Nesting Already?

Currently our nursery for the new baby is still the guest bedroom...or I should say the catch-all room.  I always had high hopes for it to become a cozy, inviting guest bedroom.  That never happened, and now it never will.  So, I've started slowly prepping it to become the nursery. 

The first thing that needed to be done was to clean out and organize all of our closets in order to make room for most of the items from the guest closet.  I started with my closet, then moved on to the coat closet and finally started arranging the guest nursery closet. (My husband cleaned out his own closet a couple of months ago)

Unfortunately, I didn't take before pictures of any of the closets, so these after pictures won't be as impressive, but trust me, the closets were horrible!  They had been neglected for months and months, if not years!

Hall Coat Closet

 My Closet

(I still need to get a shoe rack)

 Hubby's Closet

(didn't my hubby do a good job organizing it?)

 Nursery Closet

(a work in progress, but already sooo much better than what it was)

I love how good it feels to open an organized closet.  I'm huge on organization, so this is a great project for me to tackle in the winter.  Anyone else stuck inside getting things done?

Pantry Update

Our pantry has looked the same since the day we moved in, bad.  We moved in in a rush, shoved all of our food in and never looked back.  I finally got to the point that I couldn't take looking at the ugliness of it all anymore!  So, Friday afternoon I tackled my pantry update in just a couple of hours.  A little paint, some organization and some labels go a long way...

Here are some before pictures...please don't stare at the ugly floor...it has some water damage and needs to be sanded and re-stained, but that's another day.

What do you think of the high gloss yellow paint?!  Yikes!

The shelves were disgusting, but we did have shelf liners on them.

Even the ceiling of the pantry was painted the ugly yellow!!

Here's my little man helping mommy...well, more like getting in the way!  But he was having fun!

 I used Fresh Aire paint (low VOC) from Home Depot.  The color is  called Of The Earth.  I didn't use white because I though it would show wear and tear more easily.

 We recently moved the trash can into the pantry because the little man was always playing with it and throwing everything away.

Here is an after pic of the shelves all organized.

 And here is what my shelf labels look like.  I made them with my P Touch label maker that my sweet hubby got me for Christmas a couple years ago.  He knows how much I like to be organized!

For a project that only took me a couple hours and no money to complete, I think it turned out pretty good!  It looks so much better than it did and now I can find everything!!

Here is where I'm linking up today:

Skip to my Lou

The Girl Creative

Making The World Cuter

C.R.A.F.T.

Between Naps on the Porch

 

Monthly Cleaning List

I've been thinking about my fall cleaning and to-do list this week so I pulled out an article I kept out of Woman's Day magazine from a few months back. (I come across so many great and helpful articles in magazines that instead of keeping the whole magazine, I tear out the article and put it in my binder)  This article is all about cleaning, but the list I wanted to check out is called "a year of 'biggies'" where they talk about a cleaning task for each month of the year. 

Here is the list:

January: Clean medicine cabinets; toss expired meds
February:  Clean all the hard-to-reach places; behind the stove, refrigerator, washer/dryer, sofas. and under beds
March:  Steam-clean carpets
April:  Wash windows and screens
May:  Organize the pantry and kitchen cabinets
June:  Wash duvets, blankets, comforters, spreads, pillows
July:  Clean and organize the garage
August:  Clean out drawers and closets.  Donate usable clothing and items to charity
September:  Clean out the linen closet
October:  Defrost and clean freezer, refrigerator, stove, oven
November:  polish silver, wash china, dust inside the china cabinet
December:  Turn mattresses; vacuum upholstered furniture and drapes

This is a pretty good list.  I actually do most of these tasks twice a year and some more often than that, but at least it gets you thinking about tackling tasks that you might not do on a regular basis.  Something to consider before winter sneaks up on us!

Where I'm linking up today!

Finger Prints on the Fridge

Somewhat Simple

Fireflies and Jellybeans

Life As Lori