The Great House Organization Project — Day 7

Today was a very productive day. The Master Bedroom is DONE! I have gone through sorted, purged and organized everything that I can touch. I left Richard’s dresser alone. He has promised me it will be done this weekend.

The count is now 20 bags to go to Goodwill and 15 cans of trash that have been picked up so far. This is a very freeing exercise.

Here are the before pictures of the Master Bedroom.

The Bookshelf and assorted other piles of stuff



More piles of stuff plus my jewelry box



Richard’s dresser



My dresser

Now here are the after pictures.  I will add Richard’s dresser once it is done.



 The shelf is now all purged and organized.  The boxes next to contain my sewing machine and our flannel sheets.  On top of it is my Thirty-One Kit.  Notice the jewelry box is cleaned off too. The bin on top contains our unmatched socks.

My dresser all cleaned off!

The bed and cedar chest all cleared.

I hope you are having a wonderful day!  I am feeling very productive lately!  Tomorrow I am going to work on the landing and the coat closet. Time to sort through all the shoes, the hats, scarves, gloves and coats that no longer are worn or fit. I see at least one more Goodwill bag coming from here and at least 2 more trash bags.

Pax Christi!
 
A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework ~~St. Francis of Rome

The Great House Organization Project — Day 6

Today was another productive day, in spite of low motivation. Both the bathrooms were cleaned and organized. The top shelf of Liz’s closet was also purged, sorted and organized. So now everything is hers in there, no more storage for the “babies.”

As promised here are the pictures of how we are doing so far:

Front Part of the Garage

Back part of the garage

The growing Goodwill pile



Organized hallway storage cabinet





Bottom of the linen closet



Organized lien closet (with a little mess building, which has been fixed).



Boys’ bed in its new position.  Complete with peeled wall cause by “Not me!”




Boys’ Shelf



Douglas’s dresser, complete with taped up door because someone thought it would be cool to use the duct tape like that.

Boys’ desk

Boys’ closet

Abby’s bed (complete with  an Abby)

Maggie’s Bed

And Marian on her bed

Shot into the room from the door.  That is Mandy on the bed.

Another girls’ room view

Girls’ closet

And for a little humor. These are all the extra blankets taken off the boys’ beds. Now I know why all the blankets were missing. There was a similar pile from the girls’s room. They are now placed into two HUGE bins.



A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework ~~St. Francis of Rome

The Great House Organization Project — Days 4 and 5

I told you the organizing bug has bitten me. Things are going along quite well here. Monday Patrick and I attacked the boys’ room. It took us most of the day, but it was completed in just one day, not the two I had planned. We went through every shelf, every drawer, every toy and every piece of clothing in that room. We even did a little bit of rearranging. Another 6 bags of trash and 5 bags of Goodwill items are ready to go.

Today we attacked the girls room. This room has 6 girls that sleep there. Three of them are 4 years old and they don’t like to put things away, but the sure love to pull things out. I had planned on this room taking three days because of the size and the overall clutter in there.  But Mandy, Becky, Emma and even the little girls all pulled together and we got finished today.  Once again every shelf, bin, drawer, toy and item of clothing was purged, sorted or donated. This time there was 4 bags of Goodwill items and 8 bags of trash.

My trash men are definitely not going to like me come Thursday. I think tomorrow we will be baking them some brownies as a thank you for putting up with our messes.
 
On top of it all I have come down with a summer cold. I hate summer colds, but I have been pushing through it to get the work done. Since I am not feeling one hundred percent, tomorrow I am going to make it an easy day. I am going to work on the three bathrooms and one shelf  in Liz’s room that has some of the little girls things stored on it. I don’t think that will take all day. But then again, you never know.

I have been told that these posts are worthless without pictures so I am going to post some of the after pictures soon. The only before pictures I have gotten are from the boys’ room. I don’t think it fair to post those when the girls’ room won’t get the same treatment. See kids mom CAN be fair. So tomorrow I will post some of those after I get my pictures organized.

Pax Christi!

A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework ~~St. Francis of Rome

The Great House Organization Project — Day 3

Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers!

