Tidying Up!

It always seems like at the beginning of the year I get a fire under me to organize the house. It all started with me watching Tidying up with Marie on Netflix. The first place I started organizing was the garage since I knew I wouldn't be able to lift the heavy bins after my surgery on January 10th.

We got a bunch of it done prior to my surgery, but there was still a bit to do. We finally finished it right before Ella's birthday party. 

I found some old pictures that I had of the garage that were basically what it was like so I'll show you some before and afters. 

This is what the back left side of the garage looked like with this huge cabinet. This cabinet was awesome for some reasons and super annoying for other reason. It was nice to have a place to store Christmas presents, but it was very difficult to get into it and it took up SO much space! 

This is what that corner looks like now. Michael had these wall shelves in the garage, but in a different location so we decided to move them back here and fill them with the bins that I get into the most often. 

Here's a picture of the whole back wall of the garage. You can see over the trailer that there are more bins. We had two sets of those wall shelves so we flanked the frig and the freezer with shelves on either sides. 

This is what the back left wall of the garage used to look like....of course in actuality it was much much messier. When we started parking the trailer in the garage it made getting to those shelves almost impossible and those were all the bins that had the kids clothes in them. Now those bins are not blocked by the trailer since they are on the left side of the garage. 

This is what the right side looks like now. Those shelves hold the Christmas decorations and all the camping stuff. It's definitely not things we need to access all the time, but we can still access them if we need too. 

This is what the front right corner of the garage used to look like. Again when we started parking the trailer in the garage those shelves became almost impossible to access. 

Here's what this side looks like now. Michael moved his workbenches up to the front corner and all his power tools are hanging on the wall. It's so great not having those shelves on this wall so we can actually walk all the way around the trailer! 

On top of organizing the garage, I had been working on the inside of the house by going through clothes and just organizing in general. Zeke had been going on and on about wanting to sleep in the big boys room again and I started thinking it might be nice to have all of them in one room and then have a separate play/game room like we had before. 

While I was at Caitlynn's birthday party with Ella I actually found something on Amazon that would make the closet work with 3 kids in the same room. My first task was to make all the drawers be able to work without having to bring in another dresser. With the new folding method I learned from watching the show I was able to get all the boys clothes in the drawers that were already in their room. 

I waited to move Zeke into the room until I had been cleared by the doctor to workout. It was super easy since Zeke's bed is just the box springs and then a mattress....we don't have his bed on a bed frame because then a ton of junk gets put under the bed and also because Charlie tries to climb up into the box springs since he ripped a hole into the fabric under there. 

The dresser that's built in under Owen's bed is where Owen and Jack's clothes are. Jack has the three drawers on the left and Owen has the three on the right. 

Originally I had the piano under the window, but I didn't like how I couldn't push it right up against the wall because of the space heater so I moved it over to this wall where the bookshelf used to be. 

Now the bookshelf is on the wall right by the door. The drawers that you can barely see on the right side of this picture are Zeke's drawers. He gets more drawer because they are smaller and because he actually wears pajamas so he needs more room for folded clothes. 

As for their closet...here it is! Owen's clothes are on the right, Jack's are on the left and Zeke's are underneath Jack's. 

This is what I purchased from Amazon. It's this bar that hooks onto the bar up above and hangs down. It was the perfect solution and it only cost $11! 

As for the play/game room....it's really in limbo right now because we are still waiting for work to be done on the house. We figured we don't want to move too much stuff in there since we need to paint, but we also don't want to paint until all the work on the inside is finished. I did end up getting something on our Facebook Buy Nothing group that was awesome. I knew that I wanted some sort of couch, sectional or futon for this room so the kids could have a place to sit and play their video games and then it could possibly be used for extra sleeping space. I decided to ask on the FB group and this lady responded that she had a hide-a-bed love seat. 

Michael went and picked it up from her and it fits perfectly in here! It's so cute and in great shape. The bed is honestly awful...she warned us about that, but I'm planning on buying a twin foam cover for it so that should help. It was just awesome to get something so nice for free!!! 

This room does have all the toys in it so that helps keep the kids rooms from getting overwhelmingly messy! 

Most likely this fall (we'll be working on the outside of the house during the summer) we will finally repaint this room and then move in the TV that's in the master bedroom and move the Xbox up there so the kids have an actual play/game room.