William Morris Thursday - the laundry room closet

It's Thursday and that can only mean one thing around here - I've been busy! I've linked up with Jules again for her William Morris project and it's been so much fun! You should totally pick a project and join us!

Last Thursday, I told you that a friend of mine was coming to help me with whatever project I wanted to work on. I decided to start with my laundry room closet because the floor was covered with stuff and it was not even coming close to living up to its potential. And, when you have a house full of stuff you want to get rid of and your friend's coming to help you with it, you just pick something.

When we built this house almost 7 years ago, I wanted lots of storage. My mother-in-law instilled it in me. Build lots of closets and cabinets and drawers and you'll fill them all up and you won't regret it! Or something like that. She was right about the filling them up part. I've done that pretty well. Off of my kitchen, I have a large laundry room that I imagined the morning light pouring into as I cheerily folded towels and hung shirts. I'll talk about that reality another time.

In the laundry room, I have small closet with a large set of shelves to house things that I wanted to have access to, but wouldn't need very often. This laundry room closet began as a place to store leftover paint we used for our house and extra tiles and wood from our flooring. Then, we added things that we didn't want to lug out to our backyard storage building, and eventually, things that we just chunked in there like wrapping paper, fireworks and art supplies.

The bottom two shelves were filled with paint cans, some near full and some almost empty. Thankfully, our town has a recycling center where you can drop off old paint. If it's still good, someone will take it. If it's past its prime, it's disposed of properly. I think we loaded up about 10 cans.

There was no rhyme or reason to the stuff that ended up on these shelves. I remember being somewhat organized with it at some point in the past, but who knows what's happened since.

A whole lot of shoving and piling is what appears to have happened. Just look at that Jack-o-lantern laughing at my plight.

On Thursday, my friend came ready for work. We brewed a pot of coffee and got started. We pulled everything out and separated into giveaway, trash, my stuff and Mr. Park's stuff. Then we made a list of things that need to happen before next week. The purpose of the list was, of course, to keep me on task and help me think through some of the stuff I keep storing and moving, but not ever using.

My list:

1. frame chicken print (For years I have intended to have it framed and put on the wall. And yet, it was at the bottom of the pile pictured above.)
2. put bulletin boards in girl's room (Same thing. I wanted to fix them up cute and hang them in my girls' room. Bottom of pile.)
3. get desk from Goodwill
4. take yellow desk to mom's house (It's in my bedroom and I'm not working on my bedroom right now. Duh.)
5. buy paint for laundry room closet (I have no idea what color I want that closet to be.)
6. have a hole cut and install a spigot in big jar (see below)

Okay, so maybe the list thing didn't work out. I only crossed one thing off my list and the only reason I got that one done was because it involved Goodwill and buying something at Goodwill. But the purpose of the list was served even though I didn't accomplish all the items this past week. If I wanted to keep something, I had to have a plan for it. And that gives me something to work toward.

For example, this gigantic old jar. My friend Brenda, the one who so generously came to help me, gave me this jar after she did a major clean out in her house. I thought it would make the perfect sangria dispenser for summer get-togethers. If only I could get someone to drill a hole in the glass so I could attach a spigot. When we came across it in the closet, she asked me why it was in there. I told her that I wanted to have someone put a hole in it for a spigot but I was afraid it would break in the process so I never had it done. She kindly reminded me that I hadn't used it one time since she gave it to me so if it broke, I wouldn't have lost anything. Yeah, I know, she's a pretty good friend to have around.

This is the stuff I removed that belongs to Mr. Park. His assignment was to go through it, get rid of the stuff he doesn't want and organize the stuff he does. I'll take it from there. Here's another example of the wisdom of my friend Brenda. I asked her where in the heck I should put the broken ice maker from our fridge and she said to put it in Mr. Park's pile and let him deal with it. Again, brilliant!

This is the stuff that still needs to be taken out to the storage shed. (I'm sure the reason this task wasn't done has something to do with the storage shed needing to be cleaned out.) #dominoeffect

We hauled out two big bags of trash.

And filled Brenda's little Mini Cooper with recyclables and giveaway stuff.