I hope you are enjoying your day.

The Great House Organization Project — Day 3

Today Douglas headed off for a week of Boys Scout summer camp somewhere in Delaware. So we will be down one child until sometime next Saturday. Mandy is now off of school for the summer. Well sort of. She has a bunch of summer homework to do, so she will working on that. As I mentioned yesterday we are on a three week break from our homeschooling. So it should be quiet at the zoo. Although I am sure that remains to be seen.

Today I had planned as a day of rest in The Great House Organization Project, but I have the organizing bug has hit, so I decided to tackle the next item on my list. Emma and I attacked the upstairs hallway, linen closet and small cabinet we have there. Three hours later we have thrown out expired products, bagged up 6 bags of usable sheets, blankets and towels to donate and organized the remaining items.

We used my bedroom as the staging area and only had one small glitch. A bag of Epsom salts had not been tightly closed, so when I reached across the bed to pick it up, it opened up and I had salts fly all over the comforter. Right now I can laugh over it, when it happened, not so much.

Now the linen closed is organized, has open space and is functional.  I can’t believe how much stuff I had been holding onto that we didn’t need.  We really didn’t need 5 sets of sheets for each bed and 6 towels for each person. Nor did we need 35 hand towels and 100 washcloths.  Each bed now has 2 sheet sets, plus a flannel set for winter.  Each person has 2 towels, plus we kept 5 extras for pool use.  Washcloths fill one small bin.  The hand towels have been pared down to 20: 10 for the downstairs bathroom and 10 for the upstairs bathroom. We tend to go through 2 hand towels a day, so I feel like that is a reasonable amount for our house.

All the toiletries and medications we use have been organized and been grouped so they are easy to find.  We have put together a neb kit for those moments when we need to get a neb going quickly.  It is a bin with the tubing, mask, medications and the neb machine.  I can tell a child to go grab the neb kit and we won’t have to search for the components.

Overall a very productive afternoon!

Next up on the list is the boy’s black hole room.  I have slated two days for that disaster.  I hope that is enough time.  But Douglas is not here, so it should go faster.  😀

I hope are enjoying a wonderful day!

Pax Christi!

A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework ~~St. Francis of Rome

The Great House Organization Project

That is it. We are done. The past 18 months has been hard on the entire family and the house. The basics around the house were done, but much was left undone. The house was surface clean, but nothing was really gone through, sorted, purged, or organized. NOTHING! I think every piece of paper, catalog, bill, and junk mail that entered the house is still somewhere in the house, garage or basement.

Thursday I went to find my mop in the garage and could not even walk out the door. I would tell one of the children to go put something in the garage. They must have stood at the door and pitched it. I picture them standing there yelling  “INCOMING!!!!” it ws thrown.  I noticed they would place one overloaded box on top of another box and the bottom box would collapse, everything on it and in it ended up on the floor, onto which more things were thrown.  The garage looked like a bomb had detonated out there. Box stacked up on caving in box, empty boxes piled to the ceiling, paper strewn everywhere, cleaning supplies dripping their contents all over the floor and onto the papers. One good match and the house would have been history.
A dungeon. A disaster zone. A hard hat area. A fire zone. If anyone had seen it I am sure it would have been condemned. Wee decided to do a Clean Sweep of the garage.

Friday morning, Richard and the children started by taking EVERYTHING out of the garage. It was placed on the driveway. We went through each large item and made a decision about it. Many things were tossed, others were put in the donate pile and just a few were kept. We were ruthless. Then we moved onto the smaller items and boxes. Similar decision were made for each item, piece of paper, and “momento” we touched.

During the process we discovered we had a mouse issue, so many things were placed in the trash just because of those little rodents. Finding a nest in a box of papers or books makes the decision easy — TRASH! Those items we are keeping have been catalogued and put into bins or boxes so we can easily find them in the future.  Not to mention, if we don’t use them in a year, they just might be donated.

We worked steadily all through the morning and early afternoon. As the day went on we got started to tire out. We called it a day around 5 PM. Since rain was a possibility overnight, we put everything, including the trash, back into the garage for storage.

