Christmas-fy the Porch: Mission Complete

6 days.  3 of which, I was away.  I got the unthinkable done:  I Christmas-fied my porch.

This was my porch, this time last Sunday:

I managed to clean the husband's crap out of there and paint the sucker:

Then I Christmas-fied the sucker:

The problem with being a homemaker is that you never feel a sense of accomplishment.  At least I don't.  You feed people, do their laundry, try to clean (but get distracted with the internet) and then the day ends and you have to do the same crap the next day.  And the next.  And the next.  So I need big projects from time to time to keep my homemaker mind in the game.   

Now what to move on to...

Christmas-fy the Porch: Moldings Now!

Monday night, I set out to get my ghetto-ass porch in tip top shape for Christmas.  I'm now on my first coat of paint for the moldings:

Sometimes I need to blog things just to get them done.  Whatever.  It's what my generation does.

Just a quick reminder of what this place looked like less than 48 hours ago:

So go!  Get motivated!  Do something to get your life ready for Christmas!

Christmas-fy The Porch: The First 8 Hours

Well it only took me about 8 hours, but I was able to clean the White Trash (a.k.a. my husband's crap) out of the porch and paint it.

Now I just have to finish the second coat tomorrow and do the trim.  Not bad for this homemaker with a Christmas mission.  I even ran a marathon yesterday.  For real!  I can't make this crap up.

My Mission: Christmas-fy The Porch by this Weekend

So we got our porch re-done.  In April 2010.  One way to save money was to not have the contractors finish the inside.  Flash forward 2 1/2 years:

Not only is the porch not done, it's like my husband is trying to win an award for most white trashiest porch in America.  Army crap all over.  Tools all over.  I'm just sick of looking at all of it.   I have a week.  I just bought a case of K-cups at BJ's today.  I will pimp out my porch because I am sick of waiting on the other half.  Watch out world (or Weymouth) - we're getting our Christmas pimp on.  

Cheap Way to Store Lego Books

I love Staples.  For real.  I bank rewards like no tomorrow.  I also think they also have some killer deals from time to time and I like to hoard office supplies for some reason.

Over the summer, I got a big thing of sheet protectors for $5 (normally $14.99) and I recently used my Staples Rewards to pick up some binders for free.  I had a mission and I finally "did it".

These were all of our Lego books that have been lying around and all different places. 

Here are our Lego books all nice and neat - in page protectors and fill up 2 3" binders.

 Now, if I can just find a good way to organize the actual Legos, we'll be all set.  

Cheap Organizational Fix

My life is a cluttered mess.  So I'm on an organizational kick.  I am obsessed with Fly Lady.  She's great.  Chaos is poor time management and wasting time is wasting money people!

The problem with really organizing and whatnot is that I find myself wanting to spend money on fancy bins and whatnot.  I can't just toss around money right now, so I'm concentrating on free fixes for now.

Today - I spent about 30 minutes re-organizing the kitchen cabinets.  This did not cost me any money - I just took one tip from Fly Lady and flew with it - she said something about making sure your cabinet shelves are at proper heights for storage.  So I moved some of them to better suit our needs - and VOILA!  More cabinet storage!

Quick, free, easy fix.

"Organizing My Crap": To Organize My Crap, I Must Organize My Time

So yeah.  I've been trying to organize my crap and I'm failing miserably.  I have crap all over the place and have like 7 "projects" going on all at once.  I'm relaxing in my semi-clean living room right now, but nope. I see a stray Velma figurine peering at me from under the tv cabinet.  

My problem is that I am pretty sure I have ADD and I have absolutely no time management skills whatsoever.  It's not even the computer - I'll find myself sitting in a completely messy house reading a cookbook for no real reason.  In the middle of putting away laundry, I'll find an old issue of All You magazine and just start reading it.  So I'm going to try to power on the next week to figure out how the heck I waste so much time.  Maybe if I can find extra time in my schedule, I can actually finish and do the 101 random things I want to do around this place.  

"Organizing My Crap": Toss & Donate - I Did The 3 Pile Thing, and it WORKED!

