Determination: January Update

For my 12 in 2012 resolutions, I am working towards an organized apartment.  As the 444 plan nears completion, Doug and I sat down to write out what else we need to accomplish to get our apartment in working order.  For us, the easiest way to do this is by handling one room at a time.  Not only does it seem easier than tackling the "whole apartment,"  it is encouraging to finish one place completely and use that space as motivation to work on the rest, kind of like the snowball method of paying off debt.

To finish out the 444 plan, we need to work on the bedroom first.  Since I lived in our apartment before we got married, most of my things are in our bedroom, including the fact that I am taking up the entire closet right now.  Once clothes are sorted (and hopefully many given to charity), there should be a lot more room in our closet for Doug's clothes.  Doug has also been using the guest room dresser, so we are moving that into our room.  This should take about 3 days to accomplish.

We need to work on the living room, too.  We still have our Christmas decorations up (scandalous!), and our tree takes up a good amount of space in our living room.  Once all the furniture is back where it belongs, we can move our game cabinet out to the living room, Doug can hang up our curtain rod and curtains, and I can set up my school books for this 8 weeks.  Pretty simple stuff -- 1 day to do!

Next we are going to finish the kitchen.  It is much more streamline and usable now, but we want to make sure that every storage space is being used its best capacity.  We have a beautiful Baker's Rack (courtesy of my Gram and Pap Finnigan) that we have been using for storage in our pantry; however, the bottom shelf is completely empty, and we only use the closet edge of the shelves.  By moving this out next to our pantry (and maybe adding some wicker "catch all" baskets), we can fully use this lovely rack.  Our pantry also has a bar under the shelving where we are planning on hanging some closet organizers to store snacks and boxed items.  I am also hoping to get a few nice containers to hold pasta and rice.  Then we are going to be rearranging a few cabinets and drawers...anyways!  You'll see when it's finished ;)  This might take a whole week.

Finally, we tackle the guest bedroom.  I have wanted to change the set up of that room since June, but we were either travelling, had visitors, or were too busy with school to move things around.  Doug's desk takes up the middle of the room, which has made it difficult for us to have guest comfortably; by moving his computer to the far end of the room and relocating the guest quarters closer to the door, we should be able to maintain both more easily.  This should take 2-3 days.

That leaves three days to clean the bathroom (no reorganizing necessary), clean up the front closet (make sure everything is put away), and clean up the linen closet (stack towels nicely, make sure sheets are folded).  We should begin February clean and organized!!!  And this time, I will remember to shoot some before pictures ;)