on my wall

Tomorrow I shall reveal my nearly complete office space. I love it, it's a place all my own. It still needs paint but that won't happen for a while, so it is what it is until then. I have this poem hanging on the wall and I love it. I need it to remind me that sometimes the dishes can wait and even if I've read that book a billion times I should read it again. For some people the bible is their source for comfort and inspiration. For me, it's my quote book and this was one of the quotes I copied in it when I was pregnant with Anthony.

My hands were busy through the day

I didn’t have much time to play

The little game you asked me to,

I didn’t have much time for you.

I’d wash your clothes, I’d sew and cook

But when you’d bring your picture book

And ask me please to share your fun,

I’d say, “A little later, son.”

But life is short, the years rush past,

A little boy grows up so fast!

Now the picture books are put away,

There aren’t any games to play.

No good night kiss, no prayers to hear;

That all belongs to yester year.

My hands once busy, now lie still,

The days are long and hard to fill.

I wish I might go back and do

The little things you asked me to!

-Alice Chase

Kitchen switch-a-roo

Today I completely switched around my kitchen, also known as "driving my husband completely banana's". Chris HATES change and complains about it incessantly. However, the next time I change it around he'll complain that he wants it back the way before - which he also complained about.

My kitchen appears to have a bit of cabinet space, but it's an illusion. The cabinets are shaped funky, there are weird dividers that make it difficult to store things effectively, and we just seem to have never enough space. I hate things on my counter, so even the toaster is stored in a cabinet (this habit I picked up from my mother-in-law!). The only thing allowed on my counter is Betsy, my new mixer. Ain't she beautiful!

Anyway, Chris was flying late tonight and most of the times this means an easy going evening. Chris is leaving soonish for 5+ months and so we are now transitioning back into "getting on with life when Daddy is gone" phase. We've been very lucky for the past 3 years Chris has been on a special duty assignment that has kept him from deploying and in the past year hasn't even gone on a TDY because of my surgeries but thats all about to change. He'll be back to being gone 6-9 months out of the year soon and so we are preparing for that.

My plan is to accent my kitchen and dining area with Polka Dots. I love Polka Dots! For now, I'm just cleaning it up and trying to find new space for my new gadgets. Such as this beauty I've been lusting after for a while

Chris jokes that I'm a disgrace. He bought me the iPad2 for our anniversary and I was disappointed because I wanted Betsy. After a few months I decided, with his blessing, to sell the iPad to get what I really wanted. This was also on sale for about $60 less than usual so I had to jump on it. This may deserve a name in the future. I get very sad when food spoils or gets freezer burn.

In my already cramped kitchen I had no room for all my new gadgets.

I decided to start in the dreaded tupperware cabinet. This cabinet is scary. We have so much tupperware, but we can never find anything. I swear there is a land out there where tupperware lids and socks are partying together.

See how scary it is? Also, see that annoying divider that makes it difficult to get anything LARGE into or out of that cabinet? So frustrating! I wanted to separate our tupperware from the cutting boards since we use the cutting boards very frequently and it's very hard to pull them out without a bunch of tupperware raining down with it. We have this drawer that we store the placemats and cloth napkins in

Which is the perfect size for the cutting boards, and it's located right next to the stove so it makes it very convenient. So now I had to relocate the placemats (I'm planning to buy or make some beautiful polka dot placemats!) Back when we bought our couches we also bought a coffee table that was entirely too large. We recently moved it behind the couches as more surface space in the dining room, and it has drawers and a shelf that would work for the napkins and placemats.

And now our four cutting boards are located in a much nicer spot

For our tupperware, there wasn't a single cabinet that would work well, so I was reduced to buying an additional storage unit. I am not pleased by this, and although it works well it is very bulky and ugly. I'm hoping to find a better solution, but for now this is where our tupperware is

I have yet to find "green" tupperware. If anyone knows of any please let me know!

