Unorganized Living

I'm hanging on by a thread lately. Work is CRAZY... I know I've said that before, but I feel like I need to create a new word that is bigger and more hectic than crazy. I have actually gotten to the point of tears this past week, on a regular basis. It could be that I ran out of my zoloft my doctor put me on after I had N, but it also could be that things are just super overwhelming! (I did refill my prescription today just in case, but my doctor told me it was a pediatric dose and probably wasn't going to make a drastic difference... I'm starting to think it is doing a good bit!)

Anyways... part of the overwhelmingness is how unorganized everything has gotten. Work AND home. Everyone has told me to just let housework and other things go and enjoy the baby, but when things look like this:


Its hard to continue to let things go, things are feeling too out of control. Yes, 3 FULL laundry baskets and one more in my room that looks just like this!

Things are so unorganized that I drove all the way to target today (20 minutes one way) and realized my purse was at home... and the tears started again and wouldn't stop.

SO - I've made some decisions. The first one is that I am going to work on Sunday morning to catch back up and hopefully start back on a good foot Monday morning instead of trying to continuously dig myself out. I hope this will be the one and only time I have to work on a weekend, but N sleeps until about 8 or 9am, so I'd rather go while he is sleeping than miss the time when he's awake. And second, I'm going to get organized! I've been inspired by my messy MESSY life and this blog (she is doing a 31 days to organized living series right now).

One of the things the blogger (Kelly) says many times is have less stuff than you have room for. Well, we don't have a lot of room, but we sure do have A LOT of STUFF... and I think its time to do some major throwing away. I have months of magazines stacked up I haven't read yet... time to go.

In one post she talks about how she only has 3 types of each item of clothing for her 5 kids, so 3 t-shirts, 3 pants, 3 skirts.... can you imagine? THREE?! I read that part to Ben and he said she was crazy. I have to admit, I don't do laundry enough to only have 3 items, but I could trim down the onesies from 60 to maybe 12... seriously... we have A LOT of onesies.

I decided that I am going to organize ONE thing a day. Just one. Whether its one drawer or one basket of clothes... one shelf... I need to organize ONE thing until things get back in order again. That doesn't sound too crazy right?

Here are some of my unorganized areas:

This is a super cute trunk in our foyer that you can't even see.



Shelves and shelves of books I haven't read.... and its not looking likely that will happen any time soon. Time to get rid of them?


On top of the fridge/cabinets.

And just because this makes it all better:Sweet little pumpkin pie! He LOVES his bath. :)

Here's to becoming more organized! First thing to cleanup: the DVR... I didn't want to start off too big. :)

The Never-Ending Nursery

We are still ticking away at the weeks/days before our sweet child arrives and yet the nursery seems to be far from finished.

Phase 1: We painted - success!

Phase 2: Order furniture - Not so successful. We ordered furniture from Legacy because it was the same company we ordered our bedroom furniture from and we knew it was good quality. Well, the kids dresser came in and it was awful. For nearly the same price as an adult dresser we got a dresser that was flimsy and appeared to be made of plywood and much smaller than I imagined (no I didn't see it in person before we ordered...). Thankfully, the wonderful Alabama Furniture Market, where we buy our furniture from, allowed us to exchange it.

Bring on Phase 3.... the search for another dresser that matched the crib. Again, unsuccessful. We knew that the crib matched our bedroom dresser (unintentionally), but I was very against having two of the same dressers in the house. Well, three weeks later of looking, phone calls and color samples, we ordered the same dresser.

Today the dresser came in! Hooray!!! (it looks small in this picture, but it is definitely not).


Now we are at Phase 4.... how does this all fit into this room?!?!

I plotted it out on Pottery Barn Kids for about an hour without getting too excited about any of the layouts I could come up with.

Here is how it was set up when the dresser came out of the box:
What I do not like about this is the bottom left corner - those are two bookshelves next to a window. Leaving that awkward empty corner. The crib is against the top wall and the dresser against the right side wall.

We pushed it around for about an hour after that and again ended up unsatisfied and giving up with it all sitting randomly in the center of the room...


Which brings me to my next problem.... I do not like the color of the shelves compared to the crib... AT ALL. So I'm back to having to paint. I'm thinking of painting them a sage/green color. What do you think? And when will you be coming to my house to arrange my furniture?

A decision has been made!

Ben and I FINALLY picked out furniture! We have been looking for quite sometime and after looking at a ton of stores, websites and prices (!!!) we made a decision. Yes, this includes our bedroom furniture AND nursery furniture.

