The Saturday Spruce-Up – Back Porch Spring Cleaning

March 31st, 2012 | Posted by Bryn in The Saturday Spruce-Up - (Comments Off on The Saturday Spruce-Up – Back Porch Spring Cleaning)

All winter, every winter, my unused back porch turns into a catch-all room, a storage room, gathering dust and odds and ends including old lamps, stuff for Salvation Army, and who knows what else? Yesterday I spent naptime moving furniture and stuff, vacuuming, scrubbing and DE-CLUTTERING. It feels so good to have my cute little porch back.

Here’s the shameful before picture with a winter’s worth of junk:

Yikes! That's embarrassing... and this is the entrance we and guests use every time.

The view from the back door. Layers of dust and junk. I do like the bamboo shades though.

I included this one because you can really see the dust build-up under the bench. It's awful. Why am I posting these on the internet?! What is wrong with me?!

Okay, so here are the after pictures that (somewhat) redeem me as a wife, mother, and human being.

Aaaah. Much better. It's all scrubbed, washed, vacuumed. Much, much better.

This is a doll clothes armoire I had when I was a little girl. I love it as an end table!

No more dust under that bench!

Won’t my mommy be so proud of me?

Have a great weekend!

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The Saturday Spruce-Up: The Kid Emergency Bag

March 24th, 2012 | Posted by Bryn in The Saturday Spruce-Up - (Comments Off on The Saturday Spruce-Up: The Kid Emergency Bag)

Okay, so this bag I keep in my van isn’t for actual emergencies, but more for normal “kid” emergencies. We were at a local indoor playground recently (Going Bonkers) and my newly potty trained two-year-old wet her pants. I frantically searched the diaper bag for anything that would fit her, then ran out to the van while my little girl cried quietly because she still wanted to play.

Out in the van, the only thing I could find was a pair of gym shorts (and it was below freezing out) that my four-year-old hadn’t quite grown into yet. Why did I have shorts in my van in the middle of January? Because sometimes I can be a bit way too unorganized, and this pair happened to fall out of a bag of hand-me-downs we had received from another family.

I brought the shorts, thinking we were just going to have to make them work, when a good Samaritan–another mom I barely know–offered her son’s extra pair of sweat pants without a second thought. All I could do was keep saying, “Thank you! Thank you so much!” And thinking to myself, “I wish I was her right now. I wish I was smart enough to have extra clothes for my kids. Why am I NOT a type-A personality?!”

Then I discovered that it doesn’t take a type-A personality to put together a kid emergency bag. Here’s what’s in mine:

The Van Emergency Bag for Kids

  • Diapers
  • Wipes
  • Extra set of clothes for each kid, including socks and underwear
  • Jacket or sweater for each kid
  • Jammies for the baby

I just put it all in a bag, and it stays in the trunk of my van. Easy as pie! (I never understood this saying… it’s not really that easy to make pie.)

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I also found a car emergency kit placed in an adorably decorated plastic wipes case on the blog Rips in My Jeans (found via Pinterest, of course!). So I decided to make my own. Since I know I’ll never make the time to actually cover the box in cute fabrics, I’m just using Tupperware. Here’s what’s in my box:

The Van Emergency Box

I like that the Tupperware is clear so I can see everything inside without taking off the lid. This piece is a square #2 Modular Mate with a blue lid.

  • grocery bag for trash
  • hand sanitizer
  • Wet Ones
  • ibuprofen
  • lotion
  • white petroleum jelly (good to use for diaper rash cream or lip balm or for small cuts)
  • tissues
  • a safety pin
  • a small amount of cash & change
  • non-perishable snacks (I have Craisins)
  • a hair tie
  • a pen
  • bubbles (my maniacs go absolutely nuts for bubbles)
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Now I can feel like one of those actually-making-Pinterest-projects, wore-her-skinny-jeans-home-from-the-hospital, super-organized-tidy-house b moms… even though I’m really not.

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The Saturday Spruce-Up – Coat Closet

January 21st, 2012 | Posted by Bryn in 2012 Resolutions | Living Simply | The Saturday Spruce-Up | Uncategorized - (Comments Off on The Saturday Spruce-Up – Coat Closet)

This week’s Saturday Spruce-Up is the big closet in our bathroom. Since we moved in six years ago, this closet has been a catch-all–just throw something in and quickly shut the door. When I actually opened it up and cleaned everything out, I couldn’t believe how much stuff we had packed into that tight little space. Here are some before shots:

This isn't even a true before shot, that would have been WAY too embarrassing...

Crowded, unorganized shelves, lots of clutter, and general dustiness

 

I am attempting to turn it into a little mudroom. Our 1400 square foot house is always tight on space, so I want to eke a little more use out of this big closet. I still want to paint the inside walls and get something to contain the shoes, but check out these “in progress” shots:

We're getting there!

Now I have a place to put two baskets of dirty laundry so my bathroom doesn't get taken over, a basket for winter hats, mittens, and scarves within the kids' reach, and a shelf for my diaper bag. Love it when everything has a home!

And we even have room for coats in our coat closet! Plus, the shelves are organized with gift bags, duffel bags, and stuff to sell on ebay.:)

No fancy-schmancy makeovers here, but at least we now have a functional mudroom instead of an embarrassing mess. Have a great weekend!

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The Saturday Spruce-Up: My Tupperware Cabinet

January 14th, 2012 | Posted by Bryn in 2012 Resolutions | Living Simply | The Saturday Spruce-Up - (Comments Off on The Saturday Spruce-Up: My Tupperware Cabinet)

Today starts a new (hopefully) weekly series to get my house spruced up by summer. Welcome to the Saturday Spruce-Up. I am hoping to post different projects around my house, declutter-ization and organization in our little “That 70’s Show” house–notice the groovy brown vinyl floor and mint green insides of our cabinets shown below.

Today I organized my Tupperware cabinet. Okay, so it’s not a very big project, but I have to start somewhere, right?

So here is the before:

I may have thrown a bit of a mommy-fit last night looking for a lid of a piece of Tupperware I was using for leftovers. Can’t blame the kids for this one…

Anyway, as you can see, it was a crazy mess even before my little outburst, with papers and random items I have hoarded crap that needed to be thrown out or to be found a new home.

I spent a couple hours–yes it took hours–to go through the entire cabinet, I even found some papers and junk mail from 2009. Yay. After everything was cleared out, I finally had room to put the Tupperware I use back in, and I am even getting rid of some of it that I never use. I’m hoppin’ back on the declutter train!

Here is the after:

Aaahhh. Much better, and I even have all the lids together. I’m taking just one step at a time, and I’m on my way to ridding my house of CHAOS (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome, thank you, FlyLady.net) for good.

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