Puttering Away

We've been working hard around here, getting ready for our family size to expand by 66.6%.

Geoff and my Dad have been working on the closet in the boys' room.  Their bedroom is not huge, and so we're trying to find ways to maximize space and efficiency, and one of the ways we're doing this is by maximizing clothes storage via shelving in their closet.  They will also be adding shelving to our little girl's room; my thinking is that girls seem to have/need more clothes, so we may as well increase the capacity in her closet, too.

In anticipation of the painter coming on Tuesday to paint Lizzie Senait's bedroom, I've been working at cleaning her room out entirely (it has doubled as a guest room and a storage place until now).  I also chose a few different paint colours to test out in her room - last week I went to Benjamin Moore and the interior designer that works there offered to help me find colours that matched the bedding and pillows that I have already.  I then painted some sample 'blobs' onto her walls and picked the final colour.  Her room is  now basically ready for painting.  The painter will also be tackling the minor wall repairs in the basement where we had some water damage a few months ago - it'll be nice to get that job done, too, before the kids arrive.

I've also sorted through several bins full of old board books that I used with Matthew when he was younger.  Many of them are picture books introducing kids to words/vocabulary, which I've thought might be helpful.  The books I'll keep for now occupy almost three shelves in our at-home library; I moved a bunch of youth books to the top shelves to accommodate them.

One of my favourite tasks so far was going through about six huge garbage bags stuffed full of girl clothes that people have been so kindly offering me.  I have quite a bit of size 4-6 girls' clothing from my sister, whose daughter has outgrown them; and a couple of weeks ago, a friend gave me a few big bags stuffed full of her daughters' outgrown (and oh-so-cute) size 2-3 clothing (thank you sooo much Chris).   I lovingly worked my way through every piece in each bag, and had such a fun time doing it.  Another (new) friend told me last week that she, too, has some clothes that her daughter was no longer wearing.  People have been sooo kind and generous, it's been unbelievable to me!  A few nights ago, while Geoff and my Dad were working on closet shelving, I showed all of the sorted piles of little girl clothes to my Mom.  I 'made' her endure the fashion show piece by piece, and it was gratifying to have someone else oooohhh and aaahhhh over the wealth of cute little clothes people have given us.  My Mom commented that little Lizzie Senait will resemble Queen Elizabeth in that she will have so many clothes that she will be able to wear things only once before tossing it aside!

After cleaning out closest and rooms and clothes and dresser drawers, I ended up taking five big garbage bags and a big box of books to Goodwill the other day.  It felt awesome to do that...every bag I unloaded felt like a progress step in the right direction.