A long overdue update

Our little house has had quite a transformation!

We wanted a bigger house, particularly room outside for the kids to play, so we've done all we can to make it nice & tidy, and most importantly, un-cluttered!!!

I'll confess that our ceiling space is *ahem* well utilised as a storage space, as is the garden shed, but we've made amazing progress inside, even the wardrobes are tidy!!

We sold our house privately, but I took my own photos of the place anyway, for our own records (and blogs!), and you can see the difference from when I started this!!

Our lounge-

Dining room (yes, we have a dining room now!!) -

kitchen (with space in the cupboards!) -

master bedroom-

(notice the lack of piles everywhere?!)

(and in the wardrobe the top shelf is even clear!)

lexi's room / playroom (the stereo is sitting on a little bookshelf, and they have a couple of toy boxes under her bed) -

eli's bedroom / study (the computer is tucked in the corner to the left) -

bathroom (complete with baskets in the cupboard belonging to each of us) -

toilet lol -

laundry (used to have PILES of stuff on that little shelf!) -

it's still a work in progress, and the kids do still trash it on a regular basis, but it does feel so good to have rid ourselves of so much of the truly unnecessary *stuff* that was weighing us down!!

When we move to our as yet undecided new abode we are going to go through all the remaining *stuff* and sort that out too!

nature be gone!

aka garden decluttering - a work in progress...

from-
to-
now we just have to work out what to plant there!
(and do the other half of the strip..)

Further efforts

in voluntary simplicity... the kids play area!
It really is amazing when you break it down into individual sets/items how many toys can be crammed into a small space! And I have most definitely found that when we have lots of toys available the kids don't really *play* with them as intended, preferring to make a game of tipping everything all over the floor & refusing to pick it up again!

But when we pare things back a bit, the kids start to actually utilise the toys and are more willing to help put them away again! And even with a much reduced cache of toys, there are still a multitude of play options available to them... this is what we have out currently-
Pencils, crayons, tea set, dominos & teddy balancing game...
Shape sorter, stacking train, 2nd shape sorter (all 3 new from eli's birthday!), basket of big kids toys - dress-up bears, wooden cars, wooden animals..
Animal puzzle, basket of baby toys - knit balls, a soft doll, wooden books, maraca & more wooden animals (and a wee felt dinosaur!)....

and zooming out-
Dolls house, box of wooden blocks, box for the wooden train set, dolls bed, a few playsilks & couple of crowns, little table & our Hug-A-Planet!
(and the bizarrely ever present orange balloon!! crazy..)

Even though it seems rather bare (well, to me anyway!) it is more than enough to keep three young kids busy for days!
Now to get the rest of the house to the same standard...

breaking the rules!

I realised a couple of weeks back that our games took up a huge amount of space in our study wardrobe - 4 shelves worth of precious, precious out-of-sight storage space!
And it occurred to me that much of that is air - air inside padded out boxes (you know how board games often have a cardboard bit inside to make a neat nook for the pieces & pad the box out to the size of the board..), and air between differently shaped boxes...

But why?! Why do the games have to stay in their original boxes?!
We've already gotten rid of the games that we don't want to keep long-term, so keeping them intact for sale purposes isn't a good enough reason to hold onto these space wasters...

so.. we got rid of this-
and replaced it with this-
which is a 25L (i think?) wheeled plastic tub, which holds a multitude of these-
little *labelled* snap lock bags containing the pieces/cards/money & rules, and, where appropriate, a colour-coded sticker to match with the game's board for easy pairing. Because i'm that sort of person. The outside of the big box then has lists of the games contained within, sorted into adults & kids games, and, again where appropriate, a note of what colour sticker the game & board has. See? I really am that sort of person ;-)

the net result being-
1.5 shelves taken up, and in a fairly orderly fashion, rather than 4+ all higgledy-piggledy!

The hidden bonus is that the mess factories living here are too little to open the big box, whereas previously they would pull the whole stack of boxes onto the floor & scatter the contents! So i'm very happy with this solution!

A blissful bedroom.. with kids!