Now I needed to move my pots and pans into my new empty tupperware cabinet. This is my awful pots and pans cabinet. It makes it very hard to pull anything out without something falling on your foot because of the weird half shelf. These poor pots and pans were gifted to Chris and I on Anthony's first Christmas by my parents. They are great pots and pans but they are nearing their life span. We are looking into upgrading to stainless steel, one pot and pan at a time as they are insanely expensive!

And this is my plates, casserole dish, bowls, and the rest of pans cabinet. Annoying.

And this is my new pots and pans cabinet in my old tupperware cabinet (Are you keeping this straight? lol).

And in my old pots and pans cabinet is where my new food saver is stored, as well as Betsy's attachments!

Thats my extra mixing bowl, my ice cream maker attachment and my bin of other attachments. On the top, weird half shelf perfectly fits my food saver and storage bags. The ice cream maker can and should be stored in the freezer, so this is the picture after I realized that

Now I need something to fill that gap!

I forgot to take a picture of my cup cabinet prior to emptying it out, but I thought it would be best to put the cups over where the plates and bowls were now that I took out most of the pans.

We have more plates and bowls than that, they were all in the dishwasher.

I needed to move the cleaners from their lower cabinet because Charlie kept getting into it. So they went into the old cup cabinet.

Here is Anastasia taking the cleaner out and handing it to me to put up top.

This is another weirdly shaped cabinet. It goes way towards the back but it makes it hard to get to the stuff back there without practically climbing into the cabinet.

Cleaners are one of my few non-"green" things, my OCD makes it hard for me to trust that something is clean without harsh cleaners. I'm working on it.

Here they are crammed in the new cabinet. This had three shelves in it, but I had to remove one and change the height of the other one in order to fit anything into it. The shelves, prior, could hardly fit anything that was remotely tall. See my inventory sheet? (My computer just turned off and I thought I lost this post! I was about to throw my hands up and laugh/cry).

I forgot to take a picture of the after cleaner cabinet. It now stores the huge pots I couldn't get past the weird divider, and the kids cups. It drives me crazy to hear 20 times a day times 3 kids "Can I have a cup!" so I thought it would be the most logical thing to put the kids cups where the kids can reach them. I now fear I will be washing every kids cup every single day, but at least they can reach them.

Around this time we had a mini-family crisis and the rest of the kitchen switch-a-roo had to be put on hold. Hopefully I'll find time soon to finish it. I only have a few more cabinets to go through.

So far I've made muffins, tortillas, and pancakes with Betsy. The pancakes were for dinner tonight, and they were super simple to make and much less messy than usual.

These are some pictures of the Bear eating pancakes. We've had such a hard time getting him to eat that I was so happy he ate some pancake! He is nursing about 18 hours a day at the moment, and it's driving me bananas. Hopefully he'll be able to eat more food soon!

Coupons galore! Day (lost track) of 60/300!

Today was the first day in a while that I felt well enough to do much of anything. Unfortunately, Charlie Bear didn't get the memo that we were supposed to be feeling better. He's been sick for nearly 2 weeks now, running a fever off and on. I swear it's due to those blasted shots. I wish I could convince Chris to fore go them. However, thats a post for another day :)

A while ago I asked Chris to rearrange furniture for me. He hates doing this, but he does it without too much complaint. I am a truly lucky gal!

I could have sworn I posted a picture of my desk area, but I can't find it. So this is what my desk area looked like, and what people saw when first entering my home:

This is a major work in progress. It was all neat and organized but the kids kept messing with everything and it became a disaster area. The blinds are all broken thanks to 4 kids and a dog, and will be taken down as soon as we buy some curtains. The desk is going to get a paint job - the wood will become black colored and the white grout with also be colored black. The silver filing cabinet will be spray painted white and green to match the other set of white and green drawers. The more I thought on it, though, the more I hated this being in the living room. So now our living room looks like this:

So much more welcoming, and homey! The blue recliner rocker makes for a great little reading area. A few more items await this room before it's finished. There are going to be baskets on the Entertainment Center, curtains are going to be hung (and blinds taken down), some writing is going on the wall, ect. I think it will look fantastic when it's done!

