Project P.R.B.

Our house is a disaster right now. You can't come in. I won't let you.

Ok, really it's not that bad. Except for half of the basement.

I'm in the midst of some major projects around here. In fact, I've come up with my own little name for this massive undertaking {because I'm just a nerd like that}: Project P.R.B.


P = Purge
I got rid of very few items when we first moved from our apartment into our house because I felt unsure of what we'd actually need and use in our bigger place. Now I know, and the excess has really started to eat at me. Especially with all the stuff that comes with having kids, I'm really feeling the urge to simplify as much as possible.

So I am going through every corner, every closet, every box and bin and purging my little heart out. It feels amazing.

Because we have a fairly significant amount of stuff to get rid of, I'm setting it all aside for now and planning to have a yard sale later this summer. I'm hoping we can at least make a small sum of cash that can help pay for some upgrades in our kitchen that don't fit our current budget.

The pile of items "to yard sale" is growing by the day and is making our basement rather precarious. Hopefully the bigger the pile, the bigger the income, but for now, it's a major eyesore and I can't wait to get all of that stuff out of our house!

R = Reorganize
We all know the tale of how we moved into this home exactly three weeks to the day before the arrival of our first baby. That means that our whole house was unpacked in quite a hurry. Whether we had unpacked just before Makenna was born or in the weeks after, we did it all without a lot of thought and just for the sake of being entirely unpacked.

I have put a little effort into making things more sensible and functional for us since then, but I haven't majorly tackled it all as it should be. As I've pulled everything out to complete the purging, I've put of lot of thought into how to best organize or reorganize items to make our life easier.

Unfortunately this has become a bit painstaking. I'm spending so much time trying to visualize or put something away one place but then decide it would work better somewhere else. The fact that I have such strong OCD tendencies does not help one bit!

B = Beautify
I've always been a stickler for organization but I haven't always paid much attention to making the whole scheme beautiful and elegant. I freely admit that I've gotten sucked into the organizing/home decor blogs out there and fallen madly in love with the thousands of ideas for pretty organization. The photos I've seen have made me hang my head in shame at my brown cardboard boxes, even if the contents within are organized.

Yet it also doesn't fit our budget for me to run out and buy lots of pretty new containers and such. I'm going to have to get pretty creative--spray paint, wrapping/contact papers, and whatever else I've got on hand will probably be the tools I use to attempt some more aesthetically-pleasing storage spaces.



I'm a procrastinator. {That's always something I'm working at!} So I'm a bit ashamed I've not gotten around to doing all of this until roughly a year and half in our house. In typical Deanne-fashion, I am pushing myself hard to get things accomplished as I have only a few remaining weeks until my "work season" will start up again. Once that happens, it's so much harder to get major projects done.

So here are my "musts" in the coming weeks:
1. Complete the P {purging} and R {reorganization}
2. Have a yard sale
3. Paint our office desk

Yikes. Wish me luck!

I'll try to keep you updated on the progress, and possibly even share some cringe-worthy photos of the current chaos in our home.