// UFYH: Kids room, my room and living room//

Preface: our house is a hundred years old and has tiny bedrooms. And zero closets. It’s a bit too easy for things to get out of hand. We recently (a year ago) moved back into it after being away while we were posted elsewhere, in base housing with gobs of closets and built in shelving. We forgot how to cope with our house. While we are fixing it up. And then, I got sick. And it went directly to Miss Havisham’s  abandoned banquet, or maybe an overgrown garden or an archaeological dig. It was awful to live in. Everyone was miserable.

I got better. And have spent the past four months fighting to get the house under control, with the help of UFYH. I would clean things (my room, the kids room, the sun porch that contains my office and the study/play area, the kitchen, the living room) but they would go right back to hell again within days. Rethinking needed to happen. SERIOUS rethinking.

On April 16th I unfucked the kids room. Took out the shelf that wasn’t working, put in some new ones, white melamine, bought some new bins to augment the old ones and moved stuff around (for example, I actually put the kids under-bed boxes under their bunkbed and put sorted in between sizes of clothes in them, so the under-bed space isn’t effectively the Mines of Moria for old popcorn and broken toys). Added some soft drawers because the boys had outgrown their baby dressers and needed more storage.

As of today, they have kept it clean for twelve straight days. This has never ever happened before. I might have to follow through with the offer to let them have the wii in their room sometimes.

This second one is taken with me sitting inside the bunkbed.

There are NO before photos. I looked. All of them are basically pictures of the walls and ceiling … almost as if I didn’t want to remember it being horrible. And it was horrible. You couldn’t see the rug. There were toys and clothes and …stuff… everywhere. It’s inhabited by a six year old and a ten year old, both boys, both less interested in cleaning than in licking soap. Just picture it. Also, there was a stash of rejected spaghetti behind one of the dressers. That was nice. *bleah*

April … uh. 12th? 13th? I unfucked our bedroom. Moved furniture, vacuumed everything, sorted everything, threw things away, put things in under bed boxes, put labels on. Added another closet pole and shelf to the Wall of Not-Closet that we use since the house has no closets, sorted shoes and winter things and summer things and linens and put things away. Winter and linens into vacuum bags, and those into the footlocker.

It looks awesome. Closet system after:

We have no closets here. All storage is stuff we engineered, moved in or built ourselves. I had the ikea storage boxes already, but they were stacked flat on top of the dresser. Not assembled. Because there wasn’t anywhere to put them. I also moved my vanity to this side of the room and the dresser to the other, so the expanded closet system would actually work. I bought those closet-shelf things and stuck them to the vanity with velcro so they wouldn’t shift.

The dresser has this week’s laundry atop it, waiting to get put up, but it’s only four bags. I didn’t photo that, though.

and the bed side of the room:

Before:

That’s laundry in the Ikea bags. 12 of them.  From a week or two before. No, it wasn’t being sorted, it was already sorted, and not put away. That was how we handled our clothes, and linens and the kids’s clothes.

There isn’t a before photo of the other side of the room because I couldn’t take one. Because there was a giant pile of clean, sorted laundry filling that end of the room and preventing me from putting any clothes away (that’s the closet and dresser being blockaded by laundry).

The living room was just cleaning, this time. I had done the big reorganization in January. It didn’t help. What did help? Making everyone else care about the house being clean by cleaning the bedrooms, keeping them neat and making the beds daily. I had help this time. And it has stuck for a few days, too. 

It has no clothes on the couch. No laundry in the chair. No discarded stuff hanging out on the table or under the cabinets next to the small computer table. The pillow covers got washed and put on the pillows and sewn up. That’s Spouse. He’s comfy and not willing to move for a “look we cleaned it” photo. And that’s my dog, who follows me everywhere.

All the shoes are on the shoe rack and the coats are hung up (that’s the old front door, now it’s an inner door).

Again, I can’t find any befores to compare with it, I suspect my shame is too great. The configuration is the same, but with old plates and cups and mail and leftovers and toys and socks and shoes everywhere.

The kitchen gets its own post, because I’m still working on it. Part of that entails ripping out the old broken sink and replacing it, so expect it to take a bit. I have confusing befores. The sun porch gets its own post because it’s not quite ready yet (still unpacking stuff into my new workspace, which I’m finally posting from, but it’s not presentable).

Oh, and I have completely lost count of days I’ve been making my bed every day. Thank you UFYH.

Listening to a random iPod mix and sometimes it hits a song which punches me with nostalgia so hard it’s like being stabbed.