Coat Closet Refresh

When we bought this house I was really happy about this coat closet. It’s size was at least twice the size (if not three times the size) of our small one prior. And it’s in a really nice location.

Nothing much to complain about -- other than the super, super, super smelly carpet in there. And the fact that I wanted to update the doors and paint. 

It’s hard to tell in the photo here, but the paint was a very drab almondy-beige-yellow-tan -- so that was always something I was looking forward to freshing it up with white paint. But…you know, our whole house needed to be freshened up so the coat closet wasn’t high up on the to-do list.

Over the years it collected everything. And even though I’ve cleaned it out before, you know the story, it gets messy again.

In this photo you see a lot of coats. Personally I probably had at least 8…? Maybe more?

Then add in the kids coats, Blake’s two plus hoodies --- it all added up and there wasn’t room for company’s coats.

At the bottom there’s a drawer I had our extra winter stuff like gloves, scarves and hats -- you can see I was excellent at keeping it under control.

And then an explosion of shoes and boots. (That were supposed to live in that laundry basket.)

On the upper shelf I have some board games inside a diaper box (that I can’t see into, so I don’t ever remember we have them) Our hair cutting supplies and just random stuff shoved up high.

I mentioned I’ve been “Marie Kondo”ing. (I still am, but I’m kinda taking a more free form minimalism purging form. But I still love her idea of thanking the items you are sending away….I thought that was the dumbest part of her book at first -- but it turns out to be kinda amazing once you do it.)

So I cleaned house in the coat closet. I went and tried on each of my coats. 

I’d been accumulating them over many years, and most fit really improperly so those went. There was one spring coat that fit just right, and I still thought was adorable, but it was no longer my style whatsoever. I was never going to wear it. So I thanked it for being awesome and sent it off to find someone who could love wearing it.

I was down to one coat which I wore the winter of my last pregnancy. (It was a great “maternity” coat because it was a standard fit padded jacket but with sweater sides, so that part stretched and shrank with me.) I still really like it and feel like me in it. 

And so in the end, only one coat in all that mess brought me joy. 

But I wasn’t sure it would be warm enough without the baby-belly-heater in the depths of winter. So I wound up shopping for a down jacket that could be used for every situation. A little dressy, a little everyday. It’s a long black puffer, with gold hardware and buttons on the sleeves for pizzaz. 

(And I was right to think I'd need this warmer coat these days. I'd be super cold without it.)

This number of coats makes so much sense for me -- it feels really good to let go of the excess.

This spring I may need a new spring jacket-- we will see. I can probably just get away with my padded jacket or some of my sweaters.

Anyway, after getting rid of my coats -- the closet was much less cramped. I went through the kids stuff, and made similar calls about keeping and passing along. (We’ve been often given to by friends and family.) And pared them down to one coat each. (At least allowed in this closet. I have a couple spares upstairs just in case.)

I addressed our shoes. 

And then I added some hooks to the back brace so I could hang my purse and gym bags.

And it was feeling so magical that I decided we needed more hooks down low for the kids to be able to hang up their own coats. (As opposed to leaving them all over the place when we get home.)

Well that wall brace needed to be painted…and as you can see...

now the closet NEEDED to be painted white.

Plus I was excited to rid myself of the dirty gross.

Turns out the paint in the closet was oil based, so I had to use some kind of primer to handle that. I chose my go-to BIN shellac.

The linoleum in here was still smelly (it was under hardwood floor planks we just kinda set in, not nailed down.) So I  made sure to cover that with shellac once I had the walls done, to seal out the smells ,before I put the hardwood back on.

So now here’s what we have. I’m so happy with it I keep just going and staring at it.

I was trying to figure out our umbrellas and I found this random plant holder that was left here which contains them quite nicely.

On either side I put one hook up high that can hold hats.

On the right side I’m keeping my kitchen aprons. (I can’t find a kitchen spot for them.)

