PAINTING, PURGING AND PACKING

With only two months left until our first U Haul truckload, we've been in overdrive down here. We painted the Master Bathroom last month and now we are in the midst of purging, sorting and packing. There are boxes and plastic containers piling up and the house is in such a state of disarray but it's only going to get worse before it gets better. We are planning on taking ALL of Dave's Colorado milk bottle collection and "go-withs" as well as the shelves and bookcases he has everything displayed upon. I am looking forward to a time where all of his stuff can be contained in ONE room, his hobby room. With well over five hundred bottles out and on display, it is a lot of work for him to properly prepare everything for a 3 day drive. Better him than me since I have enough on my own plate to prepare!

Once the bottles and shelves are down, we can spackle and repaint the living room. There is another wall with nearly the same amount of milk bottles displayed.

This past month we ordered some new lamps as well. I wanted something different, yet still rustic for the Master Bedroom. I really liked these when I saw them on Black Forest Decor but Bed, Bath & Beyond carried them as well so overall, we saved more than a hundred dollars!

We unpackaged the lamps and put these out on our night stands to see how nicely they would go with our log bedroom set and I am very pleased!

The matching floor lamp is currently out in the living room and I can't wait to see it up in the bedroom!

The plan is to put the floor lamp in this corner in the Master bedroom.

Dave has had his heart set on a log floor lamp ever since we got the table lamps that are out in the family room...

This one, in the lighter Aspen wood will go nicely in the living room in between the two rocking chairs. We've decided against table lamps but we need another light source along with the overhead light.

I purged the curio cabinet which holds my Pink Glass Depressionware pieces; setting aside those pieces that I want to pass on to our daughters. I catalogued those pieces and wrote up a brief summary of the different designs along with their estimated values. Once that was finished, I spent a couple of hours reconfiguring where everything should go, photographing it and then labeling which shelf it went on. I'm anticipating that it will go quicker when I recreate the display once it's up there!

For some reason, packing up the Pink Glassware made me a little sad...

I started packing up the china cabinet yesterday but ran out of bubble wrap near the end. I am putting the china cabinet up in the craft studio once it's finished and I am pretty certain, I will keep special things that were my mother's up in the hutch portion. While wrapping things up, I labeled all of those things too so they can be separated and set off to the side until they are ready to be displayed.

I feel like the clock is ticking...

GET IT TOGETHER

I love organization! I get a thrill from looking at organizational products, planning a project and the thrill of completing something that ultimately, makes my life better. I also love our movie collection. Over the years we have transitioned from VHS tapes to DVD's and then eventually to Blu-Rays. I have accused Dave of being a "Blu-Ray Snob" but even I have to admit, the clarity of some of our movies can't be beat! I was discouraged every time I opened the doors to our movie cabinet and looking at the picture below, you can see why! All our Blu Rays were stored in the bottom with our TV Series' and Documentaries while regular DVD's were in the top section. My Type A personality just couldn't handle this any longer!

I looked on PINTEREST for some ideas; have I said that I also LOVE Pinterest? Electronic hoarding without the guilt and clutter, but I digress! After seeing some options that were on there, I got a general idea of what I wanted to do and what types of products were out there. I found these sleeves on Amazon, they come 25 to a pack and cost less than a dollar per sleeve. Each sleeve holds 2 DVD's or Blu-Rays and you can insert the liner notes from the old plastic cases so you can see what you have and it looks very neat and tidy.

I had an enormous stack of empty disc cases which I threw into the recycling bin. Not all of our movies were transferred to the sleeves, we have some nice boxed sets or metal specialty cases (Harry Potter series, Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, Band of Brothers, etc) that I decided to leave as is. Once the DVD's had been transferred, I purchased 6 photo storage boxes from Hobby Lobby at only $2.00 a piece (on sale) and divided our movies in between them. All Westerns, whether DVD or Blu Ray were alphabetized together as were our Christmas movies and everything else was appropriately organized, including those boxed sets or specialty cases. I took a disorganized, hot mess and transformed it into a well-organized thing of deep, personal satisfaction! Can you believe that there are 300 movies in these boxes?

All of our Boxed TV Series and Documentaries are stored neatly now in the bottom of our cabinet. If I can only convince Dave to discard his old VHS tapes from all the Stanley Cup 1999 playoff games when our Dallas Stars won the Cup... One step at a time!