I can hardly believe it!  I have very little left to do in the basement with the completion of this room!  The bathroom downstairs has next to nothing in it.  The playroom is done (and staying clean, I might add!), my oldest son’s bedroom needs just a bit of work, and one of the two storage areas was recently gone through.  So, really, that just leaves one little storage area near where the tubs reside and I will be done tearing the house apart!

Here’s the scoop on the Guest Room/Sewing Room…

My mom had been staying with me (in this room) while my husband and oldest son were away at the 2010 Scout Jamboree near Washington, D.C.  As soon as my mom left, we would have houseguests moving in with us (in that room) for approximately 2 weeks.

It wasn’t that the room was horrible–after all, we’ve had people in and out of that room for months with it looking just the way it did, but it was cluttered and as sewing rooms tend to get, a little um…”thready.”

Once again, I forgot to take Before Pictures, so you’ll have to use your imagination about just how cluttered and thready it was.

When I go to clean out a room, I like to start on one side of the door and work my way around the room–usually clockwise (not sure if that’s because I’m right-handed or some other totally random reason).  In this room, the scrapbooks are near the door, so I tidied those, straightened the bed, and then dug into my daughter’s sewing stash.

She has her own sewing machine and her own stash of fabric and other crafting things.  Most of her things were already fairly well contained; however, they weren’t in any sort of order.  So, I rearranged the drawers in the 3 drawer nightstand we use to hold her things and made it make more sense. My mom folded all her scrap fabric and neatly put it back in her tub.  (Any fabric I get my goodie out of gets passed on to her.  She likes to make doll clothes and pillows and sachets from the scraps.)

Now, my sewing stuff was a different story.  I have a cutting table next to my serger and sewing machine, but I’d like to see you try to cut anything on it considering it is usually covered in projects!  I also have a 3 drawer chest for my sewing things, so I made one of the drawers for unfinished projects and stashed all of the items cluttering up my cutting table into there.  I figure if the drawer gets too full, it’s time to actually FINISH a project!

I also decided I needed to separate out my cloth diapering fabrics and supplies from my other fabric, so I bought another tote (neon green to boot!) and that’s where I put all my diapering fabrics.  I also moved them to a different area of the room since their presence was also hindering me from cutting out anything on my cutting table (they were just too close behind me to really be able to move around).

I had a lot of ribbon from my “I’m-going-to-make-hairbows” days, so I decided to make another drawer in the 3 drawer chest a ribbon drawer.  The last drawer was for serger thread and the instruction manuals for my serger and sewing machine.

I tidied my pattern box and put together a box for my shipping supplies.  The final destination was the closet.  All it really needed was a good tidy and the doors shut.  The end!

(Note the lovely red carpet and the mirror over the bed?  I live in a rental, folks. )

Have you missed any of the Half My Stuff Saturday posts?  Check them out HERE.

Remember I said I needed to psyche myself up to actually get started on the basement?  Well, once I’m ready to tackle something, I rarely remember to bring my camera!  Pictures in this post are all AFTER pictures. (which my mom says is probably a good thing since I might scare you if I show you too much of my messy side )

So, I had my mom here helping out for the week.  Because of that, it seemed like the perfect time to tackle the more difficult projects–the clothes and the toys.   I needed to pull out baby things anyway, so that’s where I started.

A few months ago, we moved my oldest son downstairs to his own room which had previously been the home of the tubs.  We found a space for the tubs of clothes in another storage area, but they always seemed in the way.  In fact, they were so in the way, that instead of putting away the clothes I would cull from the upstairs bedrooms, I would just toss them on top of the tubs, waiting for the day when I would have time to actually wade on in there and put them away properly.  In addition to this mess, the tubs were not labeled in easy-to-read places.  Talk about a nightmare!

So, mom and I dug in!

There were tubs of shoes and baby things and cloth diapers, not to mention tubs for every child in this house.  We sorted and culled and pulled out stained items and got them to soakin’ and sunnin’.  Tubs were labeled and moved around into a much more user-friendly arrangement.  Here’s the final result:

The tall closet in the foreground of the picture is my homeschooling closet.  I also cleaned that out and got the doors shut!  As far as the tubs go, I got rid of about 5 bags of stuff!  Pretty good!

I decided to move out of the storage room and head into the main living area downstairs…also known as the Toy Room.  Several months back we moved all the kids’ toys downstairs to try to keep the upstairs neater.  You know what that equals: Out of Sight, Out of Mind!

As I was cleaning and sorting, I kept thinking how overwhelming it all was and how my children were probably even more overwhelmed when I asked them to clean up!

I was pretty determined to get this room under control and I would definitely say at least half the toys were either thrown away, donated, or sent to grandma’s to be stored.  The room is in much better shape now and not nearly so overwhelming to keep clean!

I must admit, I’ve always dreaded going down in the basement, but yesterday evening, I went downstairs to put away some things and I actually sat down in one of the chairs down there and just rested.  Usually, the basement is anything but restful to me.  Amazing what an uncluttered, clean palette can do for a very visual mama. *sigh*

Now, where to next???

Would you like to catch up on all the nesting going on around here?  Check out all of my Half My Stuff Saturday posts!

Quick update on the state of the home…

Getting rid of things has definitely helped in the overall efficiency of cleaning our home. However, I have noticed that stuff continues to multiply and must be tackled on a consistent basis before it gets out of control. This past week my bar began to look scary again (not nearly as scary as the before pics, but scary enough I knew it would soon look like that!)  I had to make a conscience effort to declutter it and put things in their rightful places.  Not exactly at the top of my fun list, but remember, fun is not always the name of the game.

With that, I move onward…to the bathrooms.

Let me just say, this is the first home I have lived in as a married woman with more than one bathroom.  Sometimes I feel blessed.  Sometimes I feel cursed.

The main bathroom looks fairly harmless at first glance, except for these two places:

I pitched several bath toys (bath toys kind of yuck me out anyway) and sorted through the closet.  I was amazed to find essential oils I thought I was out of tucked away up there!  Here’s the finished result:

I also added this rack on the wall to house the toothbrushes.  Our curious 17 month old is a toothbrush stealer and a toothpaste eater.  However, he has yet to figure out how to get them now that they are off the counter!

Oh, and here’s something that will really gross you out:

This is supposed to be pretty?  This is nearly 3 years of caked-on dust!  I wonder how many of our house guests noticed this?!  They’ll be happy to know I dusted them off…we should be good for the next 3 years! {just kidding!}

The other bathroom is my master bathroom.  It’s a half-bath off our bedroom.  It’s nothing stunning, but organizational-wise it really wasn’t too bad.

There were a few hidden issues…but I cleaned all of those out. {and for those of you who like to snoop in people’s medicine cabinets…tough! }

I managed to find some new homes for the things on the countertops.  After my son cleaned the bathroom on Wednesday, I was pretty pleased with the finished result.  The only thing I would change in this room are the curtains.  But, that will have to wait.

All in all, these were pretty easy projects for this week.  The final upstairs project awaits me for next week…the master bedroom!  Then, I’ll be taking a couple of weeks off before tackling the downstairs.  You know, give myself some time to psyche myself up! lol