Along the upper back wall I have one tote I use for the library. My purse. Blake’s gym bag. And a couple back packs that Blake and I use for random stuff.

Along the lower wall I have our “splat mat” (the zebra thing) that I put under Bronson’s chair to catch crumbs. I have two, so when one’s in the wash I have a back up. It lives here when clean and not in use.) A basket with the kids scarves and hats. And spots for the kids to hang their coats. (Bronny isn’t old enough yet to do it himself.)

Up on the shelf:
 I now have moved our board games to the dresser in the entry way (I had to clean that out of mostly just random garbage stashed in there so they can fit.)
So that leaves room for a basket of grown up winter scarves and gloves. My camera bag, the hair cutting stuff, our family’s cooler (this one goes with us like all the time because of our food allergies -- it’s a really nice fit for us, size and portability wise) and my pump (which I don’t use much, but need to be able to access it still.)

We’ve all been thrilled by it. The makeover was very much two parted -- the paring down made room for the clarity of the space. And the paint and hooks really revitalized the space. 

The kids declared that it’s so nice and clean now, it can be a house(!) -- and they moved right in and played in there for a couple hours!

My Clothes

A friend of mine sent me a link to a new-to-me blog last week. Since we were re-doing our roof, it took me a while to find time to look at it. But once I gave it a peak, I was hooked.

Un-Fancy | A Minimalist Fashion Blog

You may have noticed from my last post, I am on a purging role.

So this blog hit me right at the right time.

I’ve been trying to figure out just the right way to pare down my wardrobe for months and months. I just hadn’t really felt sure-enough on how to go through with it hard and fast -- just taking out bits here and there. And I’ve looked at a few different minimalist blogs which address their wardrobe, but I guess just the way Un-Fancy is laid out finally gave me the breakthrough I needed to really grasp it.

Her blog seems easy to take in. For one thing the blog isn’t even a full year old yet -- and it’s only about the clothes, nothing else --- so it makes it a faster learning experience than some blogs can be. And she breaks it down in really manageable bits of info. After looking at her blog for all of five mins, I was on board.

Her technique is to buy her capsule wardrobes to work for 3 months (with hopes of saving them for the upcoming years to keep from shopping later on) and her budget is (for me) very sizable.
I knew I wouldn’t be doing that.
I knew I already had enough clothes I could pick from to not need to shop.
I needed to remove clothes.
And I don’t necessarily expect my capsules to last from year to year. (We may have more children -- that means lots of clothing sizes-shifting. And my kids will likely get ketchup on my stuff and I’ll kiss those items goodbye after oxiclean gives up on them. You know, that kind of thing. My mom clothes aren’t gonna be going the long haul. Which is one reason why me and the thrift store are such good friends.)

So I downloaded her wardrobe planner and filled it out.
It’s slightly hilarious for me to fill out the pie chart (which is there to help you figure out lifestyle -- aka where you wear clothes, so you know which type you need) As a stay at home mom, it essentially read “HOME!!” (With a sliver that said “Church, grocery store, library.”) But I knew that already. :)

And there is section where she has you write out your fav Brands. Since I wasn’t shopping anything besides what I already own, I used that space differently.
I looked up all the style tips/rules for my body type from a bunch of websites and complied the most useful to me ones and wrote them on that page. That way I could be more objective when trying on my stuff. It helped me have less guilt when ruling items out. I could tell myself “This is just not flattering for you, it’s not going to be helpful having it around.”

Then I took EVERYTHING out of my closet and brought it downstairs.

(Because that way I could still let the girls play and stuff during my purge.) I pulled a full length mirror out of our garage (still haven’t made use of them inside the house, so they are just leaning in there) and got to work.

Basically I started by pulling the favs out first -- stuff I wear as definite go-tos.
Then I set aside everything too summery -- to store.
Then I set aside stuff I felt like would be better for deep winter to store. (This capsule is for 3 months, so in January I can do this again.)
Then I just really had to edit down what was left.
Around this point is where I had some initial hardship.

