Chipping Away

I've been slowly chipping away at my to-do list for before Tony comes. At this point, it looks like the move might get pushed back a few months (those things always happen), so I haven't been in a panic to get things done. My nesting has been non-existent.

But... I have done some things.

We bought and froze a bunch of meat for easy crock pot meals after he's born. We've started a list of what's in the chest freezer and the fridge freezer so we can keep track of everything as well.

I've washed all of Tony's clothes that he received at the shower, and returned the diapers and wipes. Well, with the exception of one pack of each. Last Sunday a family visited our church and I found out later that they are homeless. They have a preschooler, a toddler, and a newborn. It broke my heart. So I plan on giving them the biggest containers that I received of diapers and wipes if they come back again this Sunday. I pray that they do.

Anyway, in preparing for Tony's birth I realized that we have NO storage in our house. This is something I realized a while back. We have a teeny tiny little closet - for the whole house. It can hold Audrey's and my clothes. Beau's hang in the laundry room. Belongings that don't need to be out are hidden behind doors in big plastic bins. That's another reason we're moving. It's not an over clutter of junk either. It's holiday decorations and seasonal clothes, picture albums, books, craft items. Stuff that we use frequently, just with no other place to put them. But it hit me all over again.

And Beau and I had been using the same dressers we had since we were kids. It was easy when we were newlyweds, he had his dresser, I had mine. When Audrey came we hung her dresses up and split the rest of her stuff between our dressers. Then when we started getting stuff for Tony, we couldn't fit everything for four people into the dressers, which made me feel like a horrible housekeeper because we were living out of baskets.

In comes Craigslist... my husband and I bought our first dresser! It's ugly as all get out, and we're in the process of revamping it. But, it was $50, and by the time we're finished redoing it, it'll still end up costing us $100 cheaper than the cheapest dresser at Wal Mart. It has potential.

This is what it looked like when my husband first brought it in - don't worry, it has the other drawers. This made me realize how small our master room is. It was fine without a dresser. It would also be fine if we didn't believe in co-sleeping.

Yes, we're *those* people. Audrey slept with us until she was one and moved to her big girl bed. She's on the other side of the room from us in her own space so no one is bothering each other. Before that, she was in the crib which was side-carred to our bed. Think a giant bassinet on that one. Tony will be in the side-carred crib now. And don't think we don't have a personal life, we're expecting another kid, so obviously it's all good in the hood.

And, yes, I realize that our bed spread and our bed skirt don't match. Last year I fell in LOVE with this gorgeous orange bed spread and bought it. Well, it turns out that it's too big for our washing machine to handle and has to be dry cleaned. At $30 bucks a pop, I just wash our current one more frequently. We have the bed skirt to match this bed spread, but my husband put it away while trying to be helpful and doing laundry one day. It hasn't been seen since.

Now, when we move, we will be keeping Tony with us (I'm big on co-sleeping for the first year) and Audrey will be getting her own room.

My assistant showing off her new amber anklet to help with the teething pain.

Here it is with the drawers in. It needs A LOT of work. We bought new hardware for it and when we have a chance we're going to paint it black to match our headboard and night stand. Don't worry, I thoroughly cleaned everything with Basic H the moment it came in the house.

My husband replacing the hardware. I know it may seem silly to do that before painting it. But we wanted to make sure that the stuff we chose would fit so we could return it if necessary. And, with our 90%+ humidity winters, realistically it'll be a while before we can get outside to paint it.

The new knobs for the first drawer. I think they'll look good with the black. What do you think?

Here you can see the drawer pulls I chose for the bottom two drawers.

And compared to the old funky one(s). I think it's an improvement already.

And here's my husband putting them in on the other side.

So now we have our very own dresser for the first time since being married, Tony has his daddy's dresser and Audrey has my dresser. I even reorganized all of their clothes so that each drawer is for a specific set of items and my husband has less of an excuse to get them all messed up. I better not find a onesie in with the sleepers or a cardigan in with the tights, is all I'm saying.

I even bought a bunch of storage bins that were on sale coz they're Christmas colors (like it affects the way they work) to pack away unneeded items. Here's little miss modeling one of the bins yesterday.

One obstacle partly done, 1000000 more to do.