If you ‘like’ me on Facebook, you already know all this. If you don’t ‘like’ me, why not? All you have to do is click that button right over there>>>>> (Don’t see it? Scroll down a little. You can’t miss it. It’s the one that says LIKE.)

So in my last update I said I would do the bedrooms next. Instead, I started picking away at the bonus room. Because of the helter skelter way I went at it, I didn’t think to take before pictures. I wish I had because it was bad. I do, however, have pictures of that time we threw everything in there when we were laying hard wood floors down. Those pictures are worse than it was this time around, but here you go:

Again, this was when we threw everything from the entire upstairs (including closets) into the bonus room when we redid the floors. It wasn’t this bad to start this time around. But it felt like it.

Scary. Anyway, the biggest issues this time were the toys covering every inch of walking space and the desk/built-ins being covered with paperwork/tiny toys Annelise tried to put in her mouth/trash/lots of random stuff that didn’t belong there.

I started picking away at it, beginning with the built-ins. I had three totes (one for garbage, one for things that belonged somewhere else, and one for things that we don’t need anymore and/or don’t belong to us) and filled them up. The progress was encouraging. Took a few days off for family things and last Sunday I went back at it with gusto. I finished the built-ins and tackled the toys. Everything got sorted by type (vehicles in one crate, toy people and animals in another, etc). By the end of the afternoon, I was done. And SO EXCITED. Not to toot my own horn, but it looked pretty darn good in there! Maybe you won’t think so, but if you’d been the one cringing every time you looked in there, then you’d be doing a happy dance too.

Without further ado, my after pictures:

Look how clean those shelves are! I need to get some baskets for them and move that bin of ‘Stuff that doesn’t belong here’ out, but I’m pleased with the progress.

The utter lack of clutter (hey, it rhymes!) soothes my soul.

The toys are just in bins right now, but we plan (some day) to build a bench with built-in storage. And the boys know where everything belongs, so hopefully that will make cleaning up easier.

I’m not quite done as I still need to go through all the desk drawers full of paperwork (ugh), but I am well on my way. The thing that most surprised me when I was done for the day was that there are actually a lot fewer toys than I thought there were. Maybe we can keep them to a manageable level after all!

Stay tuned…. more updates to come!