Making a Home for the Holidays - UPDATE

While I haven't been following the blog's daily instructions to a T, I think I have made some really great progress in my quest to have a clean, organized, clutter free home in time to relax for the holidays.

Since I work full time, have two year old twins, am 5 months pregnant, and very much an exhausted scatterbrain right now, I've been focusing on just doing an hour a night. Sometimes I skip a night, but I still feel really good about what I've done.

So far, I've managed to clean out and streamline my entire kitchen - which yeilded an entire box of glassware, stemware, plates, saucers and assorted kitchen gadgets that are no longer necessary to keep.

I cleared out all of my junk areas (and there were several stashed around the house) and made the areas a "No Loitering Zone". Nothing remains there for more than a day without it going to it's proper place or getting tossed. I have high hopes for that anyway.

I stripped my bedroom of all the piles that had accumulated over the past six months. For lack of space, our master bedroom had become my catch all room. Anything that didn't have a specific home, or I just didn't know what to do with, landed here. After six months, I no longer had a clear path to the bed, which in my rapidly expanding state, was quite the safety hazard. I'm happy to say that all of my clutter piles are now gone - hopefully for good! I went through my dresser and my closet and cleaned out all the clothes that I have been hanging onto for no real reason. And yes, I'm counting "maybe someday I will magically shed 3 sizes and be able to fit into these pants again" as an unreal reason. I managed to fill two big black garbage bags full of clothes that I no longer need. And wouldn't you know it - I now have room to store the clothes I actually do wear in their proper place instead of the laundry basket!

Tomorrow is the big pay off day when I will be dropping all the unwanted items at the Goodwill and be rid of them forever! How sad is it that I'm really excited to do that?

This weekend we will be tackling the boys' room. Notice I said "we". I am fully recruiting Kamaki's help on this one as dismantling cribs and hauling heavy toy boxes around is way out of my range of capabilities at this point. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm excited to get the boys set up in more of a toddler type room instead of the not far from the newborn days type room they have now.

In addition to clearing out their room, we will be saying bye-bye to their cribs and setting up mattresses on the floor for them until we can find some suitable beds. I have to admit, I'm pretty nervous about the fact that they will be free to roam around as they please when they should be going to sleep, but for now, I'm going to be naively optimistic.