The Big Clean Out Project

I don't know if you have ever looked around your home, and all you have seen were messes and undone projects and things that needed doing.  I do this daily and for the last few months have been completely overwhelmed by them.  I have decided to take action, and instead of just being overwhelmed, start changing it, little by little. You will be (in the nearish future) be seeing some truly terrifying bordering/should be on an episode of hoarders "before" pictures from my home for this project.  I simply ask that you don't judge, and realize that if I can do it with my disaster zones, so can you.

When I was younger I used to love this movie (that most of you have probably never heard of) called "The Richest Cat In The World" in short it is about a talking cat, who inherits $5 million dollars and helps this boy learn to read.  The cat gets catnapped by jealous relatives who were expecting to cash in on the inheritance, in hopes of them receiving it instead.  I haven't seen it in years but one quote that stuck with me was this: "Inch by inch life is a cinch!  Yard by yard it's very, very hard!

So in that spirit, one (small inch like) step at a time, I am going to clean out my home and commit to completing, and sharing with you, 4 projects EACH MONTH.  I'm excited because these can be ANY projects you want!  If your space is more organized, than simply rearrange something.  We can each change something, even something small to make our homes better, more organized and more effective.  I'd love for you to join me in, The Big Clean Out Project!

On the last day of each month, we will be having a link up party so we can share and encourage each other!  The Big Clean Out Project 1st link party will be on August 31st, so get moving on your projects!

This month I am planning to:
1. Clean out the lower cabinets under my "bonus" counter
2. Clean out the upper cabinets above my "bonus" counter
3. Boxes from childhood in the garage
4. Kitchen Utensil Drawer (the kids have been messing with it, and it is a disaster!)

Number one and two are both in anticipation of me creating a "command center" on the extra counter I have between my kitchen and dining room.  Number three is because my parents dumped several boxes from my home into our garage a few months back, and I haven't touched them, we need the storage space in the garage so I need to at least go through them and figure out what is in them!

What projects will you do this month?  Big or small, each is a step towards a better home!

December Goal

As I reflect on my November Goals, I made progress on both, which I am so thankful for!  I not only did something new this month with my blog by vloging, but I also did some great brainstorming and have some great ideas about what is going to happen next.  I also did a bit better about getting somethings done.  It did however discover one thing that I am horrible at and DESPERATELY need to work on this month

Daily maintenance is hard for me.  I truly struggle with doing things daily.  Sure, I eat, drink, get stuff done for my kids on a daily basis, but when it comes to things I don't "HAVE" to do daily or things that I can put off, I don't bother with it.  I have been reading this great book Beautiful in God's Eyes by Elizabeth George and while not only being a great read, has been really challenging to me personally. If you are looking for a book that will challenge you as a woman of God, this is a good one.  (Side Note: This really is a great book, and if you choose to purchase it if you could please do it through the link I would greatly appreciate it as I do get a small percentage of the sale.  I would not recommend something I didn't truly enjoy.  Thanks for helping support me and my blog!)

There has not been one specific thing I can point out that led me to this thought process, but basically I have come to the conclusion that I am an extremely undisciplined person.  I don't really know where and when it happened, but over the years the lazy part of me has crept out and claimed more and more of my time.  I know that part of it is the exhaustion of not having slept a good solid night of sleep in over 2 years due to pregnancy and babies, however I have been using that as an excuse for far to long.

For the month of December I am going to start a challenge for myself personally.  It may seem dumb and many of you probably already do this, but I am going to make sure that my daily list is done every day this month.  I am sick of seeing this things undone and being too tired to do anything about it before bed.  So I am going to each day create a list of things that need to be done before bed and do them, NO EXCUSES.  Help from hubby and/or kids is allowed.  The one main thing that will be on the list every day is dishes, and the other days will vary so that I can get more done on nights that I don't work.  For example, I work 3 evenings next week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday) plus have 2 other nights with church related events (Thursday and Saturday).  So this coming week will be a great test run as it is my craziest week of the month, plus throw in holidays and traveling as well and if I can do it this month than I think I can do it all the time.