Well we've been at it for a long time now, and, to be honest, the results are not all that obvious..
but one success has been our bedroom!
we've managed to keep the clutter down, and now that we have nice coordinating sheets & duvets for alexis' & our bed it is a much cleaner, simpler space... even with four of us in one room!

tis a beautiful thing..

my new sewing & crafting table all ready to go!

my sewing machine & overlocker live on the top, in season fabrics, machine pedals & rubbish bin underneath...
the plastic drawers hold works-in-progress (sewing & knitting), patterns & tracing paper (ok, el cheapo baking paper ;-) ), and felting fleece...
the built in drawers hold sharp things in the lockable one, felting & knitting tools in the middle, and sewing notions in the bottom...
and stashed in the back are my tracing/cutting board (aka hunk of MDF) & 1m/40" steel ruler.

the stack of fabric on the right, in front of our new curtains *insert happy dance here*, will live elsewhere, once there is an elsewhere for it to live in ;-)

doesn't it just bristle with potential?! :-D

lounge transformation!

in the beginning, there was this mess...
followed by some small changes, and then some bigger ones..

well yesterday i was struck by a giant fit of whim, and did this-

which turned into this-

and this-
(oh yeah!! my own sewing & crafting table!! bliss...)

and let's just not talk about this-
ok?

so i'm not exactly finished, but i'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel!

mammoth mission done!

before

and

after

thank you to my friends, trade me peeps (the remaining ones are listed currently), waipu SPCA and the New Lynn Lions foundation for helping me rid myself of a ridiculous amount of books!

now to fill them back up again with all the ones we kept.. *sigh* ;-)

what i would like..

would be to extract a few boxes of stuff from the house, then just walk away..

yup i have a major case of apathy & hopelessness..

it's not so much the deciding what to keep & what to get rid of that is the hard part (actually it's very easy!) it's actually getting stuff out of the house that i'm really struggling with, and also not being able to get rid of some stuff i hate ie- furniture because we can't replace it at the moment..

like on the recent tv show "the big stuff" they would tell the participants to toss anything that didn't 'fit the vision' of what they wanted their house/life to look like.. well that's all very well & good if a tv show if buying you new furniture & storage solutions for africa! But here in the real world we have to put up with a mish-mash of inefficient, unsuitable & asthetically displeasing items indefinately..

and again, it's a lot easier if you have a handful of free skips & recycling bins provided & dealt with afterwards for you too.. but instead we have flimsy rubbish bags, expensive dump fees, rare-as-hens-teeth (and possibly on the cutting board altogether!!) inorganic rubbish collections, and a sallies shop that never seems to be open! and don't get me started on 'buyer must pick up' auctions on trade me...

*sigh*

sorely tempted to set fire to the house, but a) it's under-insured, and b) the people in the adjoining house probably wouldn't thank us! (even though they have gutted their place twice in the past 4 years! ;-) )

play area finished!

the kids toy space is now pretty organised & streamlined.. from this to this-

bit nicer huh?

it's now very functional, especially with the addition of the lovely wooden table & chairs, and much more baby friendly too, with the dolls house off the floor, and smaller toys on the top shelf of the re-purposed bookshelf (hidden benefit to clearing out books!). Yes, we still have the castle, it is now home to a box of books, a box of dress-ups & playsilks, and a doll's cot full of dolls & teddies. The crates of wooden blocks & train tracks now live in cubbies under the dolls house, and the kids art work is now displayed in their own gallery on the wall too ;-)

and the toys are predominantly & increasingly made from natural materials too :-)

and i just noticed that we have an orange balloon in almost the same place in both the before & after pics! how odd, it's not like we usually have them, the first was from a birthday, this one is because lil' miss found a stash in our emergency kit! lol...

finally ready..

i'm pretty sure that is is all the books that we will be

getting rid of!

heh heh there's a few of 'em huh? ;-)

but wait, there's more!