I’ve pared my closet down A LOT  two different times since moving. (And honestly I’ve been paring down for years -- I used to have a absurd amount. I don’t spend a lot on my clothes, so sometimes it feels like I can have a lot of them.)
One of those times, I went ahead and tried things on, then I used my phone to take a picture of myself from the back.
Ladies, if you’ve never done this -- you might want to consider it. I was shocked at how bad some of my dresses (that looked great from the front) looked -- I mean, super un-flattering from the back. I had to get over some “Woah, how horrible I’ve been wearing this in public” emotions that day!

Example:The black dress makes me look all sorts of good. The red dress, all shorts of squatty and chubby.

It’s just not for my figure at all.

(Thankfully, in the red dress’ case, I had been given this dress (the person got it for free) and I had never worn it, so this one was not hard to see or get rid of. But is a great example of how lines can be your friend or enemy.)

To avoid this back-side fumble in the future, I plan to do these back-side phone photos in the dressing rooms from now on! That over the shoulder glance has been failing me!




Anyway, after doing this paring down process a lot already, I felt kind of crazy taking more out of my closet.
But I knew I wanted to because, I’m just in the mood to have less. Think less, but get more out of it.

And I got some comfort knowing I could just store away off season stuff -- so I’m not going to get rid of those. And I could store away “maybe” items incase I need them later.

I did get rid of some more stuff.
I used my body-type tips to be more honest about what I had in my closet. A lot of those items I never wore because they are cute, but don’t look cute on me. So it was always hard to get rid of them since they were cute, but they just took up space. And they would complicate getting dressed because I would try to think of ways to make them work, but they really are never going to work for me.

Look at ALL those empty hangers -- they used to be FULL!

For me the concept of getting the clothes to mix-and-match color-wise was easy because I’ve been veering more and more towards neutrals for a couple years now. Its just what I’ve been drawn towards. So my color palette is black, white, grey and blue.

It took me all day yesterday to do this project.
I felt kinda lost trying to get the right number of the right items -- but I think it would have all ended up about the same no matter how I mentally processed it -- it kinda just is the way of clothes. Fewer bottoms, more tops, you know?

Doesn’t look like a lot -- but I think it’s gonna feel really vast since I can layer and mix it all up a lot.

But then this morning I got dressed in about 1 minute.

I desperately need to get to the grocery store today, and thus I am out of coffee! So before Blake left for work I ran to a nearby coffee place for sustenance.
So before I left I pondered shoes for a moment.
Going on the “rule” that for short girls you want to elongate legs by not breaking up color for shoes (AND heels are a very good friend!) I threw on my black wedge boots. This process seriously took 30 seconds. But once I put the shoes on I was shocked by how chic I looked. I could have thrown on my chucks and looked college/weekend/cozy/casual. But put on these boots and I felt like I just nailed a Pinterest-street-style-outfit.
And all that happened in 1min and 30 seconds of time because my wardrobe is pared down to good stuff.
And when I got to the coffee shop, I was feeling really confident and happy with my look. I got a lot of “ooo” looks.

So I’m hoping for lots of good and easy dressing to come in these next 3 months of this capsule wardrobe.

I’m personally fine with the idea of still changing the wardrobe up, as long as I’m willing to switch one for one (one in = one out) so I don’t grow the closet again.

I still haven’t really pared down my shoes (but I know my favs) -- I ran out of time before we had a church thing last night.
And I plan on going through my accessories kinda of similarly soon.

I’m just really enjoying less-is-more lately.

So we will see what happens.

I plan on getting the stylebook app (something I learned about from Un-Fancy) to help with my mix-and-match process. (Just because it sounds fun -- not because I’m putting pressure on myself or anything crazy.)

If I feel brave, and find time, maybe I’ll blog more of my outfits and pieces. But you know, I might just not find time. I still have the house to work on too. So…time will tell what I’ll blog for ya.

