CLEAN HOME CARNIVAL

Several weeks ago, JulieMom invited us to a Clean Home Carnival. She challenged us to start getting our houses in order by picking one or more rooms or spaces to clean and organize, and then come back on April 1st with before and after pictures to show what we had done.

Well I had all kinds of great plans for what I would accomnplish for this great Show and Tell, but alas, I got bogged down with work (the kind that pays the bills) and was only able to focus on one room--my bedroom/office.

This room doesn't have a real partition in it, but I have accomplished that in a virtual sort of way by having the bedroom part face one wall, and the office part face another. Here are the "before" pictures of each half.

As you can see, lots of clutter. Stuff all over my bed and the floor, under the credenza, and stacked all over the top of it. And my computer desk so full of paper, it was a frustrating eyesore.

The first thing I did was wash the windows and curtains, and vacuum the blinds. Then I decided to focus on the bedroom half of the room. What to do with all these piles of stuff. Bills that needed to be paid, things that needed to be filed, magazines I had started reading, projects I was in the middle of, books and videos I had borrowed from the library, all haphazardly scattered everywhere you looked. So off I went to Costco, to scrounge up some sturdy boxes of varying sizes that could be hidden under my bed, or neatly placed in my giant walk-in closet.

My next step was to sort everything into organized piles, and put each category in a separate box. Now nothing is mixed up anymore, and I can instantly locate what I'm looking for without creating an even bigger mess trying to find it. And, I can also work on one project at a time without creating any more clutter in the process. Oh, and I almost forgot. While I was working on the bedroom cleanup, I ordered myself a new bedspread and pillow shams for a bit of a new look. It arrived just in time to be included in the "after" pictures.

Now that I could actually see my floor again, and the top of the credenza was no longer piled high, I was able to do a thorough dust and vacuum job, including underneath the bed. And in the dusting process, instead of just dumping all the papers on my computer desk someplace else and back again, I took time to put them into the binder and folders they should have been in, in the first place. Such a simple thing, and yet such a huge time saver when I'm trying to put my finger on something I need fast.

The finished product? Voila!

Thank you, JulieMom, for sparking the fire.