acTivity Tuesday

This week snuck up on me.  After last week, I was planning to prepare a little better for today's activities, and then I prepared nothing.  It's a good thing there is a long list of activities that we can do without any pre-planning.

This morning we did three activities.  We started off with a combination of 'Cruising' and 'House Tour' both from the Early One-Year Old list.  Cruising involves dragging them around the house on a blanket, and house tour is telling the names of each room in the house.  We did both.  The only rooms Evelyn could remember every time were her bedroom, our bedroom, and the kitchen.  She's doing pretty good, and I think a little more repetition of the name of the living room and entry way, and she'll know those too.

Cruising on their house tour.

Next we decided to play winter dress up.  This was my variation of 'Put on Your Jacket' from the Middle Two-Year Old list.  We went down in the basement (which is the coolest part of the house) and pulled out the totes of hats, boots, mittens, and coats.  Evelyn thought it was pretty fun to put all her stuff on, but didn't want mittens so she could still suck her thumb.  Elsie only let me put a hat on her, but she thought she was pretty cool too!

Elsie toddling around with her winter hat on.

I think the picture says it all.  This one is definitely going in the photo albums!

Our last 'tivavee' as Evelyn now calls it, was 'Painting the Sidewalk' from the Late Infant list.  Even though it was from a younger child list, Evelyn loved this just as much as Elsie did.  I took them both outside with yogurt containers full of water and 2 paintbrushes each, and let them paint the steps and driveway with water.  .

Evelyn got so into it, she was painting the storm door, the railing, the plants, her face, our name rock, and was having a blast.  They really surprised me with this one. I thought they'd dump their tubs so fast, but they were actually very into what they were doing.  It was so cute to see them both in their own ways learning the hand-eye coordination needed to use a paintbrush.

We had a lot of fun today.  Can't wait until next week!

acTivity Tuesday

Yesterday as I was browsing pinterest, I discovered a website that a friend had pinned called productiveparenting.com.  The pin had this caption, "Wow this site has HUNDREDS of activities for newborns to 5 year olds that are organized by 1/2 of their age all the way! Perfect for EVERY stage!!!"  It intrigued me.  So, I put the pin on my "Mommy Things" board and later went back to browse through it.  Wow.  There are literally hundreds and possibly thousands of activities to do with your kids.  They are divided by age.  I printed off the 'Early One-Year Old' list for Elsie, and the 'Middle Two-Year Old' list for Evelyn.  There are about 125 activities on each list.  Not all of them are necessarily perfect for every child of that age range, but most of them are.  They range from very little prep work involved i.e. singing songs to a lot of prep work involved i.e. making a balance beam, or a family picture book.

I realized that if I don't have a schedule for blogging, it tends (more often than not) not to happen.  So, I decided to start acTivity Tuesday.  Starting today, and every Tuesday following, we will do activities in the mornings.  Then, hopefully I can blog about them in the afternoons.  Because I didn't have any prep time for this week, we did a couple of activities that didn't require any prep work.

First Evelyn did two activities in one.  They're called Loose Change and Piggy Bank from the Middle Two-Year Old list.  Loose change involves sorting the change by putting each type in a different bowl.  Evelyn wasn't real enthused about this one.  The only coin that she could pick out on her own was the penny, and even then, she asked me each time before she put it in the right bowl.  She was more excited about the Piggy Bank.  This involved simply dumping out the coins and letting her put them back in.  She didn't finish all of the coins by the time we went to run errands, and the first thing she wanted to do when we got back was keep working on her "tivtee" (activity).  With the Loose Change activity, it's something we can keep coming back to until she gets it.  It's a learning and teaching activity as much as it is for fun. 

The other activity I took from the Early One-Year Old list.  It's called Kitchen Band.  I pulled out bowls, lids, pots and spoons and put them on the floor.  Each girl was armed with two spoons and started banging away as soon as I showed them what to do.  Here's a couple photos of the girls enjoying their 'band'. 

Evelyn actually banged on her pot so hard, she broke one of the spoons. I think I am going to enjoy these mornings as much as the girls are.  I can't wait to start working on next week!

HTCI Overview

After going through and organizing our entire house, I ended up with quite the pile of things to get rid of.

Not long after I finished my organizing, my neighbor stopped by to invite me to join the thrift sale she was going to have the last weekend in May.  Awesome!  It turned out to be the best thrift sale experience of my life.  I priced all of my stuff.  There were a few bigger items, but most things were marked around the $0.25 - .50 range.  I brought all my stuff over to her house a couple of days before the sale.  All I did was drop my boxes off and she set everything up.  She's really particular about how her sale is run, so she wanted to do it all herself.  Fine with me.  I went over the first morning of the sale to help run things.  I stayed for about 2 hours and didn't feel like much of a help as I had both girls with me, but we had fun.  And that's all I did.  I went back the day after the sale and collected my unsold items.  We dropped off two pickup beds full of stuff and brought home one big box plus a few other items.  We made $130.00 too.  So I got paid to get rid of my junk and hardly had to do anything.  It feels so good to have all of that stuff gone. The only problem is that I have another pile started already. 

At any rate, it feels so great to have my entire house organized.  If I need to quickly pick up the house for an occasion, I know where everything goes.  If Kevin asks me where something is, I usually know right where to find it.  Of course the organizer in me is constantly looking for areas that need improvement, but for the most part, my home is functioning smoothly because of all the organizing I did.

