Basement Mess to Playroom!

We live in a tiny two bedroom house.  with four kids.  and a dog.

The other day I decided to clean out the girls' bedroom.  I ended up removing most of their toys in order to give them more space and calm.  They still have bins of things stored under their beds, but the toy shelves moved downstairs.  The problem with downstairs was that it looked like... well, you'll see.  It wasn't really useable.  Therefore, my next project was tackling the basement mess.

Before:

After:

We bought metal shelving from Costco that completely covered one wall and gave us so much more storage space.

I don't have before and after pictures of the laundry room, but we also added more shelves in there to store food, toilet paper, etc that had all piled up.

I love my clean organized basement; its like adding a whole room to our house!  Thanks to my wonderful husband for working hard all weekend to help me get this done.  :)

Bedroom Organizing

The great end-of-summer house cleaning has begun!  Here is a look at the girls' bedroom before we tackled it the other day.  Sadly, this was in its "clean" state; it pretty much always looked like this or worse.

We made more of a mess while cleaning.

And there's still a mess in the playroom downstairs.  We're working on it.

But they love their peaceful bedroom now!

 I gave the girls a big pep talk before we started.  We live in a small two bedroom house, and just can't continue piling up things and filling our house!  I talked to them about making space to play, getting rid of what we don't love and keeping what we enjoy most.  We talked about how "things" are to be used and enjoyed, not hoarded, and sometimes that means giving those things to someone else who will use and enjoy them.  Someday we may have a bigger house, but this is what we have now and we need to fit into it!  They know that other people do not even have homes and we are very blessed to have the one that we live in.  While we wish for a bigger one, we should do the best we can with our little house.  (This was a pep talk to myself as well.)

I am so proud of them for making good choices!  They got rid of an entire laundry basket full of stuffed animals, threw away lots of random papers and junk, and chose to pass along some things we didn't need anymore.  They LOVE their new baby doll corner and all the space that they have to play now.  We moved the toy shelf to a downstairs room that we are working on organizing as well.  That is a bigger project that requires purchasing some new shelves, but hopefully that will happen soon.  I've been very overwhelmed with our house and it feels great to be organizing it now.  We tackled the hallway school cupboard and several other messy spots this week too.  My bedroom bookshelves will be getting whipped into shape tomorrow!

Pinterest Find: Toothbrush Travel Towel

I love easy sewing projects!  This one didn't take long at all (except for the pulling Isaac off the chair, away from the sewing machine, off the middle of the table, and so on...).  :)

This was my Pinterest inspiration.  I grabbed the hand towel today at Kohl's with one of those $10 off anything in the store coupons.  Some of the other towel toothbrush holders I saw on Pinterest had pretty ribbons on them, but I decided to use elastic so that the kids could easily close it up.

A few tips:
wash the towel before sewing.
put the ribbon or elastic in the side seam before you sew that up.
make your spaces a variety of widths to fit various sizes of toothbrushes.
make some big spaces for toothpaste.

I love this!  No more gunky plastic baggies or toothbrushes getting germy and infected.  I can just throw this in the wash and be all set.  I am excited to try it out on our upcoming cottage vacation.

Easy peasy!  Let me know if you have any questions.

Our "Nursery"

We live in a small two bedroom home.   ....with three children, and number four on the way.  Needless to say, we don't have a nursery.  I much prefer sleeping near my babies anyway.  I love having the baby nearby and nursing/ snuggling through the night for the first couple of years.

When Esther was born, we put a bed rail on the side of our bed and she slept with us from day one.  This time around we have a new king size latex mattress that is rather soft.  I got a mini co-sleeper for the baby to use at first.  After baby outgrows the co-sleeper, we'll probably add the bed rail back on our bed; at that point the soft mattress won't be as much of a concern.

I've been nesting like crazy lately - I think the bedroom is all done and set up for the most part!  I even vacuumed the dust bunnies from under the shoes in the closet today.  Here is our new bed, co-sleeper, and the Gia nursing pillow that I'm excited to try out.  Oh, and the big sister gifts are wrapped and sitting up on the bookshelf there.  (Big Sister shirts and cute little silicone bracelets that say "I'm a BIG Sister!"  They even had a smaller size that I think will fit Esther well.)  The zippered part under the co-sleeper holds my aden + anais swaddling blankets, dream blanket (Black Friday deal!), and a few other blankets.

