cleaning

Growing up we had a lot of little neighborhoods popping up in our community. We would wander through the model homes on the weekends and I always remember thinking and asking my parents, “Why can’t our house look like a model home?” My mom and dad would laugh and say, “It’s because we LIVE in it.”

Noooowwwww I get it!

Sometimes sitting and perusing beautiful blogs can be inspiring, yet at the same time it can be overwhelming. Am I missing something? How on earth do these ladies keep such spotless and organized homes?

How they do it doesn’t matter. I need to come up with a way that works for me. I will admit I don’t spend as much time as I should making our house a home. But I do love the days when I putz around and spend time in little areas and get them just the way I want them. I’ve been trying to do that this summer…I’ll go upstairs and spend some time tidying up or rearranging and will return downstairs to find it a disaster with scraps of paper all over, blankets on the floor, Lego explosions, etc. Or vice versa, I’ll be cleaning up the kitchen downstairs and the kids will DESTROY the upstairs all the way from their rooms down the hall to our room. I’m not going to lie, it’s frustrating.

I know that it’s not realistic to keep a spotless, everything-in-it’s-place home 24/7. But I would like to find a happy medium…like you know when you hustle around and straighten up, dust, vacuum, Windex and fluff the pillows before a party or hosting guests? Well, I want our home to look like that on a semi-daily basis. For US. Then, when we do have guests over, there’s not so much running around and stressing about the dog hair in the corners and the random Lego pieces under the buffet table.

When both kids start school full time in about 3 and a half weeks, I am going to go through our place room by room, from floor to ceiling and purge, organize, arrange and deep clean. Like I said, I’ve already started this summer, but am running into road blocks here and there which happens when kiddos are around….I get it.

So, with that said, I clicked around on Pinterest and peeped out some organizational techniques that I hope to put to use in the next couple months and get this place clutter-free and streamlined!

We have gorgeous built-ins in our Master closet and I hope to pretty them up with a jewelry display like this…

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Weed out and arrange our kitchen gadget drawer so it looks a little something like this…

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And our garage needs some love. We have lots of shelves and cabinets so there is no reason not to have things organized or tucked away and out of sight…

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*****

Looking forward to, not so much making our home look like a model home, but making it the model of a livable, happy, useable and smart space.

Before and after photos to come…

What are your tips for keeping an organized home? I’d LOVE to hear them!

XO