2012 Cleaning Spree - Before Pics

Yesterday afternoon, we took the kids up to DeSoto to spend some awesome time with Nonnie and Pa. They were SO EXCITED about going. And Will and I are selfishly super excited too, because this means that we can commence the GREAT CLEAN OF 2012. (Thank you a million, Nonnie and Pa!!!)

This is probably lame, but to motivate myself, here are our "before" pictures. Nowhere near as dramatic as last year, when we did a mega purge of the house - and finally finished unpacking most of the boxes from our move from Florida. But over the year, clutter has gradually piled up again and we have more boxes from Will's childhood bedroom to go through. So here is the state of the house this morning.

Our bedroom. We have a new bedroom set this year (yay!) but still need to get rid of some of the old stuff. And despite having 2 dressers for me and one dresser for Will - clothes are still piled up...

Annika's room. Last year we finally put Annika and Daniel in their own rooms (they used to share) and they each got new beds in the process. The top of her dresser and the "tent" under the bed are full of all kinds of, um, treasures.

Daniel's bedroom. Same bed. Same story.

The kitchen. Most of the crap right now are Christmas presents that need to find a home, but there is still an amazing amount of clutter scattered about. (Will wants me to be clear that we are not actually going to throw him out, even though he is the picture.)

Living room. Much better than after the Christmas Bomb, but still random crap that needs a home.

Family room. Other than picking up some things on the floor, the main thing we need to use this room for is to fold all of the clothes that we need to wash from the laundry chute that is threatening to overflow....

Guest Room/Office downstairs. We would like to truly turn it into an "office" (attempts to work at the kitchen table are usually a failure...) with an extra bed for guests. All of the boxes are from Will's childhood bedroom from when his parents moved this summer. I guess when you are 36 years old, it as good as a time as any to finally sort through memories. :)

The basement - play room for the kids, which they don't like to visit :) I would like to purge a lot of the toys, etc. here, especially ones the kids don't play with anymore. There are also a lot of boxes on the other side of the wall that we need to go through. (I went through a few last year and one of them one was, I kid you not, a box from when we moved from our apartment in Florida. In 2007.)

Finally, our van. Will and the kids cleaned the car out recently, but the van is littered in - um, stuff.

All right, now that I have embarrassed myself, it's time to get to work! So excited to purge and de-clutter and clean - hopefully we will have great "after" pictures to post!