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!

A Cozy Pack N Play

We live in a small two bedroom house... with four kids.  The second bedroom is quite full.  Two dressers, twin bunkbeds, a toddler bed, and a small toy shelf fill the room.  So where does Isaac sleep?  He sleeps with us right now, but eventually he will move to a pack n play in our room.  I am getting it set up and my plan is to start using it for naps and go from there.  In the past, my babies haven't liked the pack n play, but I think I found a way to make it pretty comfy for him.

I discovered a pack n play mattress on Amazon!  Genius!  Who wants to sleep on a hard bumpy pack n play bottom anyway?

This is the pack n play we bought:

And here is the pack n play mattress! (The description says it fits a square pack n play, which is obviously not true.)  It fits perfectly.

I also bought this organic waterproof mattress cover.  We have the crib size on Esther's toddler bed and love it.  These are very soft and comfortable and not crinkly at all.  I took a chance with the sizing on this one since it wasn't exactly the measurements I was looking for, but its stretchy enough that it works just fine.  (You can see it on the mattress in my photo above.)

These organic sheets fit over top of it all (get two!).  Again, I love these.  They are stretchy, soft, and comfortable.  I used this same brand in a different size on our co-sleeper.

Oh, and the kitty in the top picture is "Diddy".  Isaac is obsessed with kitties and was so excited when I got him his own diddy.  He is so cute snuggling with it!