Thanks for reading when you do! :)
It’s always fun to hang out for a bit.

P.S. If anyone else is in a major purge/minimalism kick zone right now, I’ve signed up for this 31 day clutter free challenge which starts today! (Not sure, if it will work for me, but it sounds fun and it’s free.)

Toys

Ok guys, it’s been a while. Sorry.

What have I been up to…what have I been up to?

I feel like I’m in a transitional phase. Maybe it’s the season change at hand. Maybe it’s the fact our house is getting closer to being done. Whatever it is, I’ve been in a kind of mental shift.

And I feel like that shift is taking up at lot of me right now . I’m less focused on the house overall. And more focused on our existence inside it. (And no, not in that poetic, getting my priorities right, it’s about who lives here, not the space…sort of thing. That’s nice. But that’s not what I’m talking about it, really.) I’m thinking through how we want to live inside this space. I want to try and make it a really good fit.

One of the biggest things I’ve been looking at is our Toys.

We used to live in a tiny 700 sq ft duplex, before we moved here.
To be honest with you, the size of that place often blessed me more than negatively impacted me. (I just hated that I couldn’t paint it or change stuff like the bathroom mirror and whatnot -- we were renting.) I’m someone who likes a place to be figured out. And so small makes that easy. I liked having a limit on how much stuff we could have around. I liked being able to vacuum my entire house without unplugging the vacuum! (Seriously that would entertain me and bless me every single time!)

In hindsight, the best part of that place I would have to say is the fact that our toys just could not overtake us. There was not enough room form them. We had to keep them in check. We had our toy cabinets and if they couldn’t fit in there I would either store them in the garage (I had maybe two small bins I would rotate out) or give them away. I adored that people would believe me when I told them we can’t accept many gifts, especially not big ones (You know the big toys like play lawn mowers, play grocery carts, kid sized play cars, play kitchens all those things…) People would see our place and agree in a heartbeat that we sure could not house those toys!

This room would get messy every day, but I could handle cleaning it, a good nice clean, every single night.

Since moving to our house here though…it felt like overnight the toys had doubled. I remember taking one night off from painting, right after we moved in and feeling just totally defeated by how much we had. It took me well into the night to get them in order (so the girls could stop asking me where it all was from the move.) I really just wanted to get rid of them because I couldn’t believe how much time and energy it was taking me to just sort of get them back into some kind of order.
And over our time here, we’ve been given lots more. It’s totally love motivated. Everyone is gifting us and it’s so sweet. But it’s more than we need. And we’ve been given all those big toys were didn’t use to have room for. (They were being saved for us, for the day we had the space.)

I was trying to come to an emotional place were I could accept them, figure out how to live with them and how to get them into a system I could function inside. Like how can I keep our house clean -- not just the toys, but the dishes and the bathrooms and the laundry AND the walls that still need paint and such…

Eventually I just had clarity.

I can’t.
I can’t do all that.

I wrote that post a while ago I called Balance. I didn’t keep up with anything I said I would in there.

I’m made in a certain way. And I’m always tempted to try and change myself to fit a mold. But the mold usually doesn’t fit me right. And so all my plans just go to waste because I can’t keep up with stuff that doesn’t work for me.

I finally got clarity on the toys.
I finally saw who I am inside that kind of space.

This might come across as selfish, but I mean it in a loving, best for all of us way.

I need less stuff.
We need less stuff.

Here’s the deal: Who I am is a person who loves (and needs) a beautiful environment. I adore design and colors and pretty.
BUT I also am a person who has a very hard time cleaning. It’s just entirely effortful and not in my nature.
 I’m also an all or nothing person, so to clean, I want to deep clean. I have a hard time surface cleaning.

Essentially that boils down to me needing to have a few gorgeous things around, and that’s it. That way  its beautiful. There is less to clean. I don’t need to clean it as often. And when I do go to clean I can deep clean easily because there is less of it to manage.

