To Do List

I constantly have a giant 'to do' list.  I guess purchasing a house that is in shambles lends itself to that little problem.  This week though, I am working to knock a few things off of this list in hopes to organize our home and make more time for things I enjoy to do and perhaps have a kitchen that is completed.  (Currently it is half painted in a color my husband refers to as 'Candy Land Blue' - so the blue is going.)

At any rate, I decided that the best way for me to organize and live this perfect, have-it-all-together life that I envision for myself was to put things in steps.  Steps to organization.

Step 1!

The first item on this list that needed immediate attention is the clothing situation.  Every member of this house appears to have an excessive amount of clothes, or so I'm told by friends who see it.  I'm not 100% sure how this happens considering I am NOT a shopper.  Well, not a retail shopper.  I'm more of the thrift store/garage sale/occasional E-bay lot shopper.  Perhaps that is the problem.  If it's only 50 cents... who cares?  Right? 

But, I really don't, or didn't, think that there was sooooo much, I think it appears this way from the outside looking in because my boys each only use a dresser.  Our old house did not have closets (odd, I know) so we have become accustom to dressers only.  Because of this there is a constant stream of clean clothes in baskets laying all over our house.  At any one point in time you can find a minimum of 3 clean, folded baskets of laundry containing at least three loads of laundry in each sitting in random locations.  (I like to break it up and move them to sporadic spots because 3 in the living room would just make me appear lazy right?)

So... this week I have gone through everyone's dressers, eliminated all excess in efforts to keep it simple.  While doing this I sent my husband and the kids on a hanger run so that we can finally make use of these closets that have just been sitting empty for the past few months.  Now everyone's drawers are filled with a manageable amount of clothes and bulkier items such has sweatshirts and long sleeved shirts have been moved to the closets.  My hope is that this itself will save me hours a week of picking up laundry off of bedroom floors to refold and reorganize drawers because one of the kids was looking for 'that one red shirt' and it just so happened to be at the bottom of the drawer.

Just a tip, one thing I found I could cut back on for my kids was pajamas.  Each of my kids had tons of pajamas.  I'm not sure why they had such large collections of them considering they prefer to sleep in their underwear.  They each now only have three pair, that they chose, to keep for sleepovers or trips to grandparents houses.

Now to just get this all to GoodWill!