I am excited to start this challenge this month so that I can become less homemaking challenged.  What goals do you have this month?

Cheers!

Ashley

November Goals

Credit

Each month, I strive to do a few things better in my life.  I always want to do better, as a wife, mom, homemaker, worker and in each of the other hats I wear.  These are things I strive to do, and to do better.  Last month I did the 31 day challenged and I ALMOST made it.  HUGE for me.  I really loved writing each day, even though I know my posts were not the best, it was stretching and challenging and I enjoyed it.  Here are my goals for this month of November:

1. Get things done.  I will admit it, I have gotten slightly lazy about some things, part of it is pure exhaustion from my work schedule and dealing with an infant who is still waking up multiple times per night.  However the other part is me using that as an excuse and choosing to be more zombie like after the kids go to bed, or going to bed really early.

2. Blogging.  I really want to make this blog better.  I'm not sure how to do that, I'd love suggestions/feedback from my readers please email me at homemakingchallenged @gmail.com (no space).  I know I can do better and I do have some really exciting things that I want to do, I know I can be more effective as well.  Still trying to figure it all out.

I'm just sticking with two this month.  Hope you all have a great one!

Cheers!

Ashley

April Goals

This month, my goals are more simple as we will most likely have a ton going on this month.  I'm not quite ready to share our hopefully soon to be exciting news as we have a few more ducks to get in order.  However my goals are hopefully going to help us to ahead financially a little as we have loosened our belts a bit too much the last 3 months.  The largest area that we are bleeding money where we shouldn't be is in the area of food, therefore my goals this month are all food related.

This month I dare to...

... actually meal plan and tame our crazy grocery bill, which has slowly been creeping higher than it should the past few months.
... NO fast food!  We are going to attempt to not eat out at ALL this month.  The only exception will be my birthday dinner date with my hubby.
... Not drive myself crazy with finances.  This will be the hardest, for sure.

It isn't that we have been going backwards, we just need to tighten the belt a bit.  As you may (or may not as I'm sure not everyone who reads this are diehard fans) we are expecting a little bundle of joy at the end of May.  Which means we need to adjust our spending to be able to accommodate the extra mouth to feed.  We are just practicing, but this category is going to be extra hard for me being pregnant and having cravings.  Hopefully we can stick to our guns!

What will you dare to do this month?

Cheers!

Ashley

March Goals

I would like to say that I can't believe that the month of February is already gone and March is here!  It went by SOOOO fast!    In February I shared some simple goals with you all that I was going to try and succeed in this last month, lets see how I did my goals were:
...  Cook 6 meals from scratch for my family, 2 of which will be new recipes. (spaghetti doesn't count)
... Complete one creative project
... Re-organize/de-cluter one space in my home (see this challenge)


Well I am going to be VERY honest, this month got away from me, and only one of the goals was completely successful.  I was able to completely de-clutter our master bedroom.  This was a HUGE project and I am so glad that I was successful in it!  A HUGE thanks to the Organizing Junkie for putting out a challenged that helped keep me motivated and accountable!  While none of the following are excuses, I don't want you to think that I'm a TOTAL flake for only doing one of my goals this month, so here are the things that happened.

My 15 month old got pneumonia.  We had an insane week trying to keep him out of the hospital, going to the doctor everyday, working crazy hours and trying to find child care since he had to stay out of daycare the entire week.

My extended family was in town.  We ate at my parents house at least 8-10 meals (usually it is 1-2 per month)

My husband did't work the last 2.5 weeks of the month.  We have a rule, if you aren't working, you get to cook your pregnant wife who did work all day dinner.

Most of them ended up affecting my first goal.  But this is a new month and a new start with new (or repeated) goals!

Here are my NEW(ish) goals for March!