I’ve been noticing that about myself for a couple years now.
It includes my wardrobe. My dishes. My decorations (holidays included.) I want it all pared down to the right amount (small but not sparse) of lovely things.

Via

This quote is so perfect. And ideally I’d love to have every thing be BOTH. Useful and beautiful, beautiful and useful.

I’d been trying to leave toys out of it, because I thought maybe that was selfish.

But I’m starting to realize a couple things.
1) It’s not selfish. Or wrong.
2) It’s the only way I’m gonna be able to find my stride as a mom.


Let’s talk about #2 first.
I’m constantly drowning in the day to day stuff of home life. Keeping house -- all that it includes, none of it is my strong point. And some of that has been made even harder than it would be -- like I’m not so prone to making meals everyday, but then add in the fact that I have picky eaters who are allergic to tons of food. Rough stuff.
The additional total-toy-chaos in my days it literally sends me over that edge. Not in like I yell and freak out. But in the “I give up” way. I can’t clean up the toys because I know they come right back. And i know it takes me hours to fix. So why not leave them a mess most the time.
But if they are a mess all the time so is my mind. And then my mind has no room to think of dinners free of allergens. And if we aren’t on top of food we aren’t really on top of anything. And so I feel more defeated, and even less inclined to clean up because what’s the point.


Now back to #1:
If I’m a better mom based on less-toy-stress, everybody wins --- on pretty much every level of our home life. So that can’t possibly be selfish when you get down to it.
Also,
Kids don’t need a million toys.
My kids don’t actually play with MOST our toys.
What ends up happening is, they riffle through all the stuff they don’t want to to find the couple things they do -- and all the extras wind up EVERYWHERE.
Literally most our stuff is just a waste of space.

A couple weeks ago I went through all our toys, at night while the girls were asleep and got rid of TONS.

My cleaning process.
You so can’t see all the mess in this photo -- it over takes the WHOLE enormous room.

The girls didn’t notice.
Not at all.
I actually didn’t give it away yet. I just set it aside, planning to give it away in a bit. I wanted to make sure they didn’t beg for any certain thing that was gone.
So far they haven’t mentioned anything.

We still have LOTS of toys.

I honestly plan to keep doing this until it almost hurts. But I don’t think it will actually hurt.

My kids like playing with sensory stuff. One of our favorite things to do is play with beans or to play with rice.
For some reason that I can’t understand, this is AMAZING fun. They could sit for hours and just kinda play like it’s a sand box, but better.

They also love crafts. I feel that once I have our toys and house under control we will have more time, mental clarity, and house-order to do crafts regularly.

I feel that less toys will equal more creativity.

My plan with the toys to to narrow them down to just a few fantastic (and visually lovely) toys.

So just keeping a few beloved ones we have now. But most of our current toys will be gone (slowly over time, so to make it less emotionally challenging). And then replaced with just a few great open ended play toys like blocks and doctor sets and such. Things we can use our imagination for, can be played with for a long time, but don’t have tons of clutter that go with them.
Blocks have lots of pieces, but they all go together and don’t need sorting -- you just throw them back in the bin. So that doesn’t phase me. (But I’m so not ready for Legos -- the small ones -- please don’t make me keep track of those yet. Dear LORD please do not give me legos yet!) (And one more aside: I don’t like puzzles because the girls get mad at them and then just put the pieces in purses and lose them. Then the puzzle is ruined. If you lose a block or two the world keeps spinning.)

     I plan to get rid of most our big toys (which actually have tons of small parts like play food which make way too much mess) (and these big toys are also very unattractive -- bad colors and designs) and replace them with a few wonderful and very versatile toys that will last well through ages ranges.

My plan is:
 In one corner of our family room, next to our fire place, I want to build a doll house to fit that space. One that is rather YoungHouseLove-esque (They are bloggers who made an adorable big simple doll house…see it here.) Only I want to make ours a bit off scale, so that when we hit Barbie age they can fit in there too. (I’m not ready for Barbies yet -- too many pieces for them to lose at this age. But honestly -- I’m so pumped about Barbie re-entering my life. I LOVED playing Barbies!)
Having one big awesome doll house will replace 4 less than stellar plastic doll houses we have. (How do we have four!?)