The co-sleeper still needs to be strapped tight to the bed under the mattress.  I am hoping the little sleep sheep will muffle some of the big sister noise in our small house.  This book light hooks perfectly on the co-sleeper and I can swivel it around so that its not shining right in baby's face.  It will be nice to turn on for nursing without having to get out of bed.  Ross has had this particular one for a couple of years and it has worked well.  I did steal it from him, but ordered him another one.  ;)

On the co-sleeper, I have this organic waterproof pad and this organic sheet.  They are much cheaper than the ones that Arm's Reach sells, fit nicely, and are stretchy and soft.  The waterproof pad is a few inches smaller around than the mattress, but still works well.  I have two of each for when one set is in the wash!  (Note: I have the Arm's Reach Mini Co-sleeper, in case you are thinking of getting these sheets.  You would have to find other sheets for a full size co-sleeper.)

From the other corner of the room you can see: my nicely decorated door (artwork that the girls give to us gets taped up there), handprint canvases, and my birth box on the floor.  (I'll do a separate post on that.)  The bottom drawer of the dresser holds baby's clothes.  The three basket shelf has my slings and nursing cover in the top basket, burp cloths in the second, and extra cloth diapering things in the bottom one.  My new diaper bag is sitting on top of the shelf and is partly packed with a few things (wet bag, changing pad, etc.).

Because we don't know if baby is a boy or a girl, I pulled out all of the neutral clothes and washed them. If its a girl, we'll dump the rest of the 0-3 month clothes box in the washing machine.  If its a boy, we'll have to go shopping!

On my desk I have a baby scale.  I bought that when Esther was having so much trouble nursing, just to be sure she was gaining well.  The shelves contain our homeschool books and toys, and cloth diapers on the bottom.  Baby's car seat is also sitting there, all washed and ready to be installed in the van.

That's about it!  I spared you a photo of the nursing bras and tanks, nursing pads, and pjs in my dresser.  I think our bedroom could use something decorative on the wall above our bed, but otherwise it is nice and cozy and ready for baby.  :)  Now I need to go "nest" the rest of the house....

Organizing Children's Clothing

This is what my stored children's clothing used to look like:

This is what it looks like now:

A couple of months ago I pulled up every box and bag of children's clothing and piled it in the living room.  It took a few days, but I went through it all.  After having three girls and rummaging through the clothes numerous times to find swimsuits, store out of season clothes, look for a snowsuit, etc, it had all jumbled into a big mess.  Now I have a big tub for each size of clothing.

The tubs are labeled with an index card taped to the inside:

0-3 months,
3-6 months,
6-12 months summer,
6-12 months winter,
12-18 months summer,
12-18 months winter,
24 months/ 2T summer,
24 months/ 2T winter,
3T summer, and so on.

The bag on top is all of our swimsuits and swim diapers.  As I store clothing I'll continue with my system of having a summer and winter box for each size.  For now the shoes are all in a big tub together since we don't have too many of those yet.

I cannot even tell you what a relief this is to have organized!  Every season I would dread changing out the clothing.  I would think about it for weeks and had such a hard time finding the right clothing for everyone.  Now all I have to do is find the right box.  Organizing like this even allowed me to give away several big boxes of clothing to moms in need.  Although if we have a boy someday I guess I would need to have double the amount of boxes!

Homeschool Organization

We started school this week!  Here is a look at how I have organized things.  We do not have a schoolroom, so I've taken over the hall cupboard and some bookshelves in our bedroom.  We are using My Father's World First Grade.

The cupboard in the hallway contains our art supplies along with a small box labeled school supplies.  The school supplies box sits on the middle shelf and holds the bean cup, coin cup, music CD, pencil, and a few number of the day sheets (all items Lucy needs to use daily).  The drawers next to it are for blank paper, construction paper, and magazines to cut up.  On the top shelf we have boxes labeled:
-play doh
-play doh toys
-scissors, glue, and paint
-markers
-stickers
-pencils, pens, and colored pencils.

