Operation Organization!

Organization..something I'm not too good at. I feel like I have little piles of things all over the house that, may, at first glance, look messy..but they're organized into my own personal chaotic way where I can usually find what I need. I always feel like getting organized is right up there with eating healthy and losing weight on the New Year's Resolution list. So, I decided to really stick with it and get organized. I'm a little late with my New Year's Resolution, but with spring in the air, I figured, no time is better than now!

So where do you being...here's a great blog..why, it's all about Organizing of course!!!

http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.com/

Jen, of the I Heart Organzing blog, has an April Challenge...30 Things in 30 days. A purging project over the month of April to help you declutter!


here's the schedule folks!

so why purge? ...mostly because you probably need a good cleaning. It doesn't mean you have to throw stuff away..you can donate to goodwill, sell it on ebay, or have a good old fashioned yard sale. We have the rule in our house..if you haven't worn or used it in a year..you're probably over it and pass it on!

So..challenge yourself! This week it's time to clear out your entry/living room. I know, for me, I have baskets of magazines I need to go through. I discreetly store them in baskets under my coffee table...it's my dirty little secret..I'm addicted to magazines! I think my highest total at one time was something crazy like 19..hey, it's cheaper to subscribe than to buy it at the store! So, there's no question where I'll start!

I Heart Organizing is full of great tips, ideas and projects!

Spring Cleaning is hard...

when the animals refuse to cooperate. I was so gung ho to haul ass around the house and spring clean until the cows came home. I read my latest issue of Real Simple magazine. I was prepared to re-do the bedroom with lighter, brighter, springy-er linens. I was even debating the advice from Real Simple to sprinkle baking soda on your mattress and vacuum it up..but I didn't go that far..mostly because the cats thought spring cleaning = play time

as if ironing your curtains and dust ruffle doesn't suck enough...its even harder when Reese thinks it's her play cave

While I was trying to wrangle Reese out of the dustruffle...I intermittently had to yell at Davie who was plotting how to scale the mattress

Once the mattress cover was washed and a fitted sheet was put on the box spring..mostly because we have a naughty cat who likes to scratch the boxspring near our heads to alert us to the fact that she's hungry...the bed was put back together and my girls, Reese and A-belle, were playing sweet...I guess I enjoyed it because normally they're chasing each other around the house like gang busters screeching bloody murder

Then they decided they didn't like the clean room and needed to cat hair it up for me

As I cleaned our master bedroom top to bottom and vacuumed and dusted..a total of 7 cat toys were found in various nooks and crannies in our bedroom.

But..at least I have a sparkly clean master bedroom..well at least for the week until it's full of cat hair, hairballs, and toys. I guess it's true..the cats kind of do run the house.

A Must for all Pet Owners

well, maybe not all pet owners...but if you have lovely cats like me who like to cough up hairballs on your white bedroom rug, then this might be a must own item for you to!

Before we had the Bissel Pet Spot Bot, if you looked under my kitchen sink there were probably 3-4 different kind of rug spot cleaners...anything from Resolve to Oxy Clean. Our house is mostly hardwoods, but we have carpet in the bedroom. I swear to God, that every time one of our furry children is going to be sick or decided  to cough something weird up...they bee line to the carpet areas..never can they accomplish this on the lovely hardwoods throughout the house where clean up is much easier. But, the rug cleaners just weren't cutting it. OxyClean bleached out spots in our rug...so that's on the list to replace...and the other never really got the white carpet clean. We hired professional steam cleaners to come in. The rugs looked great for 2-3 weeks, then every stain and then some resurfaced and new magical stains I wasn't even dealing with before came to life. So, it's been a big tug of war with how to clean the rugs. At one point, we thought about investing a huge steam cleaner...but they run around $400 and honestly, I don't have the room for a mammoth looking vacuum type deal in my house.

One day, I was perusing around Bed Bath and Beyond and saw this little guy...

It was right around the time Mr. Allan and I were planning the big nupitials, and I put it on our registry. My two co workers got it for me, and it has been a blessing to our household with 3 hairball prone cats. One little water resevoir pops off and you fill it with hot water and a cap ful of cleaning solution that Bissell makes for the Spot Bot. You pop it back on, place the spot bot over the stain, hit Clean and walk away....it cleans for you and beeps when it's down. There are two settings...one for surface stains and one for set in stains. I'm often torn about what I like more...the fact that I don't have to sit there and scrub the stain, or the fact that it cleans, sprays, and sucks it all up for me...no getting the vaccuum out after the spot dries.