Our family room furniture is different now. (I need to blog that!)
But here you can see in the spaces on the side of the fireplace I’m talking about.
P.S. The room NEVER looks this clean anymore.

And on the other side of the fireplace I want to take out our play kitchen stuff and replace them with a baby doll corner. The girls are SO into their baby dolls right now. I want to give them each a doll crib. (Right now we have one plastic one they have to share, which for 4 and 2 year olds they handle well, but it does get exhausting monitoring that. They each need one so both baby dolls can get good rest. :) I think we will build some along these lines. And I already bought two matching doll high chairs off Varagesale.com. (I couldn’t believe there were two! How perfect is that? And they are really cute.)
And since the only part of our play kitchen that gets used is the sink. (Ruby likes to fake fill cups there.) I think we will make a super small “kitchen” which is basically just a sink. To go in that corner.

This I feel will be a major family win.
Because the girls get some major toy upgrades.
And I get less stuff, but stuff the stuff we will have will be stuff I think is nice to look at. (Read: Mental clarity.)
Also the girls will get to enjoy a cleaner house just due to the fact it won’t be able to get so dirty.
And when they get asked to clean it won’t be so daunting. (To be honest I want to throw worse fits than they do when I think of cleaning those toys we have right now.)

I keep mentally going back to this post I once saw on Pinterest. A mom took away her kids toys. All of them. And the kids were way better for it.
When you read the follow up post, it sounds more like long term they just have very limited amounts of toys. Which is basically what I would like to achieve.

The only hard part I foresee is making sure we don’t get given tons more toys again by people who are just being loving.
And giving away stuff that people spend good money feels awful. (I’m totally fighting guilt through this whole process of mine.)

I’m still trying to figure out how to handle that.
But one thing I liked from those posts I just mentioned was the idea that they like to spend money on experiences instead of things. So instead of toys, a trip to the zoo. That kind of thing. I think we could ask for things like that for gifts.
And that author mentioned for birthdays its not about the toys but the fun of the party.

So we will see.
I don’t expect this to get fixed over night. And I don’t think it will be a cure-all to my life.

But I’m excited about it because I feel like I’m finally just agreeing to be myself even inside motherhood. I’m not letting who I am scare me into worrying I’ll ruin my kids.

So that’s one thing I’ve been doing while not blogging. Figuring all this out and making big plans for it.
(I think most of this will come to pass this Christmas, with my paring down what we have more and more until then.)

This past week I also went through our clothes. The weather kinda made me. I was not looking forward to it at all. We have WAY to much! It’s been amazing how much we’ve been loved on with clothing, we’ve hardly had to buy anything for our girls.
But when our drawers are overflowing, I just stop again. Too much laundry. Too many choices. And the girls end up wearing pjs over a few days in a row. (Until too much spaghetti sauce gets on them.)

SO I pared it way way down. And what do you know, the girls have been dressed almost every day since. And laundry isn’t overtaking my world either.

Wonders of glorious just-enough.

Anyway, besides that….

We’ve been doing a bit of house stuff here and there. Like adding in our baseboards in the living room.

I’m still working on getting the girls room done. They are getting matching pink beds! We are all pretty pumped about these!

And we are gonna be re-doing our roof on the sunroom this weekend. So…big stuff. Blake is sort of nervous to do this ourselves, but we have some great help coming, including people who know what they are doing. And when you get a quote for having one small part of our roof redone (the smallest and easiest part of it) for close to $4,000 (and maybe even more because of they extra contingencies they throw in) DIY sounds SO SO SO much better!!

It’s gonna be awesome to not have to run in there with buckets and towels every time it rains anymore!

So I’ll keep you filled in on all that stuff!! More pictures and stories. Exciting stuff!