The bottom shelf is full of coloring books with a box of crayons separating Lucy and Julia's books.  Yes, we have that many coloring books and crayons!  They get used all the time too.  Oh, and there are paint shirts tucked to the side of the drawers.  The girls also place finished artwork on top of the drawers and I go through them every so often tossing some and saving others in a large box in the basement.  I have one box for each child's work.

Lucy and Julia can both reach things in this cupboard and are welcome to play with them all.  I have another cupboard in the basement that contains other art supplies - large bottles of tempra paint, my stash of new school supplies to dole out as needed, reams of paper, posterboard, etc.

I moved our sheets out of the hall cupboard last year in order to make room for all of this.  I now store our sheets in a large plastic tub under our beds and that works well.  Our house is small, so we have had to get creative at finding storage for everything.  Most of the school books are on these shelves in my bedroom:

I love snooping on other people's bookshelves, so I'll give you a closer look at the shelves eventually.  The books are divided by subject, with the plastic boxes holding small manipulatives and games for each subject.  Esther's cloth diapers are on the bottom shelves.  The other side holds games and preschool activities.  One of the clear file boxes is for file folder games and felt stories.  The other clear file box is MFW papers.  I have folders labeled: student worksheets, number of the day copies, restaurant game copies, general MFW information, and finished student worksheets.

I think that about covers our set up.  Lucy does her work at the kitchen table, along with lots of snuggling and reading on the couch.  Thanks for letting me share!

Muffin Tin Monday - on vacation

I brought cupcake liners and colored picks along on vacation just for Muffin Tin Monday!  We've had some upset little tummies, so we had to stick with chicken soup, banana blueberry picks, and Cheerios.  I am excited to try out my new supplies, but that will have to wait until next week when we're home.  I just bought these coolest ever picks, and organized everything into plastic tubs before we left:

The boxes are labeled: Egg Molds and Picks, Mini Cutters and Sandwich Punches, Cookie Cutters, Silicone Cups and Trays, and more Silicone Cups.  I cleared out the cupboard above the refrigerator, banishing the crystal bowls to the basement.  I do have to stand on a little chair to reach these, but I love having everything organized and ready to create with!  Do you have a good storage system for your MTM supplies?  Do share!

My Father's World Kindergarten - Organization

I saw a great blog post recently about how someone organized their Kindergarten homeschool supplies and it was a huge help to me. I've finally finished organizing our school cupboard and thought I'd share the results.

I cleared out a cupboard in the hallway, moving some things to the basement and trying to creatively find new places for what was previously stored here. Lucy is excited that she can reach the drawing paper on her own now and I love having all of our school supplies stored in one place and ready to go for the fall.

On the top shelf I have plastic shoe boxes labeled (from left to right) - "play-doh", "play-doh toys", "pens pencils colored pencils", "stickers", "crayons markers", and "scissors glue paint". Each bin is labeled on both ends so that it can be put back with either end facing front. We have a good assortment in these bins including window markers, fat markers, skinny markers, crayon rocks, finger paint, watercolor paints and more! I love having a huge array of art supplies available for the girls to use and they always have fun when I pull out something they haven't used in awhile. Other art supplies like pom pons, brads, cardboard tubes, baby food jars - things like this for special projects are stored in a cupboard in the basement. On top of the play-doh bins are some extra plastic containers of homemade play doh. (For more play-doh ideas see my post here.) The small plastic boxes in front of the bins have crayons in them.

Second shelf - (from left to right again) I have a box labeled "My Father's World" that holds plastic bags of the ABC game, short vowel song, ABC chart, and bingo cards, alphabet flashcards, the number cup, and anything else we use daily. The box underneath is labeled "school supplies" and has pieces to our big calendar, HWOT music cd, HWOT chalk boards, MFW music cd, fundanas for our nature studies, and more. The Cuisinaire rods are stacked on top of these two boxes. Beside that is a roll of fingerpaint paper and a paint shirt. The three drawer set holds handwriting paper and the HWOT wooden pieces, a small pad of colored paper, and white paper. I was disappointed that my large pad of colored paper didn't fit in the drawers, so it is stacked on top of the drawers along with some watercolor paper and more drawing paper. These were all to wide to fit in the drawers. Beside the drawers I have my teacher's manuals, HWOT workbook, Cuisinaire rods workbook, and a dry erase board.

