New boys bedroom

Last post I left you with an emptied out room ready to move my two boys into a shared bedroom. Well, they are in it and they love it!


New boys room (complete with boy #2 napping on the bed)

We started out by just moving their existing furniture into the room and working out what we need from there. I am also only putting in things that we definitely want in our lives (ie. books and toys that they love, the clothes that they actually wear and a box of memories each). This process for me is about simplifying and organizing! So I am also trying to make it easy to maintain by creating a "home" for everything that belongs in the room.

I pinched an idea from Jen at iheartorganizing and organised their Lego using the Trofast storage units from Ikea. Works brilliantly!!!

Lego Station

I also sorted their colouring books and activity books into magazine holders and placed them on to of the Lego station. Their crayons and pencils are in the pots on the shelf (slightly higher than Master 3 year old can reach to minimise unsupervised "activities").

We still want to repaint the room and I have bought them matching doona covers also (not photographed yet). But overall we are pretty close to done apart from a few little tweaks here and there.

Our next project is moving our daughter from the room which is next to our bedroom at the front of the house into the room which was our oldest son's room. The room which was hers will become our home office. I'm hoping that in the redesigned room we won't have a repeat of the chaos you saw earlier! Next post I will show you the results! 

I have a secret....

I have a secret, the bedroom right at the very back of my house is a shambles! No one would know it because the door is ALWAYS closed. I'm about to take a deep breath and share it with you. We're opening the door...



And stepping inside...

Step carefully over all the junk and look back toward the door...

This room is supposed to be my craft room and our home office. Doesn't exactly scream creativity or organisation does it? Come to think of it, my creativness has taken a turn for the worst lately and I've got no doubt that it is because of the state of this room.

There is so much stuff here! Every time I need to put something in this room I end up dumping it because either I don't have anywhere to put it or I can't get to the place where it is supposed to go. It's also become the dumping ground for anything that doesn't have a home! Then on the other hand, if I want to work on a craft project, the thought of having to deal with this in order to find anything puts me off.

TIme to take a stand!

My husband and I have been talking about converting this room into a shared bedroom for our two boys (it is the biggest bedroom in the house other than the master bedroom). We will then separate out my craft from our home office and make them separate rooms.
The first step I had to take was to begin to at least sort out what was in this room. It didn't take me long - two days. I threw out LOTS of paperwork from the bookshelves, removed the trestle table from the room, put all my fabric into baskets, put away anything that had a home. Then it started to look more like this.

Maybe you need a side by side to really see the difference:

Before                                                                  After

And the wardrobe



Before                                  and                                After

Better but not great.

Then hubby took some annual leave to get some of the projects done around the house. So we emptied the bookcases entirely (onto the floor of our living room).

Moved the bookcases and filing cabinets out of the room. And moved the boys in!

Watch this space! I'm pretty thrilled with how it's turning out! And so are they!



Welcome

Hi! I’m Belinda and I’m very excited to welcome you to my first blog post about my journey since I found “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin. Please be gentle, this is my first ever blog and I’m a bit nervous! This might be a long post, please bear with me.

A couple of months ago, I found myself feeling a bit “down in the dumps”. I had my latest acquisition in hand – the one that was supposed to fulfil my latest hope of happiness. But what do you know; there was something else I wanted....  There’s always something else...

However, maybe this latest acquisition may in fact be the one to stop the cycle. It is a Kindle. It’s wonderful and I love it. I was searching through Amazon’s store looking for a title to try out on my new baby and happened upon Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project”. I promptly downloaded a sample and it was like she was talking about me! I bought a copy and haven’t looked back!

Let me start by talking a bit about myself. I am married to the man I believe to be my “soul mate”. He is a wonderful man, he knows me probably better than I know myself. I am Mum to three lovely, healthy, energetic and beautiful children – 5 year old son, 3 year old son and 1 year old daughter. I work part time in a good job. My husband has a good job. We have a lovely home in a good suburb. I come from a wonderful and supportive family. There is nothing about my life that I should be “down in the dumps” about! Sure, there is the odd speed hump along the way but nothing that anyone else doesn’t have to deal with.

As I read Gretchen’s book I realised that my dissatisfaction with my life comes from within – I am always going to be “happy” when I achieve the next goal, when I make the next purchase, when the next milestone in my children’s life is achieved, when we’ve had the next holiday..... There’s always SOMETHING....

So, armed with Gretchen’s book (yes, another purchase!!!!), I wrote out my list of goals for the first month. Gretchen chose to work on “Vitality” in her first month of her project. This involved generally trying to increase your energy by looking after your health (sleep, exercise, eating well) and reducing the amount of physical and mental clutter in your life.

My goals were:

Health – Drink 8 glasses of water per day,

                Take vitamins

                Exercise every day

                8 hours sleep per night

                Reduce alcohol consumption

Declutter – Declutter 1 shelf/drawer per day

                Obey the 1 minute rule (never put off anything you can do in less than 1 minute)

                Identify any issues as to why clutter is an issue in my life

Tackle 1 nagging task per day

Act energetic – Fake it if needed!

Actually, I did quite well in my first month but there were two areas I fell down on.

One was eating well. I don’t have a weight problem (yes, I know I am blessed) so worrying about what I put in my mouth has never been an issue. However, I did worry about what I was teaching my children with my bad habits. I would skip breakfast, get take out for lunch and snack on unhealthy food – very regularly. Maybe I am blessed by a good metabolism but would my children be??? And surely it would catch up with me at some point! I struggled to find a way to find food that was both appealing to them and myself and make it quick and easy to prepare. I never really had a good understanding of healthy eating. Then I found the Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation and I signed up as a means of education (another purchase!). It was a great decision! I have gotten so much out of the program and I have just signed up to do another round in her next program in January.

The second area I fell down on was the decluttering! At any point in time, apart from toys scattered around the house, my house looks fairly clutter free. That is, until you open a closet or open the door to my dreaded spare bedroom! They are a disaster! I felt so overwhelmed by the massive amounts of stuff that I didn’t even know where to start. I realised that I am emotionally drained by the amount of stuff that I have in my house. Every time something enters our home I don’t know where to put it. So it gets shoved in a cupboard and forgotten. Meanwhile the cupboards are getting more and more overstuffed.  There was too much stuff and nothing had a home. I have no energy for the things that I love and no sense of calm in my life. Time to rethink the situation. I started trawling blogland. I found several sites but the one that has inspired me the most is www.iheartorganizing.blogspot.com . I realised that maybe if I reduced the amount of stuff in my life and gave what was left a place to call home then I might be able to breathe again.

I would love to have you along as I attempt to sort out some of these issues! I welcome suggestions (please be nice!). I’m starting at one end of the house and working my way through and I can’t wait to see the end result!