(this doesn't include the stacks previously pictured on this table!)
and for those of you who have never bought a Safe-n-Sound Meridian car seat, this box is roughly 70x48x48cm.. and overflowing..

and it's STILL not all of them..

and all to find new homes! i have no idea how to display them so people can rummage through them easily..?!

books, books, books, books, books, books, books, books..

these are what i am getting rid of, so far.. i've only just started sorting so this is only some of what is to come!
four & a bit of these heaps...

plus these..

and these...

resulting in-
ahhh.. that's a bit better! we might even be able to get rid of a little bookshelf now!

so that is one big bookshelf & one box down - two big bookshelves, 2 little bookshelves, and 6-7 boxes to go.. plus the kids ones of course!

study update..

well.. despite the good news with our bedroom & lounge, i only have bad things to say about our study :-(

i had been making good progress, but unfortunately the door handle had broken off, and i hadn't gotten round to moving stuff *out* of the room..

sure enough a toddler got in and trashed the place! everything that was carefully sorted got spectacularly unsorted, everything that had been put away got tossed out again, and so on...

so now that we have fixed the door handle it is back to square one & mission five for me :-(

lounge progress

we attacked the lounge a wee bit this weekend.. not exactly planned, but good nonetheless!

the main change is the tv/stereo unit..it's quite visually dominant in our small lounge, but it looks heaps more unified, and having the speakers up there gets rid of the cables that were running around the walls & stops toddlers pulling the overs off all the time & posting things into the horns! the nappies underneath still need sorting though..

the other breakthrough we made is the dining table..
i hadn't actually posted before pics of this, but i'm sure you can extrapolate from the state of everywhere else!

before pics of the tv unit are here..

bedroom update!

finally the promised pics of the bedroom changes!

the wardrobe is heaps better, we've gotten rid of the stuff all over the top of the drawers, the fabric is much tidier (still not the ideal home, i know), we've both tossed the clothes that we hardly used, and i've gone through the drawers, now 2.5 of them are empty! And the remaining ones only hold what they should and are all tidy :-)

it's a similar story with the kids drawers, and we're working on keeping the top clear all the time..

you can check out the hideous before pics here, here & here..

mission five

Mission five
finish sorting the toys in the study

mwahahahahaaa!

sunday update

i've been hard at work in our study today, making heaps of progress! but i won't post a pic because you'll just laugh..the floor & shelves are still completely covered! but in my defence that is just because i am sorting things in there ;-)

i've been rearranging the books to make better use of the shelves size-wise (because we have more to home in there!), and separating fiction from non, and getting the heavier books off the flimsier shelves!

we've tossed most of the tapes (the LP collection remains..) and our ancient cd-rom stash, a 26 year old forest green laziboy (bought as a nursing chair for me!), and i have started on.. The Toys (insert ominous thunder here)

so today...
2.5 supermarket bags of rubbish
1 big box of stuff to give away
1 big box of D&D books to give away
1 laziboy to give away
1 supermarket bag of paper to recycle

Saturday update

well, i didn't get started til after midday, but..
i got our bedroom finished!!

i'll post pics when it is a bit sunnier (and once i've cleaned a wee bit!)

so adding to the tally-
1 supermarket bag to give away
1 big box to sell
1 supermarket bag in the rubbish
1 small box of stuff to live in other rooms

woohoo!!


and i've made a start on the study too, mostly just grouping the stuff into smaller groups to sort through separately at the mo, and organising the books a bit more to make better use of the bookshelves..

it is seriously daunting though, i had a good amount of momentum in our room, but the sheer volume of it all, and the nature of it (lots of things that *might* be useful for the kids, or nic-nacs that belonged to my mum or were given to me by her but that i don't necessarily like anymore..) make it a much, much more challenging task :-?

ah well.. shall press on, and we will overcome! :-)

weekend plan #1

we're all home this weekend, so the MOTH is going on 'babysitting' duty ;-) and i'm waging war on the house! (and feeding the baby, obviously)

soooo.. my plan of attack is...

our bedroom -
* mission #4 as previously posted..
* refolding the nappy fabric stash so it is tidier until is finds a better home
* sorting the remaining two drawers (candles & misc)
* tidying the top of the drawers..
then that should be our room finished!!!

then all going well, i'll move on to the study (insert ominous rolls of thunder here) -
* sort through toys & hopefully toss lots of them
* sort through paperwork & hopefully toss most of it
* find spaces for the books & hopefully keep most of them ;-)
* toss the ginormous tape collection!
* sort through the wardrobe & any other misc stuff in the room...

sadly enough that is probably heaps more than i can get done in 2 days.. but i'll give it a go! :-D