Bottom shelf - way at the back I have a large pad of fingerpaint paper that didn't fit anywhere else. The ant hill is stored here as well. I'm going to get a big binder with page protectors to hold all of Lucy's worksheets and projects throughout the year. (Art projects that are too big for the binder will go in a big plastic bin in the basement. Each girl has their own bin.) That binder will sit on this bottom shelf. Lastly, I have my file box with the alphabet puzzle on top of it.

My Father's World K goes through a series of themes: sun, moon, etc. I have a file for each week containing any ideas I come across, the student worksheets, and other things related to the theme (songs, fingerplays, etc). The calendar, hundred chart, and blend ladder are in the first weeks folder right now and will travel to whichever week we're working on at the time. After weeks 1-26 I have a file labeled "Music and Fingerplays" including the MFW music idea sheet and some fingerplay and song ideas. The "Nature Studies" file has some ideas copied from the back of the book "Pocketful of Pinecones" and other nature studies ideas I may come across. I have a file "Holidays and Seasonal Ideas" with holiday ideas that I want to use (a snowman poem, turkey coloring page, Christmas ideas, etc). "General Information" has a MFW catalog, speaking cds of David Hazell, a few parts of my student worksheets that I didn't need yet, etc. "Preschool MFW" contains the idea booklet and papers from the preschool kit and some other things I printed out that we used last year. My last file is labeled "HWOT" and includes the laminated cards that go with the wooden letter pieces.

I hope some of that is helpful to you! It actually took me quite a while to figure out how to best organize this and some of it may even change as we go. I always enjoy seeing how other people have organized various things and it sparks ideas of my own. Be happy I'm only showing you the one cupboard, you definitely wouldn't want to see the rest of my house in all its chaos. Maybe as the nesting instinct hits I'll become a bit more organized. Thanks for stopping by!

Homeschool Update Summer/ Fall

I'm officially out of the first trimester this week Wednesday and have been having more good days than bad the last few weeks, so I'm hopeful that the nausea is leaving me. I have been on low maintenance around here for the last few months - barely keeping the dishes done, napping whenever Julia naps, and trying to use my free time to play with the girls and not stress about housework too much. Somehow we've survived!

I've been preparing Lucy's preschool curriculum for the fall and finishing up a few things I had on my list to do with her yet this year. I wrote a post here about what we used this year for homeschooling. We read lots of books - Lucy looks at books on her own, "reads" them to Julia, and Daddy always read a few with the girls before bed. Lucy has a few workbooks she enjoys doing and colors or works on some sort of art project quite frequently. We've enjoyed the My Father's World preschool package and have had fun with the toys and ideas they include. I have two shelves on a bookcase in my room that are filled with "preschool toys" that we pull out and play with together at times. Our learning is rather spontaneous and depends on the girls' interests that day.

Before Five In A Row seemed to be too simple for us, and while we enjoyed making a few lapbooks from Homeschool Share, I found it to be a lot of prep work on my part. We haven't used Handwriting Without Tears yet, as Lucy was enjoying some other workbooks she had and I didn't want to introduce another workbook yet.

Lucy actually just turned 4 this week. Although I agree with not pushing a child to start schooling, and some of the "better late than early" philosophy, I also believe that homeschooling gives you the freedom to follow your child's lead. Lucy is very interested in learning, is very bright, and is at a level where we think she will do well with starting My Father's World Kindergarten this fall. We're not calling it K, we're just calling it preschool and will take it slowly if we need to. I read through the teacher's manual and feel like she's ready for this. My Father's World is a very gentle K program and I anticipate it being a lot of fun! I've been working on ordering the books and supplies I'll need, cutting and laminating pieces, and trying to get organized. I cleaned out a hall cupboard so we would have room for our school supplies and I'll post a picture and explain my setup once I figure out how its all going to work best. I'm not finished yet...

This summer we are working on a few more lapbooks that I had printed out things for and hadn't gotten to. We're on Goodnight Moon this week and are enjoying it. I want to do a few more of these throughout the summer; Lucy has fun with it and I think its a good transition into the fall where we'll be doing schoolwork every day.

Handwriting Without Tears - I ended up purchasing the wooden pieces, capital letter cards, chalk boards, and song cd used from friends. I laminated all of the capital letter cards and we're going to play around with them a bit and start the pre-K workbook soon. MFW includes handwriting, but I just love the wooden pieces and multi-sensory approach of HWOT. We're going to start the workbook this summer and then we may use this along side MFW as we get to the various letters and are learning to write them throughout the year.