Here is our nursery purchase, although we decided on just the crib and a dresser (not shown). Not the under crib storage either... all I thought was how much that would attract dust and doghair!


It was hard to make the purchase, but Ben used his negotiating skills he learned from Pawn Stars (along with shopping at a warehouse/market store) and we really feel like we got a great deal (and that is why we've been saving). I feel so much better now that our baby won't arrive before the crib :). The 'what-will-be-a-nursery' still looks like a disaster area, but we are one step closer. My dad is going to help me paint next weekend and our furniture will be here in 4 weeks. Then we'll worry about the little things like curtains and accessories (hamper, storage, pictures, bedding, etc.).

I can't wait for our furniture to be in either and my clothes to be in a working dresser; don't worry there will be before and after pictures!

Country Livin'

When Ben and I got engaged we (I) went house hunting. I found our perfect house, but couldn't get back to it. The roads were windy and most of them did not have street signs. God knew we should live there because when we asked a realtor to show us around, she brought us to the very house (frame) I picked out.

Our house is half-way between two cities: Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. Ben works in Tuscaloosa and at the time I was in Birmingham. 30 minute drive either way. I love where we live. It is just far enough from the city that taxes are lower, houses are a little cheaper and we're in the country. But, it is close enough that I can drive 15 minutes to the grocery store or 30 to a mall.

One fabulous thing about living in the middle of nowhere is there is no fast food! If you want to eat out, it has to be a trip. There isn't any running to the corner to pick up a sandwich or order a pizza.

In fact, if we want to order a pizza we have to meet Domino's at the nearest truck stop. Yep.

So we don't eat out often, Dave Ramsey would be happy.

However, we're getting big time!

We're getting a Loves Truck Stop. We probably don't NEED another truck stop, but they didn't really ask me one way or another, so up it goes.

Well... I was driving by the other day and saw this sign going up....

Great...

I would certainly prefer it to be a Chick-Fil-A and a Jimmy Johns if it HAS to be fast food, but I am not happy about fast food moving into our neighborhood one bit!

While I'm at it, I'll also enlighten you to some good and bad things about country livin':

We have 9 lakes! (This is one of the smallest ones, but it has a cute picnic area and fishing area for kids)No one tells you you cannot have roosters....... (No, this is not MY rooster)

....or move into your Home Depot shed if you please. (The real one in this story is not nearly this cute.)You can have whatever mailbox you desire. (Just in case you thought this was my latest purchase... again, not mine.)

You don't even have to clean the mold off of your house!

Or clean up your broke-down swimming pool.

(Ben would not let me take pictures of these... he was worried I'd get shot. Use your imagination!)

You can see the stars at night and hear the frogs & crickets when the sun goes down.

Its usually 5 -10 degrees cooler!

Ben can work as loud, as early or as late as he wants to on his buggy and no one gets upset.

So, as long as I don't develop a new love of McDonalds or Subway (doing great so far) then my country livin' shouldn't be interrupted too badly.

What happens when I losen the grip a little.

You may know... I have a hard time letting go of the money. (See #3) Well, Ben has been telling me and telling me we needed a new faucet for several months. (I'm very sad I forgot to take an actual 'before' picture, but this one w/ the old sink on the porch will have to do). I found this faucet at Lowe's while shopping for the new one. Wanna know how much the builder spent on it? A big fat $29.98! It didn't take long for the cap to fall off and it start to leak.


Now, if you know Ben even a little bit, you know that he LOVES to spend money. So while we were looking for new faucets, Ben mentions that we probably need a new sink to match too. Um... no. So we leave Lowe's and give up on the whole idea. Well, several weeks went by and Ben again mentions we really need a new faucet. I finally gave in and agreed. I even went by the post office that day to pick up a change of address packet (for the 10% off Lowe's coupon, of course!). Well, we picked out an amazing faucet and yes... a new sink. But I can't even express the difference it makes in our little kitchen.

Before: (Sort of)


After:
I think its wonderful and am so glad Ben persisted with the faucet/sink issue. He even installed the whole thing by himself. I watched and asked why he didn't need to read instructions a few times, but turns out he didn't need to read them after all. We struggled with the white color, but we don't have anything stainless in our whole kitchen (except the old sink) and cabinets are white, tile is gray and counter top is dark gray speckled, so it looks very 'clean'. What do you think?