Disorderly Conduct

I have a confession to make.

I am a bad housekeeper (those of you who know me, stop laughing)

Our house is usually quite cluttered and messy most of the time. I have spurts where I am positively psycho about say..the kitchen being spotless. But then I'll cook something that uses more than 3 pans and all my spotlessness goes out the window and those dirty pans can sit on the stove for...well...a WHILE - until I get sick of the mess and finally clean it.

I'm the same way with laundry - I have a spurt where everything will absolutely HAVE TO BE WASHED and my laundry room needs to be orderly and spruced up...but then I'll go weeks without wanting to even LOOK at laundry and it'll pile up.

Needless to say, I'm quite scared of how having a child will affect my laundry situation. I have a feeling I'm gonna have to suck it up and force myself to do laundry a bit more often - otherwise our kid could be known as "diaper joe" or something equally enchanting...

We rent a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house. The set up is as follows...

Living room - our basic hang out room with the big tv and the coffee table that's usually cluttered with dirty dishes, magazines, misc. crapola

Bedroom #1 - the so-called "office" where our computer lives, all my bookshelves with my mass amount of books piled and stuffed into every orofice (note to self: take picture of bookshelves to motivate myself to clean them out and organize them). This is also where our 2nd tv lives and we have two IKEA chairs for reading, relaxing and tv watching...or more appropriately for hubster x-box playing.

Bedroom #2 - our "guest room" which is actually quite nice once it's cleaned up - but has a tendency to be our catch-all room. currently this room is housing bags and bags of Christmas presents that need to be wrapped, clean laundry that needs to be put away...and a ton of baby stuff (swing, exersaucer, car seat, etc.) that my brother and sister in law wanted to get rid of and since it's brand new I snagged it...hey, I'll use it eventually. This room also houses the "closet from hell" which means that anything we don't know what to do with gets stuffed into that closet when company comes....as evidenced here:

Literally - a WALL of stuff we didn't know what to do with...how do ya like that afghan huh? hehe. Don't judge me people.

Moving along

Bedroom #3 - our master bedroom. This room is quite tiny and contains our queen bed, two nightstands, a dog crate, a big ass dresser, and a laundry hamper...seriously that is all that will fit - it's a small room. The main problem we have in this room is clothes....dirty laundry strewn everywhere...clean clothes piled all over that need to be put away. Currently we have 3+ bags of clothes that need to go to Goodwill and are right in the doorway practically. For some unknown reason we've just been stepping OVER them for the last couple of weeks instead of getting rid of them.

Bathroom #1 - the hall bathroom....MY BATHROOM. I actually try to keep this room pretty clean because it's the one that guests use, and the dog sleeps in there during the day - it's pretty big and very white and blue and crisp looking when it's clean. I have a tendency to pile lots of crap on top of the cabinet in there though, and I let the trash pile up too high...and the cats drink out of the sink, so it's constantly sporting cat hair - ugh, perhaps it's not as clean as I THINK it is.

Bathroom #2 - attached to the master bedroom...hubter's domain. It's small, it's usually pretty dirty, but it's HIS and I DON'T CLEAN IT.

(seriously, sometimes I think the secret to a happy marriage is having seperate bathrooms because all the other places we lived had only one bathroom and it sucked)

Kitchen - okay, I consider this to be my domain...even if that's a pretty old school way of thinking. I do almost ALL the cooking, most of the dishes (although hubby helps with that more often now), and almost all the grocery shopping. Our kitchen is a very nice size (especially compared to my one-drawer kitchen before) and I love it, but for some reason I have the hardest time keeping it spruced up. The dining table is usually covered with stuff, clothes or dishes, or whatever...the cat bowls are strewn around, it's my biggest problem area.

Laundry Room - another problem area because it's usually piled with either clean or dirty laundry. This is also the room that houses the cat box, pet food, cleaning items. Sometimes there is literally a PATH going from the kitchen to the back door.

SOOOOOOOOO - my reason for explaining all this is that I've decided I need to motivate myself to CLEAN UP already. I think alot of what I think is stress around the holidays is from the fact that my house is a mess. If I just got a bit organized I think I would feel much better. Right now, it's kind of overwhelming. My plan is to take pictures...no matter how embarrassing it might be...of the room "before". Then I'm gonna bust my butt to clean and organize it, and then I will take an "after" picture.

This will include closets - although I think I'll have to focus on those seperately because they are a MESS, as seen in the above picture. That picture was taken back in August by the way, and seriously? hasn't changed much and it's now December. How pathetic huh?

When we have company coming over - hubs and I magically manage to make our house quite presentable. Course this includes cramming stuff into drawers and cabinets and closets and running around like mad squirrels cleaning everything in sight...and it sucks and I don't want to do it anymore. I don't want my house perfect - but it would be nice if I didn't feel embarrassed when people just "dropped by" you know what I mean?

So yes, come with me down my road of self improvement...and laugh and gasp in shock and horror as you witness the mess that two people can make in an 1150 square foot house. I think you'll be surprised and shocked and you might think I'm a bit white trashy after all this is over. HA! oh well..it's all in the name of keeping myself accountable anyway - and possibly destressing my holidays a bit.