Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Dining Room Transformation

As I mentioned here in my last post, I wanted to tidy up and make my dining room look better. I had planned to just:

  • straighten our built-in corner cabinets
 I did this. I reorganized each and every shelf in both of the cabinets (total of 8 shelves) and now anyone who wants something from one of the shelves can easily figure out where to get it from and best of all, can also easily figure out where to put it back. Before, there were a few shelves with mixed items and some of the things stored on the shelves were actually split up and stored in multiple spots. That was not working for me. The way it is reorganized now though, definitely works better for me and for the rest of the family.
  • straighten the armoire where I keep extra storage containers
Not only did I straighten the armoire, but I removed EVERY item from within it and then with Hubby's help, we moved it to the kitchen into a spot where I thought it would look better (which it does). It also happens to be the same spot where I wanted the armoire when we first moved into the house, but it was placed in the dining room instead and I have dealt with it being in there for quite some time. I'm very happy that it has relocated. It is now cleared out, happy in it's new home and filled with different items from the kitchen. The items that were in it were either moved into one of the corner cabinets in the dining room or moved to a new location within the armoire itself. Yay!
  • straighten the little kids' table (where the little kids eat when we have company)
For this job, I really just cleared it off and put miscellaneous items back where they actually belong. Things like the iron back in our closet, the table top ironing board back onto the rod of our bedroom closet, some plastic grocery bags thrown away and some dishes put into the sink. I still need to wipe down the table and bring in the chairs that belong with it, but it's a definite improvement over what it was.
  • clear off the table
I did this and also put on a fall table cloth that Cephas (I believe it was him - although it might have been Koren, I can't quite remember) picked out about a month ago. It has an array of pumpkins in all different fall colors on it. Not my first choice (I was leaning towards the leaf print at the store) but it still looks quite nice on our table. 
  • straighten the few items that are regularly kept on the floor of this room (the dog dishes and the extra dog food)
I put the tote of extra dog food under the little kids' table because that is an area where it fit and where it doesn't take up floor real estate. Love it! I also moved the dogs' dishes away from a vent. Now, it's in front of one of the corner cabinets, but it's on that we don't use very often at all and the dog dishes are easy enough to move when I would need to get into that cabinet.
  • dust
Did NOT get this done, but got some other stuff done, which I will mention in a moment.
  • wash windows
Ditto for this.
  • sweep
Done and...
  • mop
done.  Don't really think that there is too much detail needed for these items.

Some other things that we did to this room was to move the older boys' computer desk into the room. Now, I know that it may sound weird, but the boys didn't even have the computer hooked up nor sitting on the desk. It's taking up room in their bedroom and they don't use it. I need a space to put all of my important papers and other things. I now have my Girl Scout Leader stuff stored neatly on the desk as well as the boys' Cub Scout activity book which they use to earn their belt loops and pins. These are all stored on the main part of the desk where you would put a monitor. I also have a file tote stored on the lower half of the desk (where the tower and printer would go if it were to be used as a computer desk) as well as a box with my coupon inserts in it that still need to be organized.

Hubby and I also got to talking about some major renovations that we want to do to this room and even put up a swatch of a paint option on the wall to see if we liked the color (we didn't) so now we are semi-committed to changing the color of the top half of the room relatively soon to get rid of that paint swatch. The top part of the room is a dark tan color. The swatch is a red tone, which is a MAJOR difference, as I am guessing you would guess. We decided to go with a burgundy tone on the top half of the room and we are still deciding what we want to do with the chair rail and the wainscotting. Right now, we are torn between just freshening up the white paint that is currently there, changing the color to a wheat color or even removing the wainscotting and the chair rail and making the room a solid color. We're just not quite sure yet.

Oh - and all told, it probably took about an hour to do what I had wanted to do and more! And now, I have a jump start on the kitchen work that I wanted to accomplish too! Yay!

Tomorrow will prove to be a very busy day. We will get the kitchen stuff started and the laundry all sorted and folded and put away or into a pile for the consignment store and hopefully we will also get our bedroom rearranged. Hubby started to do it as a surprise to me while I was working on this post but it will be a big job and one that will require two people to work on.

A Case of the Crazies!!!

Okay, I admit it. My house is driving me insane. Or rather, the cluttery-ness of it at the moment. I have to work a 12 hour shift today (which is why I am awake at 4am, of course?) but let me assure you, when I get off work today, I am going to start a full-scale clean and declutterization of the whole house. Notice I didn't say that I was going to get it all done, rather I said, START one. You see, I am realistic. I know that what I am wanting to do here is going to take some time and is not likely to be completely accomplished in one evening. Maybe 1/8 of the house will be done (equivalent to one room of our home) but rest assured, the job will get started!

My plan of attack is to start in our dining room. It's one of the smaller rooms and overall, it should be fairly easy to accomplish. I just need to straighten our built-in corner cabinets, the armoire where I keep extra storage containers and the little kids' table (where the little kids eat when we have company). Then just clear off the table, straighten the few items that are regularly kept on the floor of this room (the dog dishes and the extra dog food) and then dust, wash windows, sweep and mop. Then the room will be done! All told, the room should take about an hour?

Then the room to follow will be the kitchen, then the living room, then the front room, the bathroom and then each of the three bedrooms. But just taking it one step at a time! I just needed to put it down here so that there was some kind of accountability to make sure that I get it done.

I may start doing Tackle It Tuesday (tackle on Monday, schedule a post for Tuesday) but I'm not sure just yet if that is something that I want to take part in. I love memes, don't get me wrong. I just don't know if I want that to be the focus. I want to have new and inspired material on this here blog. Not just something that I did and blogged about because I was supposed to. Does that make sense to everyone? I guess as long as I have other content as well then it will could be okay. We'll see...