Busy!

Welcome to our newly organised home! I think it may be partly nesting but also necessity that drove me to do some shifting of things around the house over the past few days. It started with some simple questions I had, like 'where on earth am I going to put the new bub's clothes?', and 'how can I make the loungeroom more childproof and save my books from tearing and stop Bethany pulling the chord that goes from the phone to the compuer?' I was pondering these questions while watching Oprah the other day and received some fabulous inspiration. Nate Berkus was on the show who normally does these fancy expensive makeovers but they were doing a recession version where he had a small budget and the idea was to make do with what they already had throughout the house and they could also swap things with neighbours that were involved in the project. They then had another guy on who's a decluttering expert

and he was helping the people figure out what they could get rid of.

Now I am a person who hates clutter anyway, I thrive on order and tidiness (although in a much more relaxed fashion than I used to due to little hands making mess!), but I realised I could definately get rid of some stuff and that I could probably use what we already had if I just moved things around, so my mission began!!

The photo above shows a little bookcase that is now in our back room (which has been gated to keep Bethany out) and it contains all our main home schooling resources and reference books that are within easy reach for Jaden and I but are now in a spot where they are safe from Bethany. I had to keep putting things higher and higher on the shelves in the loungeroom cause she was pulling things off and ripping them, but only so much can fit on the top shelves and we didn't want to spend money on another shelf to put out the back. (We couldn't move any of the bigber bookshelves out the back because with the light fittings on the wall and the attached shelves on the wall only a small shelf would fit.) That small shelf used to be in the loungeroom full of DVDs.
So to free up that shelf I did a video cull. We have a couple of draws underneath the TV cabinet that were full of videos that were mostly from when Jaden was little, and our other video/DVD shelf had a whole row of old videos that I had taped from TV when I was a teenager, they are now gone! All the old taped ones went in the bin cause I don't think they would actually survive much longer anyway and I never watch them, and Jaden's old ones are in a box to give to a lady at church who sells off stuff like that at markets to raise money for a Kenyan orphanage. We currently have a combo VCR/DVD but it has been in twice to be fixed and when it does finally die we are not replacing the VCR as you can't buy videos anymore anyway so we decided that culling made perfect sense. So there was now room to fit all the DVD's onto 1 shelf and the draws under the cabinet, which freed up the smaller shelf for the back room. But that was just the start.

Moving the DVD shelf meant that we could move the computer over to where the phone outlet actually is and remove the long chord that was draped all over the place and just begging for little hands to pull it. Moving the computer then meant we had more space in the corner area of our loungeroom so that became the play area and freed up more space making the room look much bigger. But wait, we're not done!

I hadn't addressed the baby issue yet. We have made a space in our room for bub and we have the bassinet in there and will be moving the change table in, but there's no room for any more draws or anything. However there are shelves under the changetable that would be fine for bubs stuff, except they are full of Bethany's sheets, blankets, towels, washers etc. Hmmm where could they go? Aha we actually have a wardrobe in the lougeroom that has a big shelf at the top, shelves down the side and then hanging space, that would be perfect (and I could finally hang up some of Bethy's pretty clothes that get scrunched in the draws), except it is full of all our craft stuff, stationery, my scrapbooking things etc. Some of that would fit in the draws that were in Bethy's room but some wouldn't, hmmm what to do. Well we did the swap and brought the draws into the loungeroom and put in all the craft stuff etc that fit. Bethy's stuff all went in the wardrobe and it freed up the space under the changetable for the bub stuff and I also found a nice basket in all that sorting that I will be able to put Bethy's wipes etc in once the changetable moves, so that I can still change her if the other one is asleep in the other room with the change table.

So now we still needed a place for craft stuff. Well I started culling my books. I had a whole shelf that was all my books, mainly a lot of christian novels were read once and had then been sitting there for years untouched. So I managed to free up 2 whole shelves of books (again they will be donated to the fundraising), plus another big pile of old uni textbooks that I can pass along to others I know who are studying now. Now I could fit stuff on that bookself, but how would I keep Bethany away from it? Well my sister has been busy rearranging too and she was getting rid of my nieces old wardrobe that had totally fallen apart. The wardrobe wasn't salvagable, but the doors were fine, so hubby took them off and screwed them onto my bookshelf. He then bolted it to the wall with a bracket cause it was a bit wobbly with the extra weight of the doors. There is a small gap in the middle cause they weren't an exact fit but all the things on the bottom 2 shelves are moved to the sides (except rolls of cardboard that wont fit through the gap anyway) and the doors are tied togther, and they have so far passed the test of little hands! Then the paints etc were put in plastic tubs out the back next to the home schooling shelf, and my scrapbooking caddy actually fitted in my room now because I had moved out a lamp table into Betahny's room to put the things on that had been on top of her draws.

So after all that culling, shuffling etc we now have order, organisation and are all set to start school next week and to fit a bub and their belongings into our room, and none of this 'new' furnitue cost us a cent. The moral of the story is that Nate Berkus was right, before you leave the house to shop when you want to redecorate, go browsing through your own house and see what you can use in a different way!!! :-)