This means that my desk had to go somewhere, and since our house isn't very large there was only one place for it to go. My room. Ugh, I hate having non-bedroom stuff in there but with 4 kids it's the only place that things can go if you don't want it messed with. It has a lot of work that needs to be done, as I've been to sick to do anything. It currently looks like this

See how back logged I am with my coupons? I'm trying to organize my inserts and needed floor space to do it. However, I haven't finished and it looks ridiculous.

This weekend my goal is to get my room back in shape. I won't be able to paint the desk just yet, but it will be soon! I also plan to hang shelves and a homemade sign of some sort. Still trying to think of just what I want it to say. I was thinking, "A Day in the Life of a Freg" but we'll see.

I've been using the coupon binder method for my coupons, and I love it.

Basically I have picture inserts that are labeled alphabetically and color coded. Colors are for food, and white is for toiletries and non-food items. I love this system, it is very easy to find exactly the coupon I'm looking for. HOWEVER, and it's a BIG however, it is very time consuming to keep up with. It can easily take a few hours a week just to keep it up. So each week I fell behind and behind until I was left with the mess you just witnessed. So now I'm doing a combined method. I still use my lovely binder for loose coupons, printables, ect. But now I use the insert method for most of it.

My files are labeled with the three major coupon inserts and then there is the Misc for the various other inserts I get. Then I take each weekly inserts, staple the like pages together (I buy 2-5 papers a week), and file them in a file folder with that weeks date on it. This way when they all expire I can just tack another sticker with a new date over the last one. Then the file folders are filed in order of date. Since I use "The Grocery Game" it tells me which insert the coupon I need is in and it takes just a moment to find it. I have a mini-coupon binder I take with me into stores that has a place for each store, their coupons, the ones I end up not using, ECB's, ect. Once I am finally done organizing it I will cut my coupon clipping and organizing time from a few hours to a few minutes.

And finally... I have inspired Chris to clean and organize too. I threatened to do his office space for him and so this weekend he began on it.

It looks awful, but I assure you this is much better than it was. This is the one room of the house I refuse to clean at all and so it is very much a scary scary mess. Hopefully this is finished this weekend too!

Day 13 - Charlie Bears first birthday!

Exactly 365 days ago I gave birth to a beautiful, sweet, perfect baby. Charles George Mizzell (Charlie Bear) was born at 8 am, weighing 6 lbs 5.5 oz and was 19.5 inches tall. I can't believe he is a year already! His party is tomorrow and there will be pictures galore! Taken with....my new camera!!!

I nearly didn't buy it, but it calllllllled to me! So awesome pictures will be had tomorrow. Buh-bye cellphone photos!

I did a quick clean today, and probably won't get back to my hard core organizing until Monday. But I DO need help with a few things and will be posting those soon!

Day 10 of 60/300

I think I'm getting sick. This is the worst time in the world to get sick. I've been having bouts of horrible nausea. I have to prep my house for a birthday party and get ready for a massive yard sale!

Today my friend Elaine came over to help me sort the kids clothes into bins for the yard sale. Four massive bins. I figure I'll sell them for .25 a piece or 10 pieces for $2. This is what my garage looks like as I prepare for the yard sale. This isn't all of what I'm selling. There is furniture and books still to be placed out in the garage.

Finally Open Door Mission got rid of our couches for us! W00t.. my garage is looking better, and after Sunday it will be down right clean!

These are the three bookshelves I've cleared and dusted - except for the tops which I'll do tomorrow. I still have one bookshelf to go and all the books to be returned to it.

And of course I feel down right gross.

Day 9 of 60/300

Today I spent the morning working on my new coupon binder. I totally rehauled it and I love the way it looks! I haven't had much time to work on it so I put some CSI on this morning and worked for a bit. Afterwards I got to reorganizing the playroom and sorting books. I need to get the books sorted prior to the yard sale. Thus far I'm about 1/3rd of the way through and this is the pile of books to be sold/donated

There is nearly three times this amount that is going back on the shelves so far, and I still have three shelving units to sort through.