Cook 6 meals from scratch for my family

Complete one creative project

Blog at least 18 times this month

So here is to a new month, a fresh start and new goals!

Cheers!

Ashley

The Challenge Reveal

It is the end of the month, and my challenge with Organizing Junkie is at and end, and it is time for the big reveal.  To see where this room started, click here.  I am so excited to share these pictures with you, and thank you for following and encouraging me along this journey.  Without further delay here are the before and after pictures

When you first walk in our room, it used to look like this:

Now it looks like this:

My "corner of shame" before:

and after:

The wall by the door before:

After:

Our closet before:

After:

The laundry hamper before

and after:

We ended up trashing a ton of junk and ended up with a huge purge pile for our church garage sale next weekend:

Overall this was an AMAZING experience for me.  I actually have a room that is ONLY a bedroom and not a storage space as well.  I really feel like this system is going to work for us, and we are going to be able to keep it up.  I am also excited about the few decorative touches I was able to add, and the fact that I only spent $35 to help contain our chaos.  It is an amazing feeling to finally have control over your own room.  As this was part of a challenge, here are some questions we have been asked to answer as part of it.  I hope that it gives you a better picture of how amazing this journey has been and I hope that it inspires you to tackle something of your own.

Challenge Summary Questions

1. What space did you decide to organize and why?
I chose to organize our master bedroom, because it had become a dumping ground for everything.  We still had boxes that needed to be sorted through from our move, way too much random stuff that we didn't know what to do with and more clothes than fit in our dresser/closet space.

2. What steps did you take to ensure you completed the space within the 29 day timeline?

I set up a plan from the beginning, and moved around the room step by step.  I tackled the hardest area 1st, so that the rest of the room would feel easy after that.  Even though I didn't stay as strictly to my plan as I would have liked (as life does happen), I had goals for each week and worked hard to meet them or catch up when I was behind.  I also had my amazing hubby help keep me accountable to finish on time.

3. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and how did you overcome it?

I ended up needing to do a bunch of side projects, in order to not carry clutter from our room to the rest of the house and that got me off track many times.  For example, in order to get the luggage out of our closet, we had to re-organize our garage storage.  In order to clear off shelving in the closet, it lead me to re-organize our entire paper system.  I had to pick and choose projects to do now and projects to contain and do later.  For example, my craft box was relocated to our linen closet, but I still need to come up with a system for all my crafty things that will work.  I chose to do the side projects that would help our bedroom in the long run during this month, and left others for another day (even though it was hard).

4. What did you do with the “stuff” you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?

As you would have it, our church is having a garage sale in 2 weeks.  Half of it is currently in the trunk of my hubby's car, and the other half will go out on a second trip this coming weekend when they start collecting everything.  I'm excited that it will be going towards a good cause, and that the timing worked out so that we don't have it just hanging around for a month or two.

5. Tell me one of your proudest moments during this challenge?

After I had finished, and I did a few other things around our home, I walked back into our room and couldn't help but smile.  This is the first time in our married life where I have felt like we actually have a master bedroom that isn't a storage room as well!  There is a place for everything and everything is in it's place.  I'm so excited!

6. Explain any organizing “tools” you used to help you create additional space and to establish some limits and boundaries?

The biggest boundary we used was our limited space, while I call our bedroom a "master bedroom" it is only 12' x 14'.  We had no money for a new larger dresser, or for elaborate storage systems, so we purged until it fit, and fit well.  I did make 2 small purchases to help us with better boundaries.  We got a new laundry hamper that is hard and not as flexible as our previous one.  Ensuring that things land in the hamper and not on the floor, so far it is working!  I also spent some money on a hanging closet organizer.  It has 6 cubbies and they all have a specific function.  I am the most excited about this, because it puts things that were at the top of my closet, in easier reach, as well as emptied out the top of the closet so we have more room to grow.

