I haven’t given up on scrapbooking ya’ll… I just have needed a life overhaul! I’ve institued some massive changes in our lives, and it’s taking some time, I’ll be back though, I swear, just gonna be about
another month.

Part of the reason being, is….. To do all this massive cleaning/sorting reorganizing of my house, I rented a commercial garbage dumpster (YEP, I said COMMERCIAL SIZE).  I did not want things sitting around waiting
to be gotten rid of, I wanted to be able to dispose of it as I go. But…since I’m renting it, I have to pay for it while I have it, which means, the faster I’m done with the whole house, the less I pay for having it here.

I should point out… we have had boxes of stuff stored here that have stayed in the boxes where we stuck them since the day we moved into this house. I decided, no more holding them for garage sales, no more
waiting to drop them somewhere, they are GOING. You have to remember our house is like 2 1/4 stories. (The scraproom is the kinda 1/4 story since it drops down and is 625 sq foot, which gives you an idea of the size of our house) The bad thing about a house so big, is the more space you have, the more STUFF you accumulate.

My house always ‘looks’ clean when ya glance around, but God forbid you every opened a cabinet, drawer, closet, pantry,etc.

How has organizing it HONESTLY TO GOD changed my life?

Example #1: Downstairs bathroom and Potty Training

Most of you know Kota is a handful, and his perception of things is very different. Getting into stuff has been a massive problem for him. He’s always looking for stimulation, good or bad.  Potty training has been a
massive problem because… He for one does not want me standing over him when he goes, nor do I honestly have time to stand and wait, til he overcomes his potty shyness. A major issue was that, if I allowed him to go into the bathroom alone, several times I came in and he had….. pulled EVERYTHING out from under the bathroom sink. He’d taken magazines that were in the bathroom, dropped them in the toilet, gotten them wet and the wet pages would be stuck to things. One day, he powdered the entire bathroom with Comet.  Things like that, which resulted in me raising hell, stopping whatever I was doing to punish him or stand over him while he sat in the corner, then an hour to clean up the mess. What did it equal out to? Me thinking he was a bad behaved kid, and him thinking I was an evil Mommy for getting mad.   SOLUTION:  I took everything out of the bathroom, putting it in the hallway, I took the opportunity to vacuum out dustbunnies under the cabinets, I bleached the cabinet, all that was put back was a small garbage can that fit under the cabinet, a toilet brush, plunger, and toilet paper.  After a few tries of going in there and seeing what was under there, and it was all boring, and it stayed the same every time he looked under the cabinet, he doesn’t bother it now, and can go in alone, do his business, and come out.  It sounds like a hassle, but it took me actually under 20 minutes, and it’s saved me from the stress of cleaning up his constant messes. The added benefit… since that’s all that is under there, I can easily grab my toilet brush, so when I reach down for a toilet paper change, or think about it at random, I grab the brush and swoosh out the toilet real quick in the time it takes me to pull up my pants after peeing, and voila, toilet stays pretty clean. So when the bathroom is ready for a good cleaning, it doesn’t really take long. And now we aren’t having a battle weekly from him making messes..   WHAT IT CHANGED FOR US: I’m not yelling at him for making messes.. Happy mom, happy kid, and I’m not having to stop some other activity to clean up after him.

Example #2: Where the hell are the shoes?

I’ve always kept a basket downstairs for shoes, since I prefer to keep the running up and downstairs to a minimum. Problem was I seemed to be the only one to put shoes in it. Because my kids have gotten used to the ‘cubby’ system at school, they each have a cubby to put their stuff in every day. SOLUTION: I bought a shelf unit at Big Lots for 89 bucks, and then bins to fit in it perfectly. It’s in my living room, convenient to entering and leaving the house.  They have a bin for their shoes, and backpack. One holds pull-ups/baby wipes, one holds books they like to read, one holds binders full of DVD movies, etc. And one holds a few changes of clothes for the kids for quick access. How did I get it to work? As soon as we walk in the door from anything, 90% of the time, they want a sippy cup to drink. I began with afterschool. When I picked them up, as we pulled up at home, each time I would tell them.. Ok we are home, what do we do next? Then I would repeat over that we go in the door, and take off our shoes and backpack, and place them in our cubbies, and especially for Kota since he has school uniforms now, they take their clothes off, and place them in a wicker basket that I keep next to the shelf unit. It did not take long for them to understand that if they didn’t do it, they wouldn’t get the drink or snack or whatever else they may have wanted until it was done. Within a matter of days, it became routine, to the point that ANYTIME now that we walk in the door, they take their shoes off, throw them in their cubbies and toss their socks in the basket.  WHAT IT CHANGED FOR US: Yes of course now I do have laundry in my living room, but I can always keep track of school uniforms and socks, to quickly toss in the wash. But… in the mornings, instead of spending 15 minutes searching for someone’s missing shoe, and another 15 minutes trying to convince them to help me find them, I know exactly where they are. Now there’s no drama of me panicking to find shoes, and keep from being late, which we all know, a late start on the day can make you grouchy the whole damn day. Which means I’m not grouchy starting my day, and they aren’t grouchy because I growled at them all morning to find their shoes!   Also, the bins, hide things from plain site, and I’m not finding their books all over the downstairs. When they want to read, ESPECIALLY since Kota LOVES books, he pulls out the bin and sits on the floor, goes through his books, and then tosses them back in the bin. He can’t get it back on the shelf, but that’s an easy grab for me to set on the shelf and they love knowing where their favorite books are. Also, since we keep their backpacks there, if there is anything that needs to go with them back to school or whatever, I can easily drop it in their bin and we notice it in the morning.

Here is the unit: it comes up to about my shoulders (sorry pic was taken with my cell phone). The sturdy plastic bins were purchased at wal-mart and are about 14 inches tall. Plenty of room to store good-sized items.