Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Spring Cleaning - Joanna's Room

This room has taken ages to organize & clean! I've been doing one small piece at a time as I find time. For example, one size of clothes or one drawer or one shelf.

Here is Joanna's closet. It is pretty jammed with any baby paraphenalia in the house, storage boxes for baby clothes up to size 2T, and some of my closet overflow (formal gowns, suits). I don't even know what all I will find in here.

Here is a more general picture of Joanna's room. It tends to become a "catch-all" space because the girls don't play in there and use the floor space. You can see some luggage & storage boxes and baskets in this photo. There is also a matted print and frame that the big girls managed to break the glass out of that just sits in this room awaiting . . . what?

The first big project was sorting and organizing the clothes for Joanna and the new baby (who remains nameless). I am pretty vigilant about not keeping too many clothes and limit myself to one under-the-bed box of each infant size. My mom loves to thrift shop and is constantly providing all the girls with new clothing items. I have to limit how many clothes I keep or there would be no space for them all! As it is, an under the bed box in each size up to 18M and two for each size in 24M/2T to size 6 takes up quite a bit of space!

I also had a big box of shoes from size 7 & up all jumbled together. I sorted those into new boxes and labeled them so I can handily put outgrown shoes into their appropriate spot (provided they aren't destroyed or just in too bad of shape to hand down), or grab the next size up when the time comes.

There was a grocery bag of socks & tights on a hanger that I spent an afternoon sorting. I felt so accomplished with the socks all sized! Why didn't I do this three daughters ago and make my life easier? It'll be really easy to switch socks out next time.

The closet shelves/drawers were like a treasure trove! Here are some surprises I found:

1.Two partial boxes of wipes all dried out. I just added some water and we used them up.
2.Three sippy cups that I thought I had gotten rid of. Thankfully we had only purchased one replacement so the extras have been very nice.
3.I have 39 pairs of cloth training pants in varying sizes. This sounds like a lot, but considering the amount of times we ran out of clean ones I am electing not to get rid of any (though I gave a few 'boy' pair away to a friend with boys).
4. I did decide to get rid of some plain white plastic exterior/cloth interior training pants because I had 12 pair and could certainly make do with 3 in the appropriate size for carseat accidents while potty training. I also got rid of many child-proofing items we have never used and lots of miscellaneous bottle pieces.
5. I found some leather "seat protectors" I had forgotten all about. These are just in time for our carseat transfer to the leather seats in the Suburban.
6. I discovered I had 8 crib sheets so I got rid of over half of those, too. I had accumulated so many because of potty training in a toddler bed, but as I plan to never have a toddler bed again I only need a couple of sheets.
7. I have not one, but two car seat carrier covers. I got rid of the gender-neutral one of those, too.

Do you notice a theme here? I've decided that on my fourth daughter I don't have to keep all the "what if I have a boy" gear. I'm stuck with neutral carseats & stroller, but I have gotten rid of all the yellow sleepers and onesies. I also was given a pink Bumbo - Yay! And added a brown/pink pack'n'play to our collection.

Here is the newly organized closet:



For the main room I first put away the luggage - we stash it in the hall closet but have to move the dresser to get it there so it's kind of a pain. After asking DH to do it a couple of times and having him move the luggage back into Joanna's room from the hallway I just did it myself. Yep- seven months preggo and shoving dressers around. Whoo!

I also found a piece of glass for that matted & framed print the girls had broken. I had an old poster in the garage from my own childhood with the same size frame so I just pulled the glass from it to use on this print. Then I rehung it where it belongs.

I had been searching for a laundry hamper for a year and finally found one a few weeks ago at a consignment store in Issaquah. It was only $10! This was a big find for me.

Here's the freshly cleaned room:




I did the spring cleaning pieces: vacuum moving all the furniture, touchup paint, seriously dust, wash inside windows, wipe down outlet plates, and wood polish on the crib & rocker. I didn't spot clean the carpet or wash the curtains. I just didn't manage, and I'm so ready to be done with this room I skipped it and am moving on to the master bathroom.

Overall it feels so great to have this space organized! Everything has a place, and now I just have to keep putting things back in their place and/or finding places for new gifts.

Katie

2 comments:

  1. Well done, Katie! It look great! I understand the high that comes from organization. Denise

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  2. Katie,
    I love reading your organization stories! An idea I had for storing shoes that are beween sizes for kiddos: I wrote down what all I had in size order and have a second copy -- one copy is with the shoes in our attic storage and one is in our youngest's room. I zip tied each shoe to its mate and now I can reference my shoe sheet to know if I have a sandal in the right size in the future and if so, I can find both easily attached together. Yes, this was one of my crazy baby nesting projects....but now I know just what I have when I think I've found a bargain....

    Thanks for writing!

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