Area #25: Office & Storage Cupboards

 You know the saying, "Saving the best for last."  Well, I saved the worst for last.  I knew from the beginning that the office and storage cupboards would take the most time to organize.  It's been fun going through everything, it has just taken a lot longer than I even anticipated.  This was another area where things just got stashed when we moved in and never gotten back to. I'll go through each little area and do before and after pictures.  I'll start with the storage shelves that are also in our office.  The nice part about these shelves is that they have doors that close, so it doesn't seem to clutter up the office even though there's a bunch of things stored here that aren't even remotely office related.  The first set of shelves transformation:

I organized the paints into three groups: primers, paints, and stains.  This way it's super easy to look for the type of paint you need. All of the spray paint is in a box, drywall supplies in a box, and anything tile related (installing, cleaning, grout etc.) is together too. 

To the right of these shelves, is an open shelf area that I use for extra office supplies storage.  Before:

And After:

The last section of shelving to the right of this shelf also have doors on them.  I have Christmas decor up top (since I don't need to access it very often).  Paper and office supplies in the middle, and gun cases on the bottom.  Here's a look before.

I implemented a paper storage thing got at a thrift sale for $1 to separate some of the miscellaneous types of paper that we keep around, and limited this area to paper, envelopes, mailing labels, and hanging file supplies. This helps the area not to clutter up with other items that don't belong.

The next area is on top of our filing cabinets.  This section of horizontal space is my primo dumping spot for things coming in and out of the office.  Things that need to get filed, things that need to be entered into the computer, outgoing mail, bills, you name it.  Here's what my dumping spot had become:

I sorted, and filed, and ordered everything up.  I got another plastic paper sorting thing at another thrift sale for $0.50 and it is going to be awesome.  The top is for anything that needs to leave the office and go upstairs.  When I'm done in the office I can just grab everything in that slot and take it with me.  The middle section is for things to be filed in the business filing cabinet (lateral file), and the bottom section is for things to be filed in our personal filing cabinet.  Here's a look at it now:

 The last and most challenging area for me was the desk.  It's actually not even a desk.  It's my brother's old dining room table with all the leaves taken out.  There aren't any drawers for office supplies, so the table top tends to get cluttered very easily.  My paper recycling box was overflowing, and many random boxes had found their way under the table. 

After lots of throwing away, and sorting through papers and stacks of things, my 'desk' area is now a usable work station.  It's not perfect, and hopefully we can get a real desk someday soon, but until then it'll work for what we need.

It's hard to believe that my entire house is now finished.  I'll post my overall thoughts another time as this is getting long enough.  Now I can work on maintaining what I have set up.  I hope that by sharing my organizing adventure with you, I've spurred you on even a tiny bit to do some of the same in your own house. 

Area #22: Laundry Room

The laundry area is on the opposite side of the room from my craft area.  It has been very functional and for the most part orderly.  The only problem is that things tend to pile up.  Like my pile of hand-wash items behind the ironing board.  And my pile of white clothes to be whitened in the laundry basket, and my pile of cleaning supplies under the utility sink.  In the case of my first two mentioned piles, I just needed to take care of them and stop leaving them in piles (which I did).  Here's my laundry before:

I was waiting to post about this area until I got my shelf put up, but now our stud finder is being borrowed by a friend, so it may be a while until it gets put up and I wanted to finish up my HTCI project.  In my after picture, just imagine a simple one board shelf on the wall above the washer and dryer in between the pipes and the dryer vent.  And imagine the bucket of laundry soaps currently sitting on the dryer neatly arranged on that shelf. 

Area #23: Guest Bedroom/Storage

Our basement has a lot of unfinished area.  Until we get our third upstairs bedroom fixed up, we have a make-shift guest bedroom in the basement.  Basically it has a bed and a nightstand with a lamp, and that's it.  But, it works for people who need a place to stay for a night or two.  This room also has some very nice built in shelves.  I organized these shelves when we first moved in, and all they needed was a little straightening. Here are my shelves.  I think my favorite part about them is that totes fit perfectly along the bottom.  That helps make for neat and orderly storage.

And here's our "guest room".  Nothing fancy, but if you are ever in the area and need a place to stay, just drop on by.  Notice that I tucked the extra set of sheets right on the night stand so it's quick and easy to switch the sheets.

Area #24: Furnace Room

The furnace room is a 13.5' x 24.5' unfinished room that holds a lot more than just the furnace. There were two main spots that needed attention.  The rest of the room holds a bunch of cherry boards that are drying, and our freezer.  My first area is my food storage shelf.  This shelf holds canning jars (both full and empty), extra non-perishables, disposable plates/cups/silverware, and a few other random items.  Here it is before.

After we completely cleared out our garage at our old house, I found another shelf to this shelf.  I added that to better arrange things instead of stacking and stacking.  I also recently discovered that banana boxes are an awesome way to store empty canning jars.  20 jars fit snugly in each box.  The handles make it very easy to pull the box down or bring up a whole bunch for canning.  If you are interested in getting your hands on some of these awesome boxes, just let me know.  I usually end up with 2-3 each month from trips to the Bent and Dent.  Here's my shelf now.

My other area is directly across from this shelf.  It has been a dumping spot for everything from other rooms of the house that I didn't know where to put.  Here's what had collected so far:

I had been waiting for our set of 3 lockers to be brought down here from the garage to store winter clothes, hunting clothes, boots etc. in.  My wonderful husband and brother helped bring it down last week, which helped greatly in getting everything put in its place.  I didn't get a picture of the lockers, but now my corner looks like this:

I have a feeling that this little corner is going to continue to be susceptible to becoming a dumping spot.  I am going to try to fight the urge to dump things here and give them a home right away.  Easier said than done, but having a neat looking area is so nice I might be able to do it.