Drink lots of fluid and get plenty of rest.

Grout = Gross

Do any of you have tile floors? Oh man, don't get them. They are too hard to keep clean! Especially when Genius McGee who redid our house before we bought it put WHITE tiles and WHITE grout in the kitchen, the highest traffic area of the whole stinkin' house! Do not get me started. Ok, ok, I am very grateful for the man who flipped this house and made it into a really amazing starter home for us. But still. Two adults, one dog, and two small kiddos equals one big headache that never stays clean.

Oh, it's gross. It is so gross! Even when I clean the floors they are still too gross because of the grout! Ugh. So finally we got some professionals out here to clean them and seal them. Phew!

By the way, no one is allowed to walk on these floors EVER AGAIN.

(Also, apparently the secret is to only clean them with hot water. Pine Sol or other cleaners dissolves the sealant! Huh!)

Grout = Gross

Do any of you have tile floors? Oh man, don't get them. They are too hard to keep clean! Especially when Genius McGee who redid our house before we bought it put WHITE tiles and WHITE grout in the kitchen, the highest traffic area of the whole stinkin' house! Do not get me started. Ok, ok, I am very grateful for the man who flipped this house and Two adults, one dog, and two small kiddos equals one big headache that never stays clean.

Oh, it's gross. It is so gross! Even when I clean the floors they are still too gross because of the grout! Ugh. So finally we got some professionals out here to clean them and seal them. Phew!

By the way, no one is allowed to walk on these floors EVER AGAIN.

(Also, apparently the secret is to only clean them with hot water. Pine Sol or other cleaners dissolves the sealant! Huh!)

Silverwhere?

Our silverware situation was annoying. We have a pretty small kitchen, and for the first two years of our marriage we didn't have a dishwasher. Not a big deal, but then we found out we were having Baby #1 and we decided we should probably get a dishwasher. Great idea, totally worth it, although it took out two cabinets and two drawers of our already cramped kitchen (and left us with two small drawers and one really small drawer).

Now that Baby #1 AND 2 are a little older, we can now refocus our attention on things that do not include babies, babies, and babies. Hence, this blog. And finally making our kitchen useful again!

The first solution that we tried years ago was to keep our silverware in the pantry in a wire slide out drawer... thing. It worked, I guess.

But then the pantry door broke, and opening the broken door to get a fork and then closing the broken door and then realizing you also needed a spoon quickly became a huge pain in the butt. But do you ever have things in your life that annoy you and you don't realize that there could potentially be a solution? It took us a loooong time to think, hey, maybe we should switch out this jam packed drawer full of pot holders and bibs with the silverware!

So we did!

So not only will it be much easier to actually find the silverware drawer, it's way more practical. Also here is my helper:

(Here is the silverware organizer we used!)

The Bathroom Sink, short & sweet

I think most women suffer from the 50-bottles-of-product-with-a-tablespoon-or-less-left-in-it syndrome. I am one of them for sure. It's true. I do it with cereal too. I rarely finish a box of cereal. I am too excited to open the new one I just bought!

So anyway, here is what it looked like under the master bedroom's bathroom sink before:

Annnnd, ORGANIZATION!

Let's just say, lots of crap got thrown away, and there is still more I could part with. Maybe.

A Dress! A Dress! A Dress! A Dress!

Have you ever read Green Eggs and Ham? Of course you have. My favorite line is "A train! A train! A train! A train! Could you, would you on a train?"

Ahem.

Last summer, my mom bought me this dress. Cute, right?

Unfortunately, the color washed me out terribly. I planned to just give it to Goodwill, but I couldn't let go of it! It was really cute and comfortable, but the color just wasn't for me. I went to a baby shower a few weeks ago and two girls there were wearing this same dress, but they were different colors. Then, I read on YoungHouseLove about how they dyed some slipcovers for their dining room chairs. Idea!

I decided a navy blue would be really cute, so I bought some iDye in, uh, navy blue. (PS, even if they hadn't used this on YHL, I still would have bought it. I am a sucker for cool packaging.)

It was super easy, although a bit nerve-wracking because with this particular brand of dye, you put it right into your washing machine. Eek! No worries though, it turned out perfectly!

Isn't it cute! The color is amazingly uniform throughout (these pics don't do it justice). And the best part? The stitching did not dye, which gives it a really cute detailing.

I am so happy with how it turned out! I can't wait to finally get some wear out of this dress. I am also dye-happy now. What else is in this house that I can dye!

(Note: it did get my washing machine a bit blue-y. So far it is coming off fine with Windex and I will be sure to run a few loads through of darks and jeans before trying out some whites. I'm not worried about it.)

The To-Do List

I'm sure I don't need to tell you guys how awesome to-do lists are. Likely if you are reading this blog, I am preaching to a very organized choir about how awesome to-do lists are. Lists in general, actually. There is nothing more satisfying than making that list and then crossing things right off of there. Including, writing out your chores, finishing them, but then doing other chores that weren't even on the list, adding them to the list, and then immediately crossing them off too. Ugh. So good.

(I sometimes also draw little pictures of my family and I on our dry erase board.)

Ties

I didn't know my husband had so many ties. I didn't know this because most of them were scattered everywhere in our closet: the floor, a few hangers, the floor.

Before:

And that was even AFTER I had organized the closet. Here is the before before:

*shudder* So I did a few things. One, I bought a tie rack from Target for about $5. Two, I picked up/gathered all of the ties in our closet, and three, I hung them up neatly in a spot in the closet that wasn't so high traffic. My husband doesn't wear ties very often, so I moved them from the "front" of his closet over to where they would be more out of the way and wouldn't be constantly pushed aside to get at a shirt. ORGANIZATION!

Nice. Here's hoping this works, because after I hung up all these ties, I discovered this:

That's right, we already had a tie organizer. Sigh.

Ties

I didn't know my husband had so many ties. I didn't know this because most of them were scattered everywhere in our closet: the floor, a few hangers, the floor.

Before:

And that was even AFTER I had organized the closet.

The Nightly Routine

This is a pretty typical view of my house after I've put the kids to bed. I'm definitely a work before play type of person, and I can't relax at night until three key things are done: one) the dishes and kitchen are cleaned up, two) the dining room is de-crudded, and three) the family room (living room? What's the difference?) is picked up.

(things you may not be able to see in this picture: a pair of my old high heels that Story likes to wear, a piece of the newspaper under a chair, tons of crumbs and sticky spots at Story's place at the table, and lots more toys)

(poor Simba...)

And now, I can relax! I give you, ORGANIZATION!

Oh man, it feels so good. In short, toys were picked up, the dishwasher is running, a big satisfying pile of Story's books is stacked neatly in the family (living?) room, and the coffee is prepped for the morning. And now if you will excuse me, there is a pint of Ben & Jerry's waiting for me that I told myself I couldn't have until I posted something.