Summer Goal

Since many (all 6 of my readers...HI!) know, I'm a teacher so I have the summers off. I'm a planner and a goal setter so my summer goal is to clean. My motto has been to throw away 5 things a day...but even though I've been decluttering (big and small) and RE-organizing what I've already organized I felt cluttered. So if you've been following along, you know that I've been looking for organizing blogs. I'd still love some recommendations please. :)

Back story: In February this year, my hubs +2 kids and I moved in with my parents who have lived in their home for 30 years...do the math = LOTS of household combinations of jumk + toys :( No matter how much I re-arrange it looks cleaner than before but I've just stored it away somewhere else. My husband says I move the jumk from one room to another. I've always been a pack rat BUT I've turned over a new leaf. I'm a "thrower awayer" now.

The thing that convicts me the most to convert to a more organized and clean person is that I'm a mom now and I need to show my kids to be good stewards of their daily things. What do you think? I've always wondered why mom's were so good at that.

A friend of mine is totally wired to organize. She is the cleanest person I know and even her husband cleans when he's tipsy! AND I'm soooo blessed that she's in my life (in more than 10,0000 ways) and she was willing to organize my pantry...which led to our kitchen drawers...which led me to do the laundry room to the bathrooms...it's slowly happening like a chain reaction.

My clean team <3 Thank you for de-cluttering my pantry and my soul! I think I was the only one smiling for this picture :D it's b/c I was soooo excited!

The after picture...we all wished we had a before picture (We didn't do the very bottom but I did it today)

 

Bottom close up

 Top Close Up

My 5 things to throw away that day (5 trash bags which let to 2 more)

At the end I almost cried! I felt like I was the recipient of the "Clean House" show. When we started we had a pact: 1) NO judging the family 2) NO judging me 3) HAHAHA Laugh 4) I could not look through the trash during or after (I peeked once and pulled out just 1 thing out of everything! Don't tell, it was only 1 thing). It was a good pact. I was telling them that I felt naked while we were going through everything. What I loved about this experience is that we used storage with the things we had. I was willing to buy containers of any sort and $$$ but I didn't have to and if I had, it would've been more junk.

Tips that I walked away with:

Put liked things together

Use your containers to store liked things and partition

Move everything up to the front and try not to store anything behind

USE things that will expire

THROW AWAY THINGS: Medicine, food, books, CD's, tapes

THROW AWAY THINGS

THROW AWAY THINGS

THROW AWAY

and put everything away where it belongs IF you're not going to THROW IT AWAY

Now I have room to start my stockpile from couponing!!!!~ LOL. JUST Kidding