7. What is ONE piece of advice you’d give to someone else to encourage them on their organizational journey?

Find a way for you to be motivated, and go for it!  Honestly, cleaning out our bedroom has been on my "need to do" list for months.  For me, a contest where I posted updates and was doing it along side of others (even though I have never met any of them) was motivating and encouraging.  Figure out what motivates you, and get going. 

Cheers!

Ashley

Update #3 for Challenge

This month has been a great one, as I have been accomplishing one of my BIG goals for the month though a challenge found here.  I am finally tackling our master bedroom.  Our room has become a basic dumping ground over the last year.  It is the place where extra boxes end up, where things that we don't have room for find a space on the floor.  No more!  I am so excited about my progress, I don't want to reveal too much, but I will show you all some of the amazing progress I have been making.  Here is my before post, as well as another update I did.  The big reveal will be coming in just a few short days, and I can't wait!


I focused on the closet this week.  My hubby and I don't have a walk in closet, or even a large closet.  We share a normal, standard size closet.  This is what it looked like before:

Then I emptied my hubby's side and sorted all of the items onto the bed:

 I had him go through it to decide what he wanted to keep, and what he wanted to get rid of.  I did the same thing with my side of the closet.  Though I will admit to purging less, only because I am pregnant and before I got pregnant this time, I still hadn't lost all of the baby weight from the first (they will be 18 months apart).  So I'm keeping the majority of my clothing until I return to normal size.  I did get rid of several pices

I also spent a little money to replace our laundry hamper.  This thing had 2-3 tears in it, and was being held together with zip ties.  I will hand it to my hubby for the creativity of helping the hamper last as long as it did, but i am so happy to replace it with a $10 one from Target that matches our room and style a bit better.  I'm not really counting this as spending money, because lets face it, we were going to have to replace it anyways, well see for your self.

Please tell me you notice that the bottom rim is no longer connected to the rest of the hamper... ya, it was time.  Now it looks much nicer (and less "college-y")

The best part is, the inside liner comes out with handles, which is a fantastic thing when you have to transport your laundry weekly to another location.

Another touch we added this week, I am SOOO excited about, I wasn't going to share it until the end, but honestly I am too excited.  I will just give you a small taste of it, because for me, this is a BIG deal.
Our bed has never had a head board.  We just have rails and a box spring, very boring I know.  Well several months ago (like September) two of my dear friends moved and were selling much of their stuff.  Because I was not in the financial state to purchase anything, and I was going to be seeing them the day they moved out, I offered to take some items off their hands, if they had not been sold.  I ended up with a folding screen.  I LOVE and have always LOVED folding screens.  I think it comes from my love of old movies when they changed behind them.  Well I decided that we could use this as a head board.  It has been sitting in the "corner of shame" for several months waiting for its home... well it has finally happened.  Here is the result...

It's not a perfect match I know, but it makes the room feel SOOOO much better.  I feel like I have a grown up bed finally!!!

This would not be a true update if I were not to share a step backwards that happened this week.  I did have my "corner of shame" looking SOOO much better, it was almost completely cleared out.  Just needed to find a spot for hubby's extra drawers (which will most likely end up in the closet once we finish getting rid of it.

I came home the other day, to find out that that corer had grown, it now looks like this...

I told hubby that all of his clothes needed to fit either in his drawers or the closet.  He agrees and is trying to "figure it out".  I also gently reminded him of my deadline and how I have Tuesday night blocked out to decorate and put the finishing touches on the room.  All I can say is if they aren't neatly in a drawer or hanging up by Tuesday night, hubby may be searching through the bags in the garage that are going to our church garage sale, which is conveniently in 2 weeks.

Well that is my current progress, I still have a few items to find storage solutions for that WORK for us.  But we took 3-5 steps forward and only a baby step back, so overall I feel successful!

