Week 3; I'm exhausted and my kids are loving their clean bedrooms

My main focus for week 3 of the 40 bags in 40 days challenge was to tackle my daughter's bedroom.  This beautiful child, who is 13.

I was very frustrated with this room because it was such a mess.  This is totally unlike my daughter.  Of all 3 children, her room is usually in pretty good shape.

She will sometimes lock herself in her bedroom and clean all day.  I guess all the evenings and weekends spent on the baseball and softball field has been keeping her from it.

I can understand that.

Or, she just hasn't bothered because she knew I was doing the 40 bags in 40 days challenge and wanted me to do it for her?  No.... she wouldn't think like that, right?!

Has anyone ever seen a chair that looks like this before?  No? Yes? I'm not the only one right?

Those clothes are ALL clean.  No wonder it takes her so long to get ready for school in the mornings - she can't find her clothes.

Her room wasn't super bad, like her brothers.  She just needed her dressers and desk cleaned off, dusted, trash thrown away and some things sorted to give away or sell.

This is her hutch.  She found this Christmas candle holder I forgot to put away with the Christmas decorations.  oops!!

Her desk.  I hope she isn't upset that I got rid of all the old birthday and christmas cards she had displayed.  It was time!

Her dresser.  See the dusting wand?  She was actually trying to clean a little bit.  I like to think that I was just helping her out.

Her closet wasn't bad.  Shes pretty good about not keeping clothes that don't fit or she doesn't like anymore.

I did find this pile of stuff shoved in the back.

Everything gets put on the bed.  It's a great place for sorting.

The empty closet.  She actually had a pretty good sized closet.  My husband likes to paint the kids closets when we redo their rooms.  I think it's fun and looks cool.  The kids love it.

Most of her clothes stayed.  I did find about 10 shirts that I hadn't seen her wear in a few years so I put them in the giveaway pile. 

Her room didn't take me near as long as her brothers.  I got finished in 1 day.

Her desk looks much better.  Maybe she can actually do her homework there now.

And 1 final finished picture.

She had been asking me all week if I had gotten to her room.  I hope she is happy with it when she gets home.

In the end I got 1 bag of trash and 1.5 bags of giveaway/garage sale items.

Not too bad for a slow start to the week.



Week 2 {40 bags in 40 days)

I'm still knee deep in my 40 bags in 40 days challenge over at whitehouse,blackshutters with Ann Marie. 

Week 2 seemed to be really rough for me.  I'm not sure if it was all the baseball and softball events or the fact that I was working on my 9 year olds room, which happened to be a total disaster area. 

I started out Monday with his closet.  The closets in our house are fairly small, so I figured it wouldn't be too big a deal.  WRONG!  I could have sworn I had just cleaned out his closet.  I couldn't believe the amount of clothes he had that he didn't wear.

The floor of his closet had so much stuff on it that I was almost impossible to get his laundry basket out on laundry day.



So I started as usual and removed everything out of the closet.  I piled everything on his bed. 

The closet completely cleaned out.

Look who came to help!  He actually wanted to sleep in there that night.  I didn't let him.  It's amazing how much room we have when we don't have all the clutter.

I even enlisted his help going through his clothes.  I let him dictate what fit, what didn't fit, what he will wear and won't wear.  He took everything off the hangers and help me bag it up for goodwill or a garage sale.

Look at all the extra clothes that were hanging in his closet.

Tuesday, wednesday and friday, I continued working on his room.  It had really gotten out of hand.  This corner right here drives me crazy.  He seems to just throw everything on the floor in this spot.

His desk is always a mess.  The kid is a genuine pack-rat and loves to hang onto stuff.

Look at this night stand.  Yes, that is a Christmas stocking! 

After finished the closet, we got the clothes he was keeping and promised to wear hung back up.  The floor is clean of stuff and I won't hurt myself trying to get to the laundry basket.

