Thursday, June 2, 2011

Cleaning Out the Dreaded Rooms

First of all, here are some pictures of my newly organized bookshelves in our den.  Some of the shelves on the right half are holding the Sonlight books.



Here is a close-up of some of the Sonlight books.  Those colored stickers on the bottom of each book designate the book's core and whether it is a reader, a read aloud, or a history/geography book.


an even closer picture
These books are from Core B, and they are read alludes.

I am exhausted!

I have tackled two major clean-out and organize projects this week.  The storage room and the secret room.  The secret room is an unfinished area that is accessed through a closet in one of my daughter's bedrooms.  For over six years, we have just tossed things into that room.  Things that we wanted to keep (most of it, anyway), but just didn't quite know what to do with.  Whenever I would clean out a closet in a child's bedroom, I would put all of the stuff that I wanted to keep (for grandchildren) in the secret room.  The girls also placed many, many items in there too.  You could not see the floor!

And I forgot to take before pictures, but trust me, it was cluttered!

I had some really good help in cleaning out both of these rooms.  I cleaned and organized each room for four hours on two different days this week-- I had a hired teenager to help me on the both days, and also Clay helped me on the second day.  They were my go-fers, and that saved me a ton of time.  They vacuumed, moved things, took out trash, and hauled all of the "give away" stuff to the garage.  I would not have been able to accomplish all that I did without their help.

Here are some after pictures.
Remember, you could not see the floor before I began!


Those are Chubbs baby wipe containers stacked up on the left.  I collected them for the entire time that Olivia and Julie were in diapers.  They stopped making them right when Clay was born.  
Those are baby toys on the right and at the end (things I am saving), and also on the left are two bookshelves that are holding plastic storage boxes of various items.


the bookshelves


the Chubbs blocks


the other end of the secret room on the left


the right side


just another picture showing the clean floor!

Now here are pictures of the storage room.  I have to clean out this room about every 6 months.  Stuff gets piled in here too.  It wasn't nearly as bad as the secret room, but it still required four hours to get it into shape.

No before pictures of this room either!


I printed out new labels for my plastic storage boxes.  I previously had them numbered, but the cats shredded my master list that told what was in each box.  I just printed the contents on each label.
That table is for bow making.


cleaned-off shelves!


I like seeing the bare floor!


I keep my not currently used school books on this shelf.

Now the rest of my house looks like a bomb exploded!  You know how it is....when you are cleaning one area, the other rooms are neglected and stuff just multiplies!

2 comments:

  1. Wow, this looks WONDERFUL! I love that row of neat books. I am sure you are exhausted but I know it is worth it to have everything so organized.

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  2. Cleaning/organizing is such hard work. Great job! And, yes, the mess thing is so true. My mom always told us, "You have to make a mess to clean it up." [smile]

    ~Luke

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