Zone 2 - The Living Room (Part 1)

In January, I told you about how organizing in this house was a'happenin'. I had divided the house into Zones to work on, and planned on slowly working through the entire house during the deployment.
The deployment that was cancelled.
But, instead of throwing my organizing plan (yes, I have a plan for organizing....mildly psychotic) out the window, I decided to take advantage of the Muscle in the house being home. :)
January - Zone 1 - was The Kitchen. It was 2 parts of organizing babble.
The good news?
All the changes I made actually WORK. Things have been consistently put away. The children are able to help with all the things I had hoped. I'm able to keep my areas cleaner - although the stove top is still the bane of my existence. (That and the shower. I hate cleaning those two things!)
The better news?
The success of the kitchen has motivated me to keep going through the house.

Side note - when I pick one zone, I still have to maintain the other zones of the house. So, sometimes even if my monthly zone is, say, the living room....I still may end up going through kid clothes. Life has to keep happening - and I can't always complete the zone I planned...so I do what I can and then start work on the other places.

My living room has been a source of struggle for me since the day we moved in. It is a HUGE room (don't ask the dimensions, I have no idea) with about 10 million windows. I LOVE it! All the sunshine is marvelous and feels so open. However, after living in 6 small and 1 medium house...it was quite a change.

Here are 2 pictures showing ALL our furniture that wasn't expressly bedroom/dining room related....

Quadrupling the size of your house DEFINITELY makes your furniture seem smaller! 

And having a pretty house, makes the furniture that doesn't look so great REALLY stand out.

Oh well.

We had places to put butts.

Not pretty places - but comfy ones!

(I'm not even showing you the COMPLETELY empty back 1/3 of the room!)

In fact, it has been such a struggle - I posted about needing help back in November. :)

I've made a bit of progress...the 3 pillows in the corner? Fantastic find and they totally go with my owls.

AND thanks to my genius friend, Molly, I will change them into removable pillow covers that I can wash!! (Why that never occurred to me, I'll never know.) I just need to find a zipper for the 3 non-washable pillows...the Owl, bright Green, and Crazy Bird. (See below) :)

My new favorite piece of furniture - this super-awesome-completely-makes-me-smile-every-time-I-look-at-it TV Stand. 

Other pillow I love - it called my name from Garden Ridge. And all 4 pillows were on CLEARANCE!! People, that is my love language. Well, that and food.

These cutesy shelves were in the damaged section at Bed Bath and Beyond for $5...so I bought them. I had no IDEA what to do with them, but I figured it would come to me.

It didn't.

They sat in that very sad hodge-podge state for months.

Iamsoashamed.

But yesterday? That changed! Now they are filled with cute little things that I like! That go with our room! That I like! (Yes, I said that twice...it was double important)

I mean, seriously, how cute are those little speak no/hear no/see no evil owls?!

I also went through ALL of the toys and got rid of about 10 million things.....but more on the toy de-cluttering/organization, tomorrow. :)

And, most likely....the entire layout of the room will be flipped in the next 2 days. I told you I was taking advantage of having the Man home! :)

~Whitney Copyright 2013