Monday, January 3, 2011

2011

Maybe I don't want a Happy New Year, he said. Maybe I want an intense New Year with a lot of growth experiences

& I had to admit I'd never thought of that
-StoryPeople


Phew... Happy New Year! So nice to have a house put back together and not have stuff everywhere! As much as I love Christmas and I love to get out the decorations, there is something so fresh and new about your home again once it's all back in storage. :)

It's not perfect... lego T-Rex on the table, pull-ups from a recent Costco run, baby paraphernalia all around... but clean and de-cluttered as much as is possible with little ones in the house.
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I've not totally come up with "resolutions" yet... I don't normally make any official ones but I want to have a couple of main goals for the year and I'm still thinking on them. For now though, I'll leave you with one thing that I know I'm going to try and master this year.

The Playroom. Ugh.
This was it's state this afternoon:
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Can you believe I'm actually revealing it? Say I'm not the only one that has a room in their house like this one.
Even Cohen is appalled.

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No matter how many times I try and "organize" and come up with some kind of system for storing toys, etc... it always ends up looking like this.
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I'm not sure that I'm going to just throw my hands up and say it's the age of my kids just yet... although I would love to. My biggest issue is that this room is lacking a closet of some sort... a place to store sets of things and little items that just get tossed about the room by Cohen. ;) I'm not sure how to remedy that, but I'm going to try and figure something out. Any and all suggestions are welcome!

In the meantime... at least I know the kids are enjoying themselves and they are getting use out of the playroom! And thank goodness I have it. Could you imagine all these toys tossed about my house?? That would be a much bigger problem. ;)
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For now I will just be grateful that I have to physically walk up a flight of stairs to see the mess.

2011. I hope it treats everyone well... and I hope that I don't have too many growth experiences this year (like the story mentions above). I figure I'm due for a year off after adding Kelan to our family in 2010. Those first and last few months of pregnancy were tough as well as the first couple months of the adjustment to 4 little ones in the house. It was a changing year for us, and although a bit tough at times... I'm excited for the future and where we are in life right now.

That sounded a bit like a toast... Where's my Martinelli's? ;)
Cheers!

3 comments:

Heidi said...

I follow your blog bc I think your kids are beautiful and your house is always beautiful too! I don't know how you do it, staying on top of cleaning like you seem to do! I have 5 little ones and my house always looks like Toys R Us threw up in it! My playroom is upstairs too and I LOVE Ikea's Expedit systems and I use their Lekman (sp) bins...they are wonderful because they are sturdy plastic and they are BIG and you can stuff random things in to tidy up and have it be clutter free in a pinch. OR you can actually have it organized by bin too! (but the kids never put things back in the right spots it seems!)

allison said...

i feel like i organize the play room all the time. ours is small though and we do have a closet so that helps. i just have things organized in labeled bins and then random stuff or big items thrown in big baskets with lids. i'm big on baskets and bins. we're going to install some shelving so that its up off the floor though.

Bonnie said...

One thing we are doing is making the kids more responsible for their things. It is part of their chores. They get an allowance each week which consists of 25 cents for each chore they accomplish. If they failed to do a chore they lose 25 cents. Then the money they earn is divided into 3 envelopes. Giving, Saving, and Spending. I think if they have to save money for the things they want, and have to hand that money over they respect their things a little more. We got this idea from taking a Dave Ramsey course called Financial Freedom which I also highly recommend. Good Luck!