Quote of the Day

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw

I love, love, love this one, and I remind myself of it often.

Nesting Momma

The urge to “nest” has hit hard. This blurb from an article I found pretty much sums it up...  

The Nesting Instinct During Pregnancy

The nesting instinct usually sets in around the fifth month of your pregnancy. Now some may not know what the "nesting instinct" is. This is basically the uncontrollable urge to clean your house, and generally go crazy doing all sorts of things that will prepare the 'nest' for the new member of the family.

This is a primal instinct and all the females of almost every species in the world will go through this same instinct in one way or another. …

…Nesting brings about some unique and seemingly irrational behaviors in pregnant women and all of them experience it differently. Women have reported throwing away perfectly good sheets and towels because they felt the strong need to have "brand new, clean" sheets and towels in their home. They have also reported doing things like taking apart the knobs on kitchen cupboards, just so they could disinfect the screws attached to the knobs. Women have discussed taking on cleaning their entire house, armed with a toothbrush. There seems to be no end to the lengths a nesting mother will go to prepare for her upcoming arrival…

With the other two, I felt a little nesting that mostly centered on painting/decorating/cleaning the nursery. But this time I am subjecting my family (including my parents) to nothing short of a total house make-over!

I wonder if my neurosis has anything to do with my recent discovery of the Pinterest website???

The good news is: It is going very well! I keep thanking this baby boy for forcing his Mom to finally get organized!

The basement has already gone through phase I of the re-do. We have cleared out all of the most of the old furniture and junk, cleaned the carpet (Grandma – The Spotbot works wonders! Thanks!), painted all three rooms (Thank you Chad for hiring someone for this!), and moved the beds down to the Boys new bedroom!! A lot accomplished in just one week!

                               

I don't have any before pictures, but for those of you who have seen the before in person... you understand what has taken place here in such a short period of time!

The laundry room is also in mid-transformation. Actually it was the laundry room what started this whole thing… sometime right after I found out I was pregnant I realized that another child (a baby creates a LOT of laundry) means my already maxed-out laundry room might just burst at the seams. I was having nightmares.

As you can see, I needed a better system… Duh. I have forced myself into a habit of ALWAYS folding the clothes straight out of the dryer… putting them away is a whole other issue…

Sometime in early December I painted three walls and most of the floor and started to build my new folding table which is the foundation of my new laundry room haven’s design. However, in building the table (BY-MY-SELF) I made a minor mistake and it frustrated me enough that I moved on from it to concentrate on Christmas madness. I mean it stood on four legs and it served its purpose but it wasn’t perfect… which, of course, my laundry room needs to be. (nesting neurosis) So, post-Christmas I finally got Chad to correct my mistake and finish it up for me. And, last week I primed, painted, and stained the beautiful folding table….

… This table is not just a table though; it is the start of a system! That’s right a laundry system. The table holds eight baskets, four on the shelf and four on the floor. One for each member of the family with three left over for unmated socks, towels, and misc. stuff. Now the folded laundry will be sorted by person (location) and the boys (all four of them) will eventually learn to put their own clothes away given the sheer convenience of it. Yes, I hear you snickering, but a mother can dream…

Now my laundry room has a good start but it's not there yet. I still need to build/paint shelves for my food storage. Build/paint a platform for my washer and dryer. Paint fourth wall. Replace nasty utility sink. And, maybe add a few decorating details. And for the boys’ space, I am on the hunt for a dresser and some old barn wood. I will keep you posted on phase II of this basement edition of the whole house re-do!!

Stacy

I think I might start blogging...