Big Plans for a Short Summer

Well, kids. Tomorrow begins my first full day of summer break. On a typical Sunday, I would have been running around to finish the laundry, clipping coupons, meal planning, and doing the grocery shopping in preparations for the work week. But because I am out for summer vacation now, things went a little slower and I loved every minute of it! We visited a new church this morning (I’ll post about that later this week) and then out to breakfast at my favorite breakfast joint. Then I had a meeting at our church for Vacation Bible School, so while I went to that, the kids took naps. When I got home, I did some laundry. Our friend, Scott, came over so he and Chris could fix something in his car and then we woke the kids up and all got in the pool to cool off. Later, a friend who we hadn’t seen since college was in town and came by for a couple hours while we continued to float around the pool. We got everyone out, bathed, said goodbye to our company, fed the kids, put them to bed, and are now enjoying the quiet of our house at 7:00pm. It was a pretty good day.

With the exception of one minor setback which I desperately hope our two house guests overlooked…

Our house is a disaster.

Seriously.

These pictures don’t do it justice. (Mostly because I broke our lens and so the lens on my camera that I’m using isn’t great and all my pictures are blurry.)

I mean, there are not one, but TWO soccer goals in my living room right now.  WHY ARE THESE IN MY LIVING ROOM?????

And it’s not just the living room, which is where we are usually able to contain our slovenly ways. It has now seeped into every nook and cranny of our house. There is junk everywhere!

Bean’s room is usually pretty messy, but we always clean it up every night so that the mess doesn’t continue to grow. But with last week being the last week of school and the week before his birthday party, we just haven’t had a chance to contain the chaos.

A couple weekends ago, we moved all of his toys out of his room to paints and to work on a bookshelf project I found on Pinterest (pictures and post coming later this week). The idea was to paint the bedroom and then move everything back in with the new bookshelves. Only, Chris’s work week got away from him and so we haven’t had a chance to finish the bookshelves yet. So, the kids have basically turned the guest bedroom where we put all of Bean’s things into a playroom. It’s destroyed. I suggest wearing protective headgear if you are brave enough to venture in. So far, I haven’t gone further than the doorway. I’m too scared.

And don’t even get me started on our bedroom. Laundry has taken up residency in there today, so there are piles of dirty laundry, stacks of clean laundry, and baskets of questionable laundry that I have to figure out what to do with (how did I end up with two sets of lace curtains? I don’t even own lace curtains!).

Oh, yeah. And there’s a tent in my bedroom.  Don’t ask.

I mean, really. I can’t remember a time when my house has been this messy. It needs to be sorted, organized, straightened, and cleaned.

And I am just the summertime girl to do it!

I’m actually looking forward to cleaning the house this week, and taking on some summer projects to get us better organized and put together. The weird thing about me is that my classroom at school is super organized. I have labeled crates and drawers and files and bookshelves. Everything has a place and everything is in that place. Nothing ever gets lost or misplaced, and my work never piles up because I can keep on top of it so easily.

But my house? Notsomuch.

So, my summer goal this year is to organize my house the way I organize my classroom. We need some systems of organizations and some processes of cleanliness. And I plan to get those things into order starting TOMORROW!

My first step has to be to get the house back to Square One. It has to be clean. Even though there isn’t enough organization, things need to be put away to the best of my ability. That’s what I’ll be doing this week. Everything will be put away. Clothes, toys, dishes, paperwork, mail, coupons, electronics, keys, shoes, dog toys, and camping tents. It all needs to be put away SOMEWHERE. I think I can pretty much do that tomorrow.

Tuesday through Friday of this week will be devoted to cleaning. Down and dirty, on my hands and knees, putting a little elbow grease into it kind of cleaning. I’m going to try to do two rooms a day until the whole house is spic and span.

With the house clean and put away, next week I’ll be able to start some organizational projects I’ve been thinking about, such as:

– Sorting through our two linen closets and consolidating them down to one.
– Turning the second linen closet into a toy closet to store the kids toys.
– Organizing my table linens and cleaning out my table linen closet (yes, I have a whole closet of table linens – I can’t help myself when I’m around tablecloths and cloth napkins…)
– Turning my table linen closet into kitchen storage
– Turning our downstairs den into an office
– Setting up our guest bedroom into an actual guest bedroom. You know…like, with a bed.

Those are big projects which will take a couple days to work through each. In addition to those, I’ve been a busy little pinner on Pinterest, finding all kinds of organization tips for households. I’ll be doing some of those smaller projects along the way, as well. And don’t all you little neat freaks out there worry. I’ll be blogging every step of my organized way through this very short summer. By the time school starts back in just 10 short weeks, my house is going to be run as smoothly as my classroom.

Or I’m giving Chris and the kids lunch detention.