An Organizational Disaster

If my house suffers from one illness, it's Atrocious Unmatched Flooring Disease, which can be cured only with time, effort, and money. But if my house suffers from two illnesses (and believe me, there are more than 2), the second is Clutter-itis. 

Not my kitchen, but some days, it might 
as well be . . . . 

Clutter-itis, as you may well know, is a result of Too-Much-Stuff-itis and the People-Who-Don't-Pick-Up-After-Themselves bug, an unfortunate combination that leads to messy spaces crowded with paper, clothing, boxes, and a host of other random items that lead me to say things like, "Why do we even own this?" and "I don't understand how I cleaned this living room two days ago and it looks like a war zone already!" 

With the new addition on the way, Brad and I are in need of some serious O-R-G-A-N-I-Z-A-T-I-O-N. If the two of us have managed to fill up (make a mess of?) four bedrooms, a two-car garage, two sheds (gulp that we even own sheds), and quite a number of closets, imagine what the situation will look like in a few months when we're +1. And you know those babies bring tons of stuff along with them (like, where are we even gonna put the stroller, let alone all those toys?!). 

And so Brad and I have resolved to get organized, de-clutter, and stay on top of (or at least next to) the general mess that builds in the course of a day/week. 

Okay, it was bad, but not this bad 

For the past few weeks we've been working on this in our more or less haphazard way: over the course of several days, I shredded about 4 months-worth of paper; we cleaned out the sheds and garage some (only some, believe me) when it was 50+ degrees out a few Sundays ago; I transformed a wasted bedroom closet once filled with "crap" into a very useful abode for my out-of-season-clothes and about 35 pairs of shoes. 

Not bad, but we've got a long way to go before this house is anywhere near as together as it needs to be. There's still a frightening amount of junk lurking in those sheds, an absurd amount of stuff-that-needs-shredded in bags/boxes in the garage from years ago, and the kitchen cabinet situation is anything but user-friendly. And that's just for starters. Soon enough, though, I hope to have a nursery closet organization project to show . . . it's already underway as of yesterday. Then it's onto that dang kitchen!