Oh, yeah, here's how that closet looks now. Some of it stills looks the same, but everything was touched and it's usefulness considered. Not finished by any means, but ready for some organization and decoration. Did you notice you can see the floor now?!?

Mucho thanks to Brenda who'll be here in a few hours to help me take a bite out of this beautiful mess...

P.S. I'll blow that picture up when I have an 'after' picture to go next to it. ;)

What are you working on?

William Morris Thursday - a little progress

Last week, I was decidedly absent from Jules' William Morris project. After all, who wants to read a post about everything I thought about doing? Every time I walked into a room, I was bombarded with thoughts of what I want to get rid of and what I want to keep. Then, because of (insert excuse here) I didn't actually do anything. This week I have a few piles to show for all of last week's thinking. It's not much to look at, but it's what I've got.

This is the back of my car. It's filled with Goodwill stuff, recyclables, plastic grocery bags and things that need to go to other people's houses. It's now empty! Next to that, on the ground, is a bag of things that didn't belong in the car and a bag of trash I collected from the inside. Most of it was what I like to call "van mix" from the floor boards. ((shudder)) The stuff that came in the house was a mixture of clothes, coats, dishes, mail, hair accessories and coloring stuff. It's all back where it belongs now. Ah, feels good, doesn't it?

This is my purse. It's a jungle in there. It's gotten so bad that I've stopped carrying into places because I've realized how useless it is.

It's like a big leather filing cabinet with some makeup and random toys and pens thrown in.

I dumped it out on the floor and as if it were some kind of bait, within minutes my oldest daughter showed up to go through it. And she's not even my organized one. (She just wanted to get out of doing her reading.) Regardless, my purse is much lighter today because of it. Thanks, Anna!


Today, a dear (x100) friend of mine is coming over to help me with whatever project I want to work on. She's kind of my mentor/other mother and she 'gets' where I'm going, what it will take to get there and what's standing in my way, so she's offered her services once every couple of weeks. Did I tell you how much I love her? When she called earlier this week, wanting to know if I had come up with a project, I was ready. I'll be spending a good part of today cleaning out the closet in my laundry room and getting rid of all those things that, if I were by myself, I would stare at for an ungodly amount of time and then set aside for later. Just in case. I can't wait to see what we get done. I'll share all the details next week.

Have you made any progress toward beauty or usefulness this week? Link up here and share!

Moves her momma didn't give her.

This is my baby. But "boss of the world" would be a better title. She's got confidence in amounts I can't even fathom. I told her I wanted her to do a dance for me and she didn't hesitate before whipping up this little number.

P.S. Sorry about the quality of the video. We're having issues with Youtube.

Conversations with my kids

On careers.

This is my friend, Leigh Archer. His picture is in a real estate publication my daughter picked up at the store yesterday. She was looking at all the pictures on the back and when she got to him she said, "Whoah! I know that guy!" I told her who he was and she was awed. Rock start status, I tell you.

Then, later that evening, my 13 year old son picked up the same publication and asked me what I was doing with it. I told him that Anna had picked it up and noticed someone we knew. Here's how our conversation went after that.

John: Who's that?
Me: It's Leigh. He goes to our church.
John: Why's he on that ad?
Me: He sells houses.
John: Is that why he's so rich?
Me: What?
John: He has a nice car.
Me: Yeah.
John: He has a nice house.
Me: Yeah.
John: He has nice glasses.
Me: Yeah.
John: He always looks like he just took a shower and he's from Canada.
Me: So based on all those things, he's rich?
John: Yeah. He's cool. I wanna sell houses.

One Bite at a Time: Bite #23 - Regularly turn off your tv

I sort of chose a gimme task for this past week's project, regularly turn off your tv. It's something we already do, but since it's not that intentional, I realize it has the potential to get out of hand. When we're all at my in-laws, the tv is almost always on. That's really the place I need to enforce this one.

The thing that is intentional, though, is the lack of satellite tv at our house. My husband made a promise that he would never pay for television and so far, he's kept his promise. I've noticed that when I'm at my in-laws there are so many options, some of them very educational, it's easy to pick something that seems harmless and waste a couple of hours. It is harmless if that happens only occasionally, but if we had that many options at our house, it would be a regular thing. Especially with my need to get what I pay for.

