Welcome to our home....

You may want to grab some coffee….and/or a meal…..I think this going to be the longest post in history!

I have been busy as a bee! I have been on an all out mission to fine tune things around our home to really be able to manage it in a way that consistently works for us me.   I’m just going to be completely honest and vulnerable if you don’t mind. If you know anything at all about me you would know that my heart is happiest when my home is in what I deem as in “order”.  I’m just a happier person.  I enjoy my life more when I feel that my home and my family have been attended to in the way that really I see fit.  For a large portion of my life that standard has hung over my head and has also been highly unattainable ( You know…the Christian Superwoman deal) and I’ve struggled over the years defining that for myself and my family.  Brandon has helped me a great deal by letting me know how he basically would like our home to run and I’ve just kind of added my own ‘flair’ while trying to find a healthy balance along the way.  School has had its  very dominant place in my life this last year and while we’ve been ‘getting by’ I’ve largely been unhappy and feeling like my home has been kicking my buttocks and NOT vise versa..  I’ve gotten away from “me”….which makes for an aggravated Mella.

So, with all that being said I was eager for winter break to start so I could get to work and wrangle in clutter in our home.  In all honesty…nothing in here is ‘safe’ I’ve been going from top to bottom trying to figure out how to best utilize our home to serve us in the best way possible.

Like any woman would (I guess) I started in the kitchen:

I took everything out of each cabinet and drawer and purged, purged, purged!  It now looks like this:

What’s in those ADORABLE little crates (that I scored at Walmart for .50) you ask?  Well they are labeled: baking, assorted, grilling, seasoning salts and each item is labeled inside. Yeah!  So excited. I will not show you each one but I’m sure you get the point.  There is a place for everything in there now Mama’s happy!

I’ll also spare you the drawers and the dishes and I didn’t take any pics of the storage in the island but you know the usual suspects: Tupperware cabinet, baking supplies drawer, utensils, bakeware cabinet, food storage drawer, pots and pans, etc.  All neatly put away. *sigh*

I also took the liberty of converting my recipe box to a binder( think 4×6 cards to 8×11 sheets of pretty sheet protected binder of organized tummy delights!  YEAH!  Love it.  It’s been SO much easier to meal plan and all that goodness.  I’ve just been pulling recipes out, placing them up front for the week and refiling when done….easy peasy lemon squeezy.  I’ve also recently fallen in love with my cozi meal planning tab….more on that another time.

OH!  I’ve redone the boy’s daily schedule/chore routine/rewards and also made a printable instead of having it written on our white board.

So what used to look like this:

(From doing their ‘steps’ they would earn $12 chore bucks a day $6/am & $6/pm allowing them to earn and then pay for 60 mins( $60) of video game time…on the weekends

Now looks like this:

This  printable was made by Jen at iheartorganizing.blogspot.com. I HEART her!  If you have one ounce of desire to be organized…you should get to know her.  She is a genius!

Christian: football//Nehemiah: basketball//Ezekiel: baseball

I look over their tins & areas and if everything is done, they are rewarded accordingly. Blue (am chores): 12 minutes// Black (pm chores): 12 minutes// Green(when we "catch" them doing something AWESOME we reward them! 15 "bonus" minutes //Red( If they are doing something NOT awesome the loose 15 minutes. With this new system, they now can earn 2 hours of screen time

Our white board with steps, rules, daily bible readings, and schedules for the boys

For both morning and evening each step corresponds to a picture and is posted where they can do them and then place them back into the "all done" tins. This is a pic of their morning routine.

WHEW!!!  Are you still here?  Pretty sure I’ll be banned from wordpress after this massive post!  I guess this is what happens when you don’t blog in FOREVER! I also redid ( got rid of games/puzzles with missing parts and pieces) our family game closet…which is in CJ’s room and he’s sleep so you don’t get a pic of that….I’m sure your <3 broken…but seriously once you’ve seen a organized stack of family friendly games…you’ve seen them all.  Before I go I H.A.V.E. to show you all the new yumminess our boys have in their rooms!

First off…I took to task the constant clothing war I wage on a daily basis and reduced each boy’s wardrobe to a manageable (for us) number, saved and stored a small reserve stash, and happily donated the rest.  YES!  No more overwhelming laundry days for this mama! They now will wear everything they have and NO more overly stuffed drawers! (Someone HAS to be able to relate to me on this one!)

I also recently scored these AMAZING desks at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore shop in J town…for ::drumroll:: $10 bucks EACH!  YAHOO!  YIPPEE YEAH!  I immediately had visions of our own little school house away from school but then the only room big enough to do that is in my office and that wouldn’t work considering I actually have to conduct business out of it on a regular basis so I decided to convert small areas  in their own rooms for their own spaces.  Again inspired (note I said ‘inspired…NOT as awesome as….but it TOTALLY works for US and that’s all that matters) by Jen and what she did for her son…..this is what they now have for their at-home educational needs:

Christian:  Has a printable that I whipped up in Excel to keep him on track on practicing his instrument. ( You’ll have to click the link to see it.  I don’t know how to show just the image…sorry :/ )

http://www.box.com/embed/mo7p993bzabmz1g.swf

Clarinet printable, pics of brothers and friends, clipboard for weekly reading log

Pic of Mommy and CJ, glue, pencils, markers, colored pencils and crayons and multiplication chart

Nehemiah and Ezekiel share a room and they each have their own desk and clipboards for their homework packets and shared “art cart” which has flash cards, paint supplies, coloring books, etc. they each have a tile for pics and writing + math helps on the wall for their reference:

BONUS:

I also hooked up each little man with their own personalized DS storage bins/cases.  Decided to make sure there would be ZERO excuses as to why they could find them or their games at a moment’s notice  They all look like this:

Well….if you’ve still here….thank you.  I just shared my home and my heart and I appreciate you being interested in something that means so much to me.  Before I head back to school, I still need to tackle    before I do that would like back to Walmart and see if I can get about ooohh….. 50 more of those cute little containers….hee hee hee

I still need to to tackle my office, Christmas gift storage, bedroom, laundry supplies storage area above my W & D, and then we will be good to go!  I don’t know what I’m really going to do in either room yet so I’m brainstorming like crazy.  Perhaps I’ll share those pics too when I’m done.

What about you? Have you started anything new in your life and home this year?  If so will you share that with me?  I would love to read it.

So in a (very large) happy nutshell…that’s what I’ve been up to!  Are you tired yet?

Thanks for reading…I’ll be back soon….I hope

<3 Mella

~~If you have a comment PLEASE leave it below so that I can have it always!!  If you have come here from Facebook and comment on Facebook then I don’t have any comments associated with posts and I loose them in a matter of days! ::Sad face:: 

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