First thing Saturday morning, Richard and Douglas loaded up the van and made a dump run. It was a very full van! Once they returned, we started going through the remaining boxes and baskets. There were still so many of them.  We continued to trash, donate or keep each item. We continued to catalog the kept items. Once again around 5PM we called it quits. Right now I still have 10 bins of paper to go through. My goal is to go through a box a day for the next 10 days to get it all done.  Then we can say the garage is no longer a disaster area waiting to be condemned.  Well actually you can say it now, but it sounds better that way. 

This has led to a lets get the whole house done train of thought. The Great House Organization Project has officially begun. We will be focusing on one area or room until everything in it has been sorted, purged, or donated. Then we will clean the room top to bottom and put the remaining items back into the room in an organized, well thought out plan. Well that is the ideal we are shooting to reach anyway.

We are on a homeschooling break for the next three weeks, so I have come up with a schedule that will get the entire house done by July 5th. Some rooms will take a day, some will take a couple of days, one or two will take three days because of size or mess.

I am not planning on pushing myself or the family to the point of aggravation or exhaustion. We are going to work steady, finish up by 5 PM and have a fun family evening. I have planned dinners that are all 30 minute one-pot meals or crockpot favorites.

Anyone else care to join in The Great House Organization Project?

Pax Christi!

A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework ~~St. Francis of Rome

A medical day that was okay :)

Richard had to have a couple of medical tests done today. He has reached “that age” when there are several tests that require unpleasant preps. Yesterday was that day. I am just glad it was Richard going through it and not me. I know cruel, but true.

The tests were today and we are thanking God that everything is okay. He has had several symptoms that could have led to bad results. The only “negative” was that he has to eat healthier and more fiber. Well that was music to my ears.

I have thinking about getting a grain mill, so next up on my to do list it research which one would be the best to purchase. Then I need to research the different types of wheat, and which one to use for things like bread, pastry, cookies. All things we all love and can be made at least a bit healthier. I guess God will give us reasons to pursue our desires if we drag our feet, especially if it involves our personal health.

Friday is going to be a catch up day since the past two days have been spent with a different focus. We are ending our home school year tomorrow too. Douglas heads off to a week long Boy Scout camp next week, then we have my birthday and July 4th in the following two weeks.

We plan on starting up the new year on July 11th. We have a new plan that we have been working out. I will blog on that sometime soon.

I hope you all have a wonderful Friday!

Pax Christi!

A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework ~~St. Francis of Rome

For those who have lost someone…

This is a quote taken from Of Many Things, America Magazine, November 3, 2003. The article is written by George M. Anderson, S.J.

A reflection by the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner deals with this issue of remaining in tough with those who have died: “The great and sad mistake of many people…is to imagine that those whom death has taken, leave us. They do now leave us. They remain! Where are they? In darkness? Oh, no! It is we who are in darkness. We do not see them, but they see us. Their eyes, radiant with glory, are fixed upon our eyes… Oh, infinite consolation! Though invisible to us, our dead are not absent… They are living near us, transfigured…into light, into power, into love.”

Such a strong assurance of the continued presence of those for whom we cared can serve as a needed…consolation.

What a comforting thought.

A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework ~~St. Francis of Rome

What a hard, long month this has been

This has been a long, hard month. A lot going on,and nothing really accomplished. Homeschooling is just about done for the year, I had my review in mid-May and everything went well.

We are shaking things up a bit for our next school year. We are going to start our new year on July 11th. We will school for 6 weeks and then take a week’s break. I think this will help with some of the “burn-out” that has been happening over the past year. It will also enable us to have a week off at Thanksgiving, three weeks off during Advent and Christmas and another week or two at Easter. If things go as planned, then the “school-year” should be finished sometime in early in May 2012.

Mandy is finishing up her junior year and will be a senior next year. THAT seems hard to believe for me. She  remains in the International Baccalaureate Program. She is surviving, but it is a very hard course of studies and many of the children are faltering this year.

We are in the midst of making some life altering decisions, so pray that we make the correct decisions for the family.

A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework ~~St. Francis of Rome