30-Day Organizational Challenge

Almost a month ago, I signed up to be a part of OrgJunkie's 30-Day Organizational Challenge. I signed up to spruce up our master bedroom.

1. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and were you able to overcome it?
The hardest part for me was getting the motivation to get started. See we were in a high stress time preparing for our about-to-be-adopted son to come home to be with us so I was in major project mode in the nursery. It was really hard for me to appropriately prioritize my time and energy - giving some (if not a lot of it) to US. This turned out to be a little microcosm for the whole 'spiritual journey' we went on with this project. (Embracing the fact that we need to put our marriage first sometimes, and our bedroom!!)
2. Tell us what kind of changes/habits you have put into place in order for your area/room to maintain its new order?
Some of the habits we have taken on are:
-making the bed first thing in the morning
-always putting our clothes away right when they get folded
-as soon as the laundry hamper is 3/4 full taking it downstairs and washing the clothes
-putting NOTHING on our dressers that don't go there - not even for a few hours! (I love this one: one evening I asked my husband where his wallet, keys, etc were and he got this sly little smile and said, "they are hiding because the room is just so beautiful I don't want to ruin it!" So, even he has gotten in the habit of housing those things in his top drawer where I put a basket for them - yippee!!)
-not bringing laundry into our room to fold, store, etc.


3. What did you do with the "stuff" you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?

-Mostly we gave things away on freecyle and to goodwill. We also threw a bunch of stuff out. A major part of the purging was the clothes. We simply had too many. It has been so freeing to look at our closet full of things we love and wear all the time! Everything else is gone!!

4. What was the biggest lesson you learned from this experience?


I went with a slightly tropical theme (with the palm tree art) mostly because of my original motivation and intention with this project - it was to do this for my marriage. You can read about that here. We went to Key West for our honeymoon and have always wanted to go back. But since money is tight and we are about to have baby #3, I figured that while going to Key West may be out of the question, I could bring a little Key West home to us. I still have a few pictures of ours that we took on our honeymoon on order in 8x10 so I can frame them for over Tim's dresser, and I am looking for a mirror for over my dresser.

I feel like I have succeeded in keeping my intentions honest and the dignity of the project has kept me motivated. This was about more than a clean room. This was about putting US first. It has been wonderful for our marriage to see the fruits of this labor spring forth. With every piece of clutter we took out, we felt one step closer to one another.

When I was spending some money on new bedding for us this week, I had a little bit of guilt, and then I remembered that I spent easily twice this amount on our kids' bedding. And it donned on me: I have had to be re-trained to believe that WE ARE WORTH IT!!! Yes the kids are wonderful and we need to focus on being good parents much of the time. But we cannot neglect ourselves individually or as a couple. I think that is the biggest lesson I have learned with this challenge: WE ARE WORTH IT!!!

And let me just tell you that sleeping in this new room has been so peaceful! We have been renewed and we are so grateful for Laura's challenge which gave us just the right incentive to finally do this for ourselves. Because you know what? We are worth it!!!

5. Now that you have completed the PROCESS, do you think having and keeping your space organized will make a difference in your life?
YES!!! Our room has remained a safe, calm, relaxing haven and has contributed greatly to the peace we have had in our home, and our relationship as of late. We are more organized in general now, and since implementing some of these systems in our bedroom, we have been inspired to tackle our basement as well! It has been such a blessing to our marriage and our family! Our kids can come into our clean, peaceful room and snuggle with us without tripping on a laundry basket or anything else!!


Pictures...

As you may or may not recall, this was a place of much disorganization, disgust, and dismay. It was cluttered from corner to ugly corner. Let's take a trip down memory lane.... here are the BEFORE pictures:

Here is our bed area. I bet you are wondering where we slept!! Well, each night we would shove everything off our bed onto the hope chest there at the end of the bed, or onto the floor!

And here is my dresser. Ugh. Piled high with um, 3 purses, books, scrapbooks, picture frames, a juice pitcher???, and who knows what else!!

And here is our closet area. I call it "area" because more often that not we could not close our closet doors and had many of it's contents spilling out into the main room. Things in here needed a new system for sure!!! We had no clue where things went!

And here are the THUS FAR pictures:
An empty closet.



An empty room.





The beginnings of a room being put back together.


It was at this stage of the game we made a few decisions.
1. Let's keep the wall color because it really is a soothing blue. We will "test drive" it with a clean room for a couple of months and then see if we want to change it. Part of wanting to change the color probably stemmed from always associating the blue with a cluttered room.
2. We need a system for our clean "extra" linens and small storage items. We don't really have a great linen closet so we decided to utilize the shelving in our closet and the hope chest at the end of the bed for master bedroom items only.
3. We really had to decide what was coming back in the room and what wasn't and we needed to be ruthless. You can read more about that process here.

And then, this week, I spent some time rummaging through the linen bins at the Salvation Army and I found some other decorative items at Old Time Pottery. (I love being able to decorate for relatively inexpensive!!) The rest of the items you'll see are things I had around the house.


And let me just tell you that sleeping in this new room has been so peaceful! We have been renewed and we are so grateful for Laura's challenge which gave us just the right incentive to finally do this for ourselves. Because you know what? We are worth it!!!


Okay, okay, okay, enough waxing philosophical and onto the pictures you say!
Here you go, here are the AFTER pictures:

That is MY NEW RETREAT!!! Yes, a place just for Mama & Daddy. A place to rest, read, and relax. Look at that bed! Doesn't it make you want to jump in?? We have all new bedskirt, sheets, pillowcases, shams, and TWO comforters!! Here is my secret: I found a white duvet cover at the Salvation Army for like 3 dollars. It bleached up perfectly and I slipped our old Nautica comforter (very pricey) inside. That is what is laying flat on the entire bed. And then I found an inexpensive comforter set at Old Time Pottery with this white comforter with rusching. I folded it over once at the end of the bed - it just makes the bed look like a hotel - or magazine. THIS IS MY DREAM BED!!!! I am so thrilled to have accomplished it! Oh, and it is SO comfy! I just may lay in bed a lot longer in the mornings to come!!


Here is our closet. I want to draw your attention to two things. 1. We came up with a new system for sharing this space. Rather than one of us take the top rack for hanging, and the other take the lower, we decided to split things vertically. Now we both hang our tops on the top, and our bottoms on the bottom. This leaves more room on the bottom for a laundry hamper. And it creates a forced limitation on me and the amount of shirts I own.

2. We also came up with a system of storage for small things in the closet: These baskets!! Our system before consisted of, well, no system at all. Now we have decided that things like my small bags, my scarves, etc will go in one basket (furthest to the right); Tim's small stuff like, (I have no clue what he will use it for!!) goes in the far left; then in the middle two are for extra magazines or books we are working on. (Since the rule of three applies everywhere!!)



Here is a great pic because you can see my husband's dresser and our new window treatment - can I just tell you how much I LOVE our new electric screwdriver???

And finally, the view of my dresser while you are standing in the doorway. Ahhhhh. So peaceful!


Thanks for journeying with me as I grew in my understanding of why I had a cluttered mess of a master bedroom. And thanks for sticking with me even when you were scared by some of those before pictures!!

Head on over to Laura's to check out more transformations!!