Fall Home Purge

One of the blogs I have been following for a while has been A Bowl Full of Lemons. Toni is currently doing a 31 Day Purge on her blog which I absolutely love! I can't think of a better way to get ready for the holiday season than going through and purging my home of the clutter that has accumulated.

Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons started this 31 Day Purge at the first of the month. But since October is playoff month for Volleyball State Championships (back to back State Champions by the way! My team is kind of badass.) I was unable to start on the first. So I've started this week. I'm planning on posting my progress as I go to help keep me accountable since I'm behind everyone else. At the same time I'll be doing the tasks out of order and throwing in a few of my own. 

To get things started I began with the pantry. Even though the month has been extremely busy I've neglected to put things in their proper places and it ends up looking like this....which makes my stomach turn a bit.

How did I ever find anything in this mess?

I removed everything from the pantry and tossed anything that was expired. I then sorted and grouped items together.

I refilled all my Oxo containers and made notes of what I needed to pick up at the store.

Then I grouped my canned food items and placed any excess items in this reusable grocery bag till I can find a new bin or basket to hold all these items.

Since I was feeling good about getting all that done I thought I would tackle another day on Toni's list. The next one just happened to be Magazines. 

Believe it or not I don't own a SINGLE magazine subscription. Kind of crazy right. But I'll let you in on a secret. I haven't needed one for almost a year. I use the Next Issue app! This was one of my Christmas gifts from the hubs last year.There are so many magazines in this app depending on what kind of subscription you want. 

When I find something I love and want to remember I just take a screen shot and save it in my inspiration folder on my iPad.

But since I was supposed to purge them I went back and deleted all downloaded issues on my iPhone and iPad so that I could make some storage space. 

I managed to get two tasks done pretty quickly and it's amazing what a difference getting rid of the excess stuff in your life can do for your day.

I'm planning on doing all the clothes in my dresser and closet next. I'll let you know how all that goes. It's going to be a bit crazy. I've been holding on to a lot of pre-pregnancy clothes (from 4 years ago). 

See you in a few days!

No Sew Outdoor Curtains

We have a nice covered patio out back. We really love this space (let's be real the patio was one of the biggest reasons we bought our house). However it gets pretty hot out there in the summers. I've always wanted patio curtains out there but lets face it outdoor curtains are really, really, really expensive. So I opted for a bunch of canvas drop cloths.

Each of these packages contains TWO...yes you heard me TWO drop clothes! Each pack was only $10.88!

The next biggest expense was going to be curtain rods. Our patio is pretty big. We figured it was going to cost us a small fortune in curtain rods...but while browsing our local Home Depot (date night!) we saw some electrical conduit...which happens to almost be the same size as a curtain rod for a lot less! So we bought four of those bad boys and some curtain rod hangers and we were in business.

Please ignore my fan...it's disgusting. I've tried to get it clean but it really doesn't want to be. Which is why it's going to be replaced....it's pretty ugly too.

We had a bit of a debate on how we were going to hang these wonderful and glorious curtains. Hubs One option: trim all the drop clothes and sew a sleeve and then just slide it over the pole...too much work for me. My option: buy the curtain rings with alligator clips on them and we can remove them as necessary. We went back and forth a bit. Would the clips hold the fabric in a bad storm and we weren't home to take them down. If we did the sleeve would the whole curtain and rod rip off if there was a storm. (we get a lot of storms and some serious wind) In the end I won with the clips! And they're amazing!

We just folded the excess cloth over and clipped the fabric in regular intervals and what do you know its perfect! The curtain ring clips can even withstand two kids pulling on the curtains and racing through them as fast as they can.

It's blocks the afternoon sun from hitting the tv so unwatchable. Gives us some shade so we can extend out time outside with the little ones.

You can even enclose the covered patio for a bit of a cabana feel! We're definitely getting our monies worth from these curtains.

I also can't wait to use the curtains this fall and winter as insulation from the colder weather!