So, in our home, where we have about 5 channels of less than mediocre programming, we are content with a regular movie night, provided by Netflix. My husband and I have complete control over what our kids are watching and have the freedom to be intentional about it. Sometimes, it's something fun, and sometimes we have a hidden agenda to educate. No matter, we are all together, popcorn in hand, enjoying something that was a planned event.

Regularly turn off your tv - check. What does your family's tv habit look like?

William Morris Thursday - My girls' wardrobe

I'm linking up again this week with Jules' William Morris project. Get the full scoop here.

I know I said I would be done with my coffee table project by now, but neither my schedule nor the weather has cooperated. My theory is that the two have conspired against me to keep it from getting done. The days it's been nice out, I haven't had time and this past weekend, when I had a full Sunday to get it done, it looked like this.

I don't know if you can tell by this picture, but that's some other town's dirt in the air. Not sure if it was Midland or Lubbock, but it wasn't ours. It doesn't do that very often, but when it does, I don't go out. For anything. I stood on the porch just for a minute to get a picture of the sun and my legs were stinging from the sand in the air.

So I stayed indoors and did some organizing. Not as much fun but so necessary. I have 3 girls and two of them are 19 months apart, so I feel like I am overrun with girl clothes. To make matters worse, both of the kid's grandmas like to pick things up for them now and then and I have a great friend that passes most of her girl's stuff down to them. That makes for mounds of clothes in my house. An unnecessary amount of clothes. I've known for some time that they have too much, I just couldn't bring myself to pare it down. Well, trapped inside my house this weekend, that's what I did.

Here's all the clothes they own. Well, I should say all the clothes they own that are in season. There's more in the attic for summer. The piles toward the top of the picture belong to my youngest daughter and the piles in the bottom half of the picture belong to my two oldest daughters.

Oh, wait, I went in their room and there were clothes everywhere. I mean, everywhere. I didn't get a shot of it, but I did get a shot of the big basket that I hauled out of there and then had to sort because I didn't know what was clean and what was dirty. In their defense, I haven't modeled very good habits when it comes to the whole business of clothes. They come by it honestly.

I put that into the wash and then sorted it. Then, I had the girls pick their favorite outfits. I probably let them pick too many, but we did make a sizable dent in it all. Some of the rejects will go back to my friend and some will go to the consignment shop in town.

Here's everything hung up in their closet. I have to admit, after the girls chose everything they wanted to keep, and we loaded that same blue laundry basket with it all, I felt like it was still too much, but once I got it in the closet, it looked normal. Normal, of course, by first-world standards. ;) I was thinking about buying a Martha Stewart closet system like the one Andrea posted about last week, but since I don't have the extra cash right now, I rummaged around my house and found cheaper, flimsier versions of the components I needed and that will have to do for now.

They're only 5, 8 and 9, but they are already showing a propensity for shoe hoarding. God help me.

All the usual dresser stuff, panties, socks, pj's, t-shirts and leggings, went into this dresser. Which I will be refinishing as soon as I can find a hole in my schedule to do it. It's a hand-me-down from my sister's husband, who gave it to us for our son's nursery 13 years ago. I haven't even begun to suck the life out of this thing. That's what a well built piece of furniture is worth.

This is the girl's other closet. Obviously, I have given them free reign to use it as they please. Eventually I will take it back and organize it. Not today.

And that's my completed project from this week. I've been so motivated by everyone's accomplishments, I think this just might be the catalyst I needed to get it all done. Thanks Jules!

The problem with choices

In our house, we've been trying to give our kids more choices. When they are acting up, I give them a choice between changing their behavior or continuing - with consequences. It works pretty well when I don't get lazy and resort to ordering them around like a drill sergeant.

My youngest, April, is pretty used to the drill. This morning, she was making noises at the table while we were trying to do school. I gave her the choice of making noises in the other room by herself or stopping the noise and staying with us at the table. She sighed and chose to stay with us.

Later on, I was giving her her reading lesson. She told me she had to go to the bathroom and when she came back she had this to report:

April: I was going to the bathroom and God told me I had a choice whether I wanted to wipe or not.

Me: Oh, great. Well, what did you choose?

April: I chose not to.

She later admitted that she was just joking. I didn't check to see.