I tackled another attic storage spot.  I wish I took a before picture, but I just saw it and went to work.  When I first started, this thing was full of stuff.  Completely smashed.  I took it all out and went through it all.  I had three piles - a.  Donate to Goodwill, b.  Trash, c.  Keep.  Thankfully, my Donate & Trash were both much bigger than my "keep" pile.  After cleaning up the Insulation Dust Bunnies that fell and secured the insulation back up, I organized all my "Keep" stuff and voila:

It went from being 100% full to about 1/3 full.  I love it.  

This closet area was the hardest for me to fix up - the back corner was completely open to the eves so I threw insulation in there - but I was convinced that a bat or squirrel was going to come out and attack me.  There's no signs that we have animals living in our house and the "bat man" did come and "bat-proof" our house - but I have this odd fear of wild animals.  Luckily, no animals attacked me and now with my sheeting - I don't think anything is getting in there.  Actually - my cats used to like in there and "walk around the eves of our house".  I was always waiting for them to somehow fall out of the roof - but they didn't.  They're both really mad I closed up their little hiding hole.  

"Organizing My Crap": Label, Label, Label

This is probably common knowledge.  Use labels.  Lots of them.  Label the crap out of your crap.  

Here's my tip though - don't spend an hour on your computer printing out "pretty" labels or going on Pinterest to see how some made up person labels their attic crap.  Just grab a sheet of labels (if you have labels laying around like I do) and a Sharpie.  Just write what you're storing.  My handwriting is horrible - but I can read what I wrote and it took me about 5 seconds to create each label.  I have a bunch of Rubbermaid bins - so I put a label on the side and top.  Maybe redundant, but easy for me.  Also - if you use labels, they come off really easily if you ever switch the containers contents. 

"Organizing My Crap": Say Good-Bye to Old Technology

I miss the 90s.  And 80s for that fact.  In my attic, I found my collection of cassettes - mostly "mixes" I recorded off the radio.  But I did find a few good ones like the Backstreet Boys & Now 2.  Let's be real though - I'm not going to pop in a cassette and rock out.  a.  90% of this music, I have no desire to listen to again.  b.  The remaining 10% (like this Backstreet Boys album),  I already have in my iTunes account.  

Here's my collection.  

Here's my collection in the trash.  Any questions?  

"Organizing My Crap": Decorate With Your Random Crap

About two years ago, a family friend (who is a "bat man") came on over and "bat-proofed" our house.  He just added flashing all over the roof line and caulked the corners and whatnot.  He went up to the eves of our attic to check if there were any gaps, and low and behold - he found a bunch of books there!

They all have copyrights of 1909-1914.  Some have some writings in them.  I just had them up in my attic since they were found, but I decided to change around our motif in the living room a little and put them out for display.  

I also found this really old picture.  I have no idea who it is - but I think she's related to me in some odd way.  So if you're looking for a change, look through your closets, attic & basement - you might find some wonderful treasures that you forgot you owned.  

You will not find my decorating style on Pinterest.  Unless "Ghetto Fabulous" comes into style.

"Organizing My Crap": Take Things Out, Put Them Back

Moved on to more attic storage organizing.  Why do I have so much crap?

This is a "Before" Picture.  If you look closely, I'm storing an empty box under my two halloween inflatables.  

So you take everything out.  Here, I put up plastic sheeting to curb the insulation bunnies that have started to form thanks to the insulation starting to fall.  I think swept it and re-organized some of the boxes that were in there. 

Much better.  My little grim reapers are now happy.  

"Organizing My Crap": How Many Easter Baskets Does One Really Need?

Cleaning out my attic - I found 9 Easter Baskets.  Now we have 2 kids.  So most people in our position probably have 2 baskets.  Oh - but we're weird and we like the kids to think the Easter Bunny leaves "us parents" something too.  So that brings us up to 4.  

So I picked out the best 4 and put the other 5 in my "spare basket area".  I will either use these for gift baskets or maybe reality will set in closer to Easter and I'll just get rid of them.

"Organizing My Crap": Modify Your Closet - Easily & Cheaply

Do you live in an old house?  We do.  1921.  I guess it's not "that old", but it's up there.  Back in the 20s, they didn't make closets like they do now.  Even in our "master bedroom" - our closet is so narrow that our clothes barely fit width wise.  And we're not even really big people.  But we make do with what we have - and if closet space is one of our major worries - then I think our lives are pretty darn blessed.