The Spot Bot also has a hose attachement. You push a button that pops the hose out and there's a brush attachment that pops on the end of it. You press a button and the cleaning liquid sprays, you run the hose over it and it sucks it all up. This has been invaluable for us when it comes to our downstairs finished basement. We have Mr. Allan's old bachelor couch down there. One in a while the cats will get sick on it, or miss the litter box....I can't tell you how convenient having the hose to clean the bottom of the couch or an arm of it has been!

The Spot Bot by Bissell is sold at Bed Bath and Beyond for around $140...but don't forget your 20% off coupons!!! It'll bring it to just over $110. I've also seen it at Walmart and Target and I thought I spied in on sale for $99 in the Kohls ad this week. It comes with a small bottle of cleaning solution. We buy the cleaning solution at all of the above stores for about $10 a bottle. We usually only go through 2 bottles a year...depending on the amount of hairballs we're blessed with! But..I think the moral of this story is a little brown and black cat and her brother and sister just don't mix with a white rug.

Big things happening in the Allan household

We've been in our house for almost 4 years. I'm sad to say, Mr. Allan and I haven't really done alot of cosmetic work. I loved house hunting...my favorite thing was when we walked into a house with a purple bathroom..toilet and all...and Mr. Allan said..I'll give  you 20k to redo the bathroom...yeah right..glad I didn't take him up on that offer..because we're kind of slow on the home improvement front. I remember when we moved into Casa de Allan. I loathed our bathroom. The poor previous owner told us she re-did it herself. I wish I had the same taste and could embrace her cobalt blue trim, chair rail, and molding everywhere and her hand painted floral stencils. That bathroom was on the top of my to re-do list..however it wasn't an immediate need to re do thing and fell by the wayside. 4 years later I'm still looking at the floral stencil mess.

But...now that we've started..we're superstars...well I think we are at least.

First thing on my agenda....get rid of our wood trim. Our house looks like wood trim threw up on every end of it. I call it the 80's explosion...all we need is a framed picture of Michael Jackson's Thriller album and Olivia Newton John blasting on our radio. The wood trim would feel right at home.

Here's what our house looked like before...

My living room...wood trim around the big window and all along the floors...yes that's my hot boyfriend Don Draper on tv

 My, well I guess I really should say our, slider leading to our deck...more wood trim throw up



Here's the new and improved living area...

 My camera phone is acting a little funky...here are more pictures without the flash..I couldn't decide what I liked better...so they're all on here

I had to take so many pictures because I'm in absolute LOVE with it. I feel like our house stepped into the millennium...I can't tell you how different white trim and a fresh coat of paint on the walls made. I wish the pictures were a little better...but the color on the walls is Benjamin Moore's Stone Hearth and the trim is Benjamin Moore's Swiss Coffee in a semi gloss oil paint.

What did I learn or teach myself through this project...lots!

1) I was soooo intimidated to do this..I'm not sure why I kept getting so intimidated about this project. It seemed so large to me and I got so overwhelmed. But..it wasn't as bad as I thought

I guess that's not really a lesson..but oh well..move onto #2

2) in painting stained wood, use a good Oil Based Primer. I did one coat of Kilz Oil Paint Primer. I then used 2 coats of Benjamin Moore Oil Based paint. I think using a better quality paint like Benjamin Moore made a huge difference. We used Behr in our bedroom and the quality difference is noticeable.

3) Don't be afraid to sand. I just used a sanding block and wished I used it more. The trim in a house gets so nicked up and the sanding block worked wonders on a window sill where my cats frequently jump up and got scratched etc.

4) Purdy angled brushes are your best friends when painting trim. I used a 2" angled and a 1"angled. The 1" was great for my windows, I don't think I could have done it with just the 2" inch.

5) when using oil paint, Home Depot sells a brush cleaner. It works better than paint thinner. Why? I soaked my brushed in paint thinner and the oil paint was just too much to get out from in between the bristles. The paint also sunk to the bottom of the container and I found myself dumping it, putting more paint thinner in and going through a ton. Brush cleaner..they were clean in 10 minutes.

6) Frog Tape rocks. It's way better than the 3M blue crap. I read up on tape. I'm not a good painter and needed tape. I used 3M in our bedroom and when we pulled it off, it left a feathery mark on the edge of the paint. Frog Tape is worth the extra money, it didn't pull off paint we didn't want it to and left a clean edge

7) If you're going to wear a skirt suit to work the day after painting, make sure you remember to clean the white oil paint spots off your legs or else co workers and fellow lawyers will stare and point at you.

I'm no expert..just some things I learned along the way. There may be way easier techniques etc. to do this...but this was my trial and error of how to paint trim and walls.