I used to have my diapers housed in toy bins but I want to get the box cubicles with the baskets so I removed all my diapers and donated my toy bins to the kids playroom - thus freeing up numerous bins in the playroom. It was like toy bin shuffle. I haven't bought the cubicles yet so right now my diapers are residing on the recliner in my room

I have an insane amount of diapers.

Day 8 of 60/300

This weekend is quite busy, and requires my house be in semi-order. On Saturday we are celebrating Charlie's 1st birthday with a small BBQ at the house. His birthday is on Friday but it makes more sense to celebrate it on Saturday. I can't believe my baby is turning 1, this year has flown by. So my house needs to be presentable for the party and since I've torn it apart at the moment it is anything but presentable. On Sunday I am having the first Yard Sale. I'll probably do an additional one at the end of the 60 days, but I have so many things I'm getting rid of I need to do one now. So I have to finish purging the major areas to prepare for that. My room and the Master Closet are nearly complete and today I organized the linen closet. I shall take a picture of that tomorrow. It used to be overflowing to the point where it was hard to shut the door, but I'm getting rid of so many linens that there is a completely empty shelf now. I wish I had remembered to take a photo prior to the purge.

So today I organized my room some, completely moved out most of the non-bedroom furniture that was residing in there, put back together most of my closet, cleaned out the linen closet, scrubbed the kids bathroom completely clean (it took me an hour of scrubbing in there to get it to my liking), and began purging the books. I have decided I'm also getting rid of my craft table/coupon table/sewing table and buying a desk instead. I think a desk would work better for me because it would have storage areas. I tried to go to Goodwill and Target today but both were closed. As we don't celebrate Easter this kind of surprised me. I hate shopping at Walmart and I wasn't desperate enough to try there so I'll make my runs tomorrow.

And finally - the crayon caddy is a hit.

The pencils are the "Handwriting Without Tears" pencils and there are so many so it takes up two pails. I may include a pair of scissors but I'm debating if I want to give the kids that much freedom. We don't do markers well in this house, the kids lose the tops so quickly we throw away so many.

This is their new art center. Prior to this it was one of the three drawer containers from Target and it was constantly falling apart, papers were spilling out, ect. It was a huge mess. The shelves were in my bedroom along with a lot of other office type things to hold all the homeschooling materials. As I'm purging my bedroom of non-bedroom furniture I figured I'd turn this shelving unit into their new art center.

The green basket holds their coloring books/work books. The three boxes are some of the stuff left over from the Pre-school homeschooling materials - such as puzzles, and lace cards. Missing in this picture is their "Handwriting Without Tears" wood pieces that are assembled to create most of the uppercase letters. It fits perfectly on the bottom shelf.

And finally - just because - this is a picture of a blanket bag I bought from the Bon Jovi Concert I went to! This held the blanket we bought Charlie since it was his first concert. When I was purging my closet I came across it and I don't want to throw it out but I have no use for it. My good friend Elaine, who is a beast with a sewing machine, is going to take on the challenge of turning it into a purse for me. It needs to be stiffened, and I'd love some more pockets on it. I can't wait to see how it turns out, and I promise to blog about it when it happens. I may have her write a post about how she did it!

1 Week Down!!! 1 room complete!

Today marks one week since I began my 60/300 challenge, and today I completed my first room. I absolutely love it and at the moment its the only non-chaotic room in the house so I just want to hide out in it and bask in the serenity of a clean, non cluttered room. I should say its ALMOST complete. I need to purchase a new toilet brush and after I clean out the linen closet/kids bathroom I will be switching the towels under the sink to the linen closet, and our master linens to our bathroom.

Here are my little helpers helping me sort items into my tumblers.

And the finished product!