Here's our closet.  Do you see what we did?  We installed a second rod half way down.  You can buy a closet rod at Lowe's for about $10-$15.  They're adjustable so you don't need to measure or anything.  It took about 10 minutes to install and we essentially doubled our hanging closet space in this closet.  

So if you're yearning for more closet space - see if adding another rod will do the trick.  I think it only works for us because the closet is pretty tall to begin with.  I'm not sure how high "more modern" house closets are.  This is also beneficial in a kids' room - if they share or if they are just a fashion diva and have way too many clothes.  

"Organizing My Crap": Face Reality - You Aren't Going To Wear That

This is a HORRIBLE picture.  Most of my pictures are.  Well anyways - we've lived in our home for just over 4 years now.  I have this shoe rack on a closet door in my attic.  I also have a bunch of clothes there that have been there for probably about the same 4 years.  

Yesterday morning, I did a quick sweep and really focused my head and thought "Really, are you REALLY going to wear those lime green shoes ever again?"  And again, and again for all that crap up there.  

After about 6 minutes, I had a garbage bag full of shoes (8 pairs) and a garbage bag full of clothes (you can't really see the dent in this "after" picture - but you can see my shoe rack is mostly empty).  

Now what I did differently - RIGHT AWAY, I put these two bags in my car.  When I went to drop off son #1 at school, myself & son #2 made a quick stop to Goodwill in Quincy.  I gave those suckers away right away. Usually in the past, I would gather stuff to "donate" and then the crap would just sit there and sit there and then I'd forget why it's even there.  I can be really lazy at times.  

It felt great to get rid of those two bags of clothes.  BONUS:  If you donate to Goodwill, they'll give you a donation receipt.  

"Organizing My Crap": Learn to Accept Your House Won't Look Like a Pinterest Pin

I love Pinterest.  It's a like a la-la dream for homemakers.  But after spending 20 minutes looking through the various pins of great ideas for your home, an element of "What the....who's house REALLY looks like this?" sinks in.

This came to light when I started to "make-over" one of my attic closets.  Now I'm lucky - I have a full walk up attic that is "mostly finished" But it was finished in the 70s so it's chock full o' wood paneling and textured paint.  One of my closets was just a catch all for crap the past 4 years.  The insulation started falling down and I started to have little black insulation bunnies all over my assorted crap.  So I pulled all the crap out of it and fixed that crap:

So all that insulation was falling down.  I bought 6mm sheeting and sucked that crap back into place.  This closet is floored with a plethora of random vinyl remnants from past kitchen renovations.  I don't have the heart to replace it.  

While cleaning out this closet, I found about 50 white painted bricks and some wood.  I could have thrown them away, but I decided to make a makeshift bookcase out of it.  I'm so ghetto, I love it:

I also went through the 3 dilapidated bags I had of gift boxes and gift bags. I put the gift boxes on the next shelf of my bookcase and organized my gift bags by size.  

Now, if I need a gift bag, I can just go in here and pick one out.  I wish I could say I did something really fancy with it, but nope.  Just went down to the basement and grabbed 3 3" nails my husband had in a box:

Voila.  Instant hooks.  Sometimes, basic is key.  

I'm just excited that I have a closet up here where I can actually walk-in without disturbing the insulation and everything is actually in order in there.  1 of 8 attic closets down - 7 more to go.  Then I have to tackle the actual attic.  And the living spaces.  I better get a move on.

"Organizing My Crap": My new series

In the beginning of the year, I had the "What in the Heck Do I have in my Cabinets" series - where I tried to use up all the junk in my kitchen cabinets.  I'm done doing that - and thus, I've stopped blogging about it.  My cabinets are back to having mostly essentials - and I don't have that many more odds & ends to use up.

With the weather so mild here in Massachusetts, I have been bitten hard by the spring cleaning bug.  So for the next couple weeks, I'm going to tackle some sort of organization project every day.  This doesn't have to be huge - maybe just 5 minutes of organizing the make-up drawer, or it could be something huge.

My goal is to have most of the place organized by April 7th.  The day before Easter.  My place will never look like any one of the millions of pins on Pinterest - but I'll make do with what I have.

WARNING:  Some of my before pictures might make you want to call DSS.  Please don't.