Cheers!
Ashley

Org Junkie’s 29 Day Organizing Challenge: Update

So this month I am completing a challenge, you can see more details about the my start here (please don't judge the before pictures to harshly), and my lack of progress here.

This is a REAL progress report.  I am actually really excited to share, because there has been PROGRESS!  I actually recruited my hubby to help clean out his dresser, to make more room for some of the stuff that was just lying around.  The results, while incomplete leave me excited to finish this project.  Here is a quick reminder of one corner of the before.

The process was messy, as I had my hubby literally empty his entire dresser onto our bed as we sorted and purged.

There were some interesting discoveries, such as this Texas shirt:

 When my hubby and I first started dating, I went to visit my high school friend who was attending UT.  This was 6 years ago come April, and being the good girlfriend, I returned to my boyfriend with a gift, the UT shirt.  As you can see, the tags are still attached.  This shirt has been sitting in his dresser, been through 3 moves and NEVER BEEN WORN.  We had a good laugh, and placed it in the purge pile.  We also found some fun memories, that I snapped a picture of, and placed in the purge pile.  The shirt below was one that we had in college, good times, good memories.

The purge plie continued to grow on our couch, which made me one happy lady!

And my "corner of shame" as I have called it, began to shrink...

 and shrink some more...

I am so excited about this progress.  I was feeling so far behind because of my son having pneumonia last week, but I am not feeling like we are right back on track.  We still have a HUGE ways to go, but we have made a big dent, and that brings a smile to my face.  We are reclaiming our bedroom from clutter!!!

For those of you doing the challenge, stick with it!  It is totally worth it!  Also, feel free to follow my blog and let me know that you are.

Cheers!

Ashley

Wow what a crazy month!

I'm back (sorta) blogging world.  My poor 14 month old son woke up from his morning nap on 2/5 with 102.8 degree fever.  The poor kid was miserable, then the coughing started.  By Sunday morning we took him to the ER only to discover that he had RSV and pneumonia.  The didn't keep him, but gave him a shoot of antibiotics and a prescription for oral ones and told us to follow up with our Pediatrician on Monday.  I have to say that I LOVE his doctor.  She saw him EVERY day this last week with the goal being keeping him out of the hospital.  5 shots and 5 days later, his fever finally broke, and you wouldn't even know the kid was sick  I am so thankful that he is better because this week basically did not exist in my world.  Not to mention I had a HUGE presentation/training I ran yesterday, that I had to plan/prep for while he was sick. It was an absolutely crazy week, so now, I have come up for air I can't believe this month is nearly half over.

Lets do a mid-way month check on my 3 goals for this month:

#1 Cook 6 meals from scratch for my family
 Umm ya, 0/6 done so far.  We have been using our typical freezer and box meals this month and been eating out far to much. YIKES!

#2 Complete one creative project
I was going to make this cute book for my hubby for V-day, but seeing as how that is tomorrow and I have yet to start, I think I will need to come up with another plan.  YIKES!

#3 Re-organize/de-cluter one space in my home (see this challenge)
My master bedroom de-clutter has yet to start. I am in SOOOO over my head on this one, basically I have 12 days to de-clutter and 3 to decorate.  YIKES!

So lets see if I can make what at first seemed like 3 simple goals happen in the next two weeks.  I hope that your month is going better than mine.

Cheers!
Ashley

February Goals

A new month has arrived and it is actually my favorite month of the year.  I love pink, hearts and fast things.  For some reason, having 1-2 less days in a month makes it fly by.  I am going to be starting a new monthly post on my blog.  Goals for the month.  Each month I always make some personal goals, but I never share them with anyone, so this month and the ones to follow, I am going to share them with you.  Then I can look back and see what I accomplished.

This month I will dare to...

...  Cook 6 meals from scratch for my family, 2 of which will be new recipes. (spaghetti doesn't count)
... Complete one creative project
... Re-organize/de-cluter one space in my home (see this challenge)

What will you dare to do this month?

Cheers!

Ashley