Perfectly Imperfect

I was flipping through FB or Pinterest… can’t remember which of my two favorite time-suckers I was on, but I saw a neat link about organizing.  The title was enough to catch my attention:  The Complete Guide to Imperfect Homemaking.  It was PERFECT, no pun intended.  I’ve seen that several of my friends have written about it, including Rebecca!

While the title caught my attention, the content hooked me!  The current series is about organizing the home.  I have known my entry way and office were in dire need of organization and straightening but I have been less than inspired.  Our problem was that the shelves we used for the boys’ shoes was viewed as more of a suggestion than a demand. And once we entered our house we threw everything in our hands on the couch. When we returned from Ansbach last Saturday (I am amazed that it has already been a week since then… time is FLYING, I tell you!) I grabbed everything from the car and dumped it on the couch.  The next day when I saw this link about organizing your home I skipped right on to Day 2!   I decided that while I was in the mood to organize a closet I’d organize two, making room for me to place the items I normally dump on the couch: namely the diaper bag, my market bag, and my ShootSac.

I didn’t take “before” pictures because these areas were that bad… so bad that I was unwilling to let you know just how bad it was.  But I have friends and neighbors who have had to endure my messy stairwell and the overrun couch.  I spent a few days running around getting the goodies necessary to complete the makeover and I believe I’ve almost taken all the pictures I need to.  Oh!  Except for the new carpet!  I got a new carpet for the living room.  The original one was spotted like a Dalmatian thanks to a variety of reasons, but I’ll give you four off the top of my head:  H, C, B, & P.

I’ll list all that I did and then show you the results:

Step 1.  I wrote out what I wanted to accomplish with the redo:

a) find a place for diaper bag and market basket;
b) find a place for the boys’ bookbags, which they use every Tuesday for PWOC;
c) combine the two coat closets into one, removing the coats we don’t use very often;
d) get two small tubs to organize the adult sized gloves;
e) sweep stairwell;
f) pick up paint supplies and paint my level of the stair well;
g) purchase and apply wall stickers to stair well wall;
h) find a new way to store boys’ shoes that will require them to KEEP THEM OFF THE FLOOR!;
i) set up some type of table for decorations in the stair well;
j) buy frames at the Thrift Store and make some cute fall decorations out of them.

Now that I write all of that out, I can see why I was so tired Friday and Saturday… I took a nap both of those days!  And on top of all that was Hayden getting sick and homeschooling a full load.  Yep.  I had a good excuse to be tired!

Step 2.

I had to shop at several stores to round up all the things I needed, and a couple of the stores more than once.  The Thrift Store is only open on Tuesdays and Thursdays and every other Saturday, so I had to plan that out.  Tuesday was PWOC and Hayden ended up pretty sick.  Wednesday he ended up at the doctor’s office.  Thursday was the big day: Soldiers who live in housing were given the day off to work around the house.  That couldn’t have come at a better time!  Matt raked and cleaned the basement while I worked on the inside.  I am so stinking happy with the results.  And we’ve kept the couch cleaned of all clutter for the past 2 days!  I am quite pleased with that!

A clean couch! This is the first thing you see when you walk in my house and it is usually covered in stuff. (Don't worry, guests... you can put your stuff there when you visit. I just want MY stuff to have a permanent place tucked away rather than rudely glaring at all my visitors!)

The top of the closet has the two small "gloves" buckets and the coat rack is filled with scarves.

The top shelf has my market bag and the diaper bag; a permanent place for two items that used to reside on that couch! The bottom row is a space made just for the boys' book bags.

One closet to the right is where we now keep all the coats.

And the final image for my couch/closet transformation is under the coats: The top shelf has a bucket for AWANA books/bags/Bibles and my ShootSac. The bottom shelf is for outgrown shoes (also known as the shoe store for younger brothers who outgrow shoes... they can go there to find a pair of shoes that fit them).

And finally… quite possibly my favorite transformation yet of the bunch:

The stairwell!!