but my tip for really scrubbing off all that caked on mess is to spray whatever bathroom cleaner you use all over the counter and sink. Then wet a scrub brush and go to town scrubbing! It really gets all the grime up! Then take a damp sponge and wipe up all the crap that you scrubbed up with the brush. Rinse and keep wiping down until your bathroom counters are SPARKLING!}

So I started clearing off all the CLUTTER that had accumulated on the counter...hair products, ponytail holders, clips, toothpaste, deodorant, lip gloss, etc. Once the counter was completely cleared off I was shocked when I realized how much more RELAXED I felt looking at an empty counter top.

Right then and there I decided to find a home for all the clutter. Because this was a last minute and unexpected decision, I didn't get any "before" photos of my counter...but just trust me, it was pretty bad!

In the end I only left necessities and pretty things (like perfume bottles) on it. And it looked SO much better:



It's amazing how a little change like this can make me feel so much better! Clutter-free is the way to be and I hope to continue with my de-cluttering in all the areas of my house.

Columbus Day To-Do List {ROUNDUP}

Wow!! This whole accountability thing really works! I got a ton of stuff done today. List items in green were accomplished, red were not accomplished.

Columbus Day To-Do List {ROUNDUP}:

-Do dishes and put away
-Wipe down countertops and sink
-Clean out fridge and wipe down (it's been a while) -- Only halfway did this one. Cleaned out old food and such but didn't get a chance to wipe it down.
-Sweep all floors (kitchen, living room, bathrooms)
-Mop all floors (kitchen, living room, bathrooms)
-Pick up bedroom clutter and put away
-Vacuum all carpet and rugs (kitchen, living room & bedroom)
-Do Laundry (wash, dry, fold & put away)
-Paint toe nails (they need it badly!!)
-Grocery shop -- Ran out of time for this but that's okay. It wont hurt me to have to eat out of my pantry for a day or two til I can make it.
-Work out at the gym for 1 hour -- I did a Body Pump class. My arm muscles are quivering as I type this.
-Mow lawn (it's been raining all weekend so I don't think the grass is going to dry out enough for me to get this one done but we will see!) -- The grass never dried out enough.

Here are some photos for your enjoyment. I should probably be embarrassed by some of these but I'm just keepin' it real here, people!

Before {look familiar?}

After

Before...embarrassing! {Excuse the lazy dog}

After...so zen. And the dog still hasn't moved...ha!



Before...holy clutter, Batman!


After

I hate folding laundry...but I did it. Go me!

Not my best paint job ever but I was in a hurry to get to the other items on the list! {I just realized that my white skin and the dark toenails almost look like something out of a horror movie...lovely.}

I just have to share this comment that was left on my original to-do list post. It was from "anonymous" so whoever you are, thanks for the laugh!

Anonymous said...

Cleaning lady $60
Yard guy $25
Pedicure $30

Having all day to work out and stop at the grocery on the way home...priceless.

Columbus Day To-Do List

I have today off for Columbus Day...YAY! But unfortunately I have a LONG to do list since I've been slacking on housework lately. To keep myself accountable I'm going to post my list here and post at the end of the day how much I accomplished. This should be interesting!

Columbus Day To-Do List:
-Do dishes and put away
-Wipe down countertops and sink
-Clean out fridge and wipe down (it's been a while)
-Sweep all floors (kitchen, living room, bathrooms)
-Mop all floors (kitchen, living room, bathrooms)
-Pick up bedroom clutter and put away
-Vacuum all carpet and rugs (kitchen, living room & bedroom)
-Do Laundry (wash, dry, fold & put away)
-Paint toe nails (they need it badly!!)
-Grocery shop
-Work out at the gym for 1 hour
-Mow lawn (it's been raining all weekend so I don't think the grass is going to dry out enough for me to get this one done but we will see!)

See what I mean about it being a long list?? I seriously doubt I'll be able to get all of this done but at least I will have this accountability to get most of it done! We shall see...time to get to work!

Turning Over a New...Sponge?

Alright look, I'm not the best person in the world when it comes to keeping house. It's not that I don't like a clean house, it's just that I'm really good at finding other things to do besides cleaning. Another problem I have is that I tend to give excuses for being lazy on certain days (I had a hard day at work or I'm not feeling well) and then things start to pile up on me. By the time I finally get "in the mood" to clean the simplest tasks are way worse because I've let it get out of hand.

You know how I mentioned in my post this morning that I needed to tackle a pile of dirty dishes today? Well...

Before...gasp!

...I wasn't exaggerating. A whole lot of dishes that had piled up over the past couple days and a whole lot of laziness. Look I'm putting myself out there by posting this so don't hold it against me!

The point of all this is to say, I'm going to make a conscious effort to maintain housework, even during the week. My starting goal is just to spend 15 minutes before I go to bed each evening to either do dishes, sweep/mop the floors, clean the toilets, vacuum the rugs, WHATEVER needs doing. We'll see how it goes but I promise to give it my best effort!

And just to redeem myself, I must post a picture of the "after" of my kitchen so that you don't think I'm a total slob.

After...ahhh so much better!