Mr. Allan is playing with a new tool in the garage...mostly because he's getting ready to hang new doors...I'm beyond excited about this! Our ugly hollow wood veneer looking stained messes will be gone and replaced with nice 5 panel white doors. He's the best!

More de-80ifying pictures to come...especially after I hang curtains back up and put the crap back on the walls so it looks like a house again. Next up...painting the trim on the inside of the 3 bedrooms, hanging new doors and onto crown moulding.

Lastly...I need to give a big ole shout out to Sara. Here's her super cool blog with a house she and Brandon TRANSFORMED
Sara's really cool blog

I asked Sara a million questions on how to paint trim and she patiently answered them all. After seeing what she did, I thought, maybe I could do it too and rid myself of the wood trim that's swallowing my house up.  Thank you Sara!!

Hardwood Floor Cleaner Rave...

Our whole upstairs is hardwood floors. God Bless the previous owners of this house. They knocked down walls and ripped up this terrible cobalt blue carpeting that covered our, now, living room and dining room area. I love hardwoods floors. The pet hair forms tumbleweeds that are easy to sweep up, messes don't sink in, and they give the rooms a nice polished look. The hardwoods are in our kitchen as well, which has proven to be more of a challenge.

I've tried so many products to clean them. I started with my regular ole all purpose cleaner, Mr. Clean. It left them dull and they barely looked clean. I took a trip to my local Walmart to buy some Pledge hardwood floor cleaner. Hey, Pledge should know their wood products since that's what the cleaner is designed for. But, it didn't cut it. I went through some Old English hardwood floor cleaner and then tried my new go-to all purpose cleaner, Mrs. Meyers. All either left a tacky residue, didn't do anything, or left a film.

While visiting my dad and step-mother, they mentioned a product they found, that was environmentally friendly and they were very pleased with. They introduced me to BONA. I, honestly, had never heard of this cleaner. I looked for it at Target, Walmart, and my local grocery stores. Mr. Allan found it at Home Depot and my parents buy it at Bed, Bath, and Beyond (don't forget your 20% off coupons!!)

We gave it a whirl yesterday and I am impressed. I vacuumed all our floors and got down on my hand and knees with the spray bottle. I used a rag to wash the floors, but apparently there's a whole polishing kit swiffer like tool that goes with it.

This left the floors clean, polished looked and no residue behind. Sorry Mrs. Meyers, I'm normally a fan, but Bona is better! There's also a hard wood floor polish. After washing the floors, I haven't gone down the polish road yet..mostly because my cats were interested in what I was doing and all over me.....so Bona polish reviews in the near future!

Here's more info and a coupon (ughh...I hate to pay full price where there's a coupon floating around...next time!)

http://www.mybonahome.com/home.html

Still Under Water

It's raining men...well, not really, but it rained everything else in RI! This storm has been unbelievable! The rain has stopped and I'm at home...because only "essential" state employees are reporting and all state offices are closed...an no, I'm not offended that I'm not considered essential.

The Governor closed state offices because Interstate 95 is now closed going both North and South. So, even if I were to report to work...I couldn't have made it if I tried!

We've been lucky. So many people are flooded out, with water filling their homes. Our home is set up on top of a hill..probably one of the biggest in RI. Unfortunately, our neighbors on either side are flooded out. There is a full on river running behind our home, and the neighbors are set back further than us.

So, while our house is dry, our pool is another story. We went to bed with our pool cover brimming with water. We woke up and the pool is completely empty. We're assuming the pool couldn't take the pressure of all the rain and the liner ripped, letting loose all the water. Annoying, yes. A hassle, you betcha. But, I'd rather have a busted pool then a wet house.

Here are some pictures from this historic flooding that has hit the Northeast, and especially Rhode Island.

For those of you who know RI, this is the intersection near Warwick Mall

Some homes in Cranston, RI

Some cars having obvious difficulty

Sections of Cranston

This is a section of Route 102 in Exeter near the Exeter Country Club where the road washed away

The Great RI Flood of 2010

It started raining Sunday night..and it hasn't stopped yet. I think this is the most rain I've seen in my 31 years. It doesn't help that RI was drowned with pouring rain last week. Rivers flooded, and some areas were declared a state of emergency, but that was nothing compared to this week.
Most roads weren't passable near our home

Here's a picture of our neighbor's house...the water in the street has gotten worse--to the point where people are turning around in our drive way and not passing through

Here's where I'm knocking on wood. There's a lake across the street, the neighbors on either side have called to let us know that their basements are flooded and we should check ours, and here's our house....no water yet! And..I'm thanking God up above we're not like the peeps across the street!