I am also revisiting the MFW preschool activity idea booklet and using that this summer. We pull out a preschool toy every now and then and check their idea booklet for a different way to use the toy. I love all of their ideas and want to be sure we get through them before heading on to K.

Some of my other goals for the summer are:

-to listen to the cds of David Hazell (founder of MFW) speaking, have DH listen to them and then talk about them together

-read For The Children's Sake again. I read it once last year but now own a copy and need to read through it again as MFW recommends it.

-organize and prepare for starting K as much as possible

I'll post more about specific resources we'll be using along with My Father's World and how I'm organizing things, as well as fun ideas as we go! I'm excited about continuing our homeschool journey this coming year and starting "for real". We may take a few breaks, especially with the baby coming in January, but I think Lucy is ready for this and will enjoy the learning time with mom! Julia is going to be a handful, she wants to do everything Lucy does and will definitely need to be kept busy during school time. Anyone else starting K or preschool this fall?

Meal Planning

Until recently I hadn't planned out meals day by day.  I would make a list of meals that we wanted to eat, buy the ingredients, and keep that list on the fridge.  Problem was, some meals would need fresh ingredients that would go bad before we got to that meal or something would need to be thawed out and I wouldn't do that in enough time.  Some friends of mine were using Google calendar to meal plan and encouraged me to give it a try.  I'm hooked!

I love using Google calendar and having meals all planned out for several reasons.  Probably the biggest benefit is that I've done the work of figuring out what to eat for dinner ahead of time.  I don't have to stare at my list trying to figure out which meal to make, which meal needed that onion that is going bad, etc.  I like the feature that allows you to simply click on a meal and drag it over to another day if plans happen to change.  I type in leftover days once or twice a week since we are a small family and usually have extras.  I'm also using the calendar to plan out my other baking - bread, granola bars, bagels, and other things that aren't necessarily dinner, but need to be planned.  Knowing what we are eating for dinner ahead of time also allows me to create better meals.  If I know what we are having I can make fresh tortillas, put some cinnamon raisin bread in the bread machine, or be sure we have a fresh salad on hand.  Using Google calendar has been a great tool to use in feeding my family healthy meals and organizing my day a bit more.

Pantry Storage Containers

*I* bought plastic for my cupboards, gulp.  We had trouble with moths in our pantry cupboards and since then I've been looking high and low for safe containers to put flour, sugar, and other staples in.  After considering my options, I finally bought lock and lock plastic which I feel is relatively safe.  Its made of polypropylene (much safer than polycarbonate) and has a silicone seal.  They offer a lifetime warranty on the product and I'm pleased with the sturdiness of it.  Its air and water tight, so I don't think my little moth friends will be getting in nor out of these containers.  They state that its dishwasher, microwave, and freezer safe, but mine will not be put in the dishwasher or microwave.  

Meijer had these on sale last week 20% off and I finally figured out that a 16.3 cup lock and lock is the size that will hold a 5lb bag of flour/ sugar/ etc.  They sold these in a package of 3- the 16.3 cup container with two smaller ones inside.  I purchased enough of these sets to put sugar, whole wheat flour, bread flour, and a few other things in the large ones and used the smaller ones for rice, quinoa, barley, etc.  I bought a long container to keep noodles in, and a large container to hold bread that I make in my bread machine.  I used my label maker to put labels on things, but these containers are also very see through, which is great for seeing how much sugar or flour I have left.  

Overall I'm happy with the new organization of my cupboards and am happy that the moths are now under control.  We had one infestation where we had to throw away quite a bit of food and while I was putting things in my new containers I found that they had started coming back again, but I think I finally have them beat.  It did cost a bit to purchase the containers, but was worth it.  The moths can eat through plastic bags (like the bag rice comes in or a plastic ziploc bag) but they can't get through solid plastic containers like these.

Note- I had considered glass containers, but couldn't find anything with a seal.  If you can find canning jars with a wide mouth in larger gallon or 1/2 gallon sizes, you can use these white plastic lids.  I thought these jars would be too heavy and large for my small pantry, but it may be a good option for someone.