I love bright colors, and this green and blue are very bright even though they look muted in the picture. We are buying a new camera soon, so no more cell phone pictures! I got the candle for $1, it's a Glade candle and it smells wonderful. Plus the colors match! I bought a new trashcan in Avocado green too.

Here is a mirror picture so you can see the curtain we hung to use as a closet door. It works really well. It's so bright and white it makes the colors we used really pop, and it makes the room feel really clean and fresh. And I LOVE that people using the toilet will no longer get a view of our Master Closet. (The Bar is Chris's pull up bar!)

Another shot of the corner of the sink. You can see one of the shelves we hung up that holds some of the tumblers.

The bathtub area. The reason there is no curtain is we only use this tub to take baths. In our main bathroom we have a shower stall that is wheelchair accessible (and therefore can only be used for showers) so we use that one to shower and this one to bathe. Makes the room seem bigger without a shower curtain. The green Submarine is a kids shower caddy that holds their toys and shampoo/body wash. I also purchased a regular shower caddy to replace the basket I had full of our shampoos. Makes the room so much less cluttered.

The toilet. The green basket holds toilet paper rolls so there is no more running out with guests, and what have you. I don't like it peeping over the top but I didn't want to put one roll back in the stockpile area. The blue container is for "reading material" and really helps tie in the blues with the greens. The shelf is the second shelf hung and contains more tumblers!

A close up of both of the shelves. These tumblers are so bright and contain so many colors that it's really easy to play off of them for accents! I think I may purchase a red bath rug to tie in the reds in these tumblers. I LOVE this idea to house bathroom supplies. I know I can't be the only one who does this but I did not get the inspiration for this from anyone else. If I do get inspiration somewhere I promise to always link it so the proper person can get credit. In these tumblers are things such as cough drops (so I don't have shapeless bags hanging around), tweezers and nail clippers since we are always losing them, headbands (until I can find a better spot for them, dang headbands!), medicine droppers/cups/thermometers since we can never find them when we need them, q-tips, chapstick, combs and brushes, band-aids ect. Basically the little odds and ends that can clutter up a bathroom.

I pretty much kept this unchanged. I took it apart and scrubbed it down, but other than that it is very functional and I can't figure out a better way to have this. It holds my cloth pads (yes, I use cloth pads), my cloth nursing pads (Cloth is my religion), and my hair products like gel and de-frizzer.

And an updated picture of the hair drawer. I removed the headbands (pesky things) and took the lids off and it works so much better.

A reader commented that hanging the head bands on a hanger might work! Great idea! And it's totally inspired a whole slew of ways to hang the headbands in my room. I don't want them in the closet and I'm already annoyed that the hair stuff is in multiple locations already (The drawer, the white drawers, and a tumbler) and I want to keep them in one room - but it's a great suggestion and may work for someone else. Keep the suggestions for home organization coming!

Another project I did today took only a few moments, and although it needs to be modified in some ways - for now this works. I purchased the little pails from the dollar section of Target, and the tray from the seasonal dishes area. The tray actually matches some of the tumblers! I've seen this idea across the internet and on a lot of my homeschooling blogs I follow. I originally planned to use a Lazy Susan or turn this into a Lazy Susan but Chris said that he could envision items going flying so we left ours alone. But, if your kids aren't crazy like mine that may be a great idea.

I used hot glue on the bottoms of the pails and then around the edges after gluing them

I may end up putting a screw through the bottom of the pail to keep it on the tray permanently.

I will take a picture tomorrow of it in use, I simply forgot to take one today. I love this idea, and I hope it encourages the kids to keep their art supplies neat.

And finally - a possible blog giveaway! I came across about 100 ovulation tests while purging my bathroom area. Well they were neatly in a bag in one of my containers anyway. I am so awful with taking these. So my laziness may be one readers gain! Once I hit 50 followers I will be posting a giveaway with a chance for two readers to win a sizable amount of these (as for how many I'm not sure yet). I'm expecting it to be a while but if you are interested follow my blog!