Before and After Home Improvements

I told Jesse all week that I was feeling overwhelmed about all the things piling up.  I feel like I am barely keeping my head above water just to keep up with the laundry, dishes, trash, cooking, sweeping, mopping, changing, feeding, and pumping.  To add anything else to my routine is next to impossible.  Thankfully, Jesse and I both worked hard this weekend to revamp and organize a few things that have been driving me crazy.  Here are the before and after shots:

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The most dysfunctional room in the house is the laundry room.  Because it our mud room and the first room we enter from the garage, it becomes the dumping grounds for anything and everything.  If our hands are full (which we know they most always are) we toss it on the washer or dryer.  What's not pictured is the cat food container and hanging laundry bag behind the door.  We couldn't even fully open the door.  I have to temporarily put baskets and various odds and ends on the floor just to open the washer or start the dryer. 

 



I sorted through everything and rearranged a bit.  To give you an idea of the last time we cleaned out the laundry room, that diaper bag was from Jackson.  It had tiny shoes, a size 2 diaper, and a church bulletin from February 2012.  Oh dear!  Every miscellaneous item found a proper home throughout the house (or trashcan).  I utilized the narrow space between the washer and the wall to store the cat food and hanging laundry basket.  Now the door opens all the way, the baskets and detergent are easily accessible, and nothing is blocking the washer and dryer.

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Jesse literally took a machete to the next eyesore.  We have this awful pampas grass that was so overgrown it was taking over the deck.  I had to move our patio furniture so we wouldn't cut ourselves amongst the sharp blades.
 

 

So much better!

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While the next makeover is less dramatic to the eye, it's a huge difference in functionality.  Now that we're finally down to our last packages of disposable diapers, we're ready to transition to cloth diapers.  Here was our previous changing station downstairs:

 

 

I moved Jackson's toys behind the chair (far left) and pushed the exersaucer to a corner in the dining room.  The babies aren't quite old enough for the exersaucer, but it should soon be helpful for entertaining one while we eat dinner.  The storage drawers now have organized cloth diapers, burp cloths/blankets, and books/baby toys. The new addition is a diaper pail. 

 

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Next on the list was to update our family pictures that hang above the couch in our living room.  We had a large 11x14 wedding picture and two 8x10 pictures of Jesse and I holding Jackson when he was two months old.  Now that James, Amelia, and Madeline are two months old, their photos are overdue for joining the wall.

I had to find another baby picture of Jackson by himself, which required us to dig out the hardrive and go through old pictures.  (This ended up taking an hour because I had to reminisce and look through hundreds of pictures from when Jackson was an infant.)  We picked our favorite pictures of Jackson and the triplets, ordered them at Walgreens, and switched out the photos in the frame. 

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In addition to the above "before and after" pictures, we also tackled the mile high piles of insurance claim, hospital bills, multiples discounts, thank you cards, car repair payment, birth certificates, social security cards, etc.  Basically, all important papers have been placed on the hutch in our dining room for the past two months.  Jesse filled out the many hospital insurance requests while I sorted and filed papers upstairs.  There isn't a single stray paper in sight!

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I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders now that my to-do list is back to the basics.  Knowing that everything else is in place (for now!) makes our challenging daily routine much more manageable!