Remember the white bookshelves I had removed from my master bathroom?  Well, they would work perfectly in his room.  He needed the extra storage space too.

It looks so much better and gets all that stuff off the floor.

Check out the night stand now. 

I just hope he can keep it this way.

And in the end, I think 'Ted' the turtle is much happier with a clean room.  Do you see that big smile on his face :)

I promised my daughter that her room was next.  She was totally envious of her brothers room.  I'm slow getting started again this week but I will get there.

One bag at a time!!

I'm linking up with whitehouse,blackshutters.

568 photos and a weekend of softball & baseball

I didn't get much sorting, tossing and cleaning done this weekend. 

What I did do, however; was take lots of pictures.

568 pictures to be exact.

Actually, let me rephrase that; at one point my daughter got her hands on the camera and she took about 100 pictures.  So, technically; I only took 468.  A minor detail when you take that many pictures.

I'm sure your thinking "what on earth could she possibly take that many pictures of?"

Um, baseball and softball, duh!!

It has started (and taken over our lives) in full force.  I'm not sure when we might have another chance to breath.  Right now, we are just taking it one day at a time.

Friday night:

We started the softball tournament.  Thank goodness it started on Friday or I wouldn't have gotten to see any of my daughter's games.

It was dark so I wasn't able to take many photos.  Also, I should mention that whenever I go to any of her games, she doesn't do well.  She does great when I'm not there.  I just don't get it.

They ended up losing the first game and tying the second game.  They had to come back on Saturday to play and we didn't figure they would make it very far. 

Since I had to take Zachary to his tournament, I wasn't able to go to Victoria's.  (Of course, the tournaments were on 2 completely different sides of Georgia)

With the way they played on Friday, we figured Victoria would only have a couple games, and then would be done.  The plan was, they would then come to Zachary's tournament.  Obviously we spoke too soon.  Her team did great on Saturday {don't forget I wasn't there}, they made it to the championship game and came in 2nd place {without me being there}.  They even got a trophy!!! I'm convinced that wouldn't have happened if I had been there.

They finally came dragging in about 1am.  One AM!!!  How in the world these people expect girls to play all day and not finish until 1am is beyond me but they do it.

So, really with the time change, that couldn't have come at a worst weekend; they really got to bed about 2am.  We had to be up at 6am to have Zachary 1 hour away by 8am.  Yikes!!!

This is what my daughter looked like until about noon.

We didn't dare speak to her.

She finally comes out of her coma and begs and pleads for the camera because she is bored. 

It's interesting what she takes photos of.

Her foot

The back of my head

My clapping hands

Finally she gets my face

And a light

We finally take the camera back from her so we could take pics of her brother.

But first, a question.  How in the world am I suppose to get that red dirt out of our uniform.  Talk about a major headache.  It looks like they added some extra coloring to it.

Yes, Zachary does 'fly' around the bases. 

Coming in for a landing at home plate.

Stealing second....

SAFE!!

  That umpire knew better than to call my baby out!  Just kidding!

Overall the boys had a great tournament.  They ended up 2-2.  We didn't make it to the championship game; but we played great together as a team.  We are improving more and more each time we play and that's what matters in the end.  Oh, and the fact that we are having fun.

And a major highlight to our weekend....

Zachary got to meet former Atlanta Braves pitcher, Tom Glavine. 

CREDIT

Mr. Glavine's son was on one of the teams that Zachary's team played against (and beat).  Tom was at the game on Sunday and every kid in the park wanted his signature.  He signed a ball for Zachary and also his baseball uniform.

I was off getting lunch for the family at the time and can you belive my husband didn't even grab the camera to take a picture.  The nerve; he was in so much trouble.

Today I feel like I have been run over by a truck.  I didn't do much in the way of my 40 bags in 40 days; I only managed to clean out a small closet.  Tomorrow I'm hoping to tackle a bigger project.

Until then.... Happy Monday!

Nancy