Like the majority of you, I too am guilty of looking up organising techniques on YouTube and Pinterest in attempts to get my home more together. Whilst this has helped me in some many areas of my home, more often than not I am faced with stunning photos of what appear to be un-lived in and certainly child-free homes. Although they are beautiful and I long to onday live in a world where last years spaghetti doesn't reside on the inside of my airing cupboard door. (If I'm being honest it could have been on longer!) Those homes are just not realistic for me right now, and I often come away feeling worse about myself and my home than I did to start with. So I thought I would share with you my dirty secrets (literally!) Its important to know you are not alone!! 1) Airing Cupboards I'm lucky enough to have 3 airing cupboard in my house. Like everyone, I've tried many times to de-clutter and purge the area but i just can't seem to get the grasp on keeping it neat and tidy. You can see that I have got some labelled tubs and trays from previous attempts to control the chaos and in which I do try and keep specific items. But unfortunately the mess seems to have accumulated around it. 2) Storage Room Yup that's right, I have a whole room just dedicated to keeping the spirit of clutter alive! Although as I mentioned I do have some cupboard space in my house, as it is a rented home our landlords has removed access to our attic and so we do use this as a sort of substitute. However regardless, we really should keep more on track of what we actually have going on in there. 3) Hall way Unfortunately even entering our home can put a bit of a dampener on things for me. Although I don't leave my shoes and coats there my fiancé does leave his. (For some reason our dog has an obsession with only chewing MY things?!) And this just makes the whole hall way look cluttered and chaotic. Our dog also sleeps under the stairs and on our hall rug which makes doesn't help the messy feel as he is awfully hairy and if I don't keep on top of the hoovering then it makes the space look even more unclean! (If you are suffering with a really hairy dog and struggling to keep up I have previously posted on how frequently I do my housework chores, just a heads up!) 4) Kitchen Sink For those of you that may have been following my blog you may be thinking, how hipocritical when i recently posted about not leaving dishes before leaving my house. And while it is true that i do try to wash up prior to leaving my house, during the hours when i am actually at home its usually a different matter. Being a working mother I spend the my time at home is stretched between housework and mothering and unfortunately washing up is not high on my priority list. A way i cope with managing my dishes is washing up is doing the meal before's while im cooking our curent meal. Howeve this of course means that more often than not there are dirty dishes somewhere in my kitchen.
So anyway there you have it! My home is not perfect! I feel like nowardays we are force-fed the idealistic view of our we and our homes should look, we've forgotten what it is to know normallity. However that being said, with a new baby on the way my new years resolution is to get more order into my home, (by the way, please feel free to leave any hints or tips on how to juggle two children under 3!) and I thought it would be good to share how I go about remedying these issues with you as I do them, so keep your eyes peeled for that! As always I would love to hear any ideas you have on sorting mess. Or even how you dont! Dont be shy! Georgia Day of Knights
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This year my daughter will be 22 months during the festive period, so it is the first christmas where she can really start to partake in official arts and crafts. The most simple way I found to encorporate this into something all our family and friends can enjoy (depending on how much they appreciate homemade items) is card making. An added bonus of which it is really affordable. I went to our local Hobbycraft store and picked up a pack of 10 cards with envelopes for £4. (I think they do smaller cheaper ones however I wanted the cards to be A5 size) and then I picked up paints/stamps/stickers and other embelisments from Poundland. I think in total I spent about £7-8 so still affordable. I had the idea of doin several different types of cards. (Mainly because I knew we would be using paints and know from experience, that can quickly go out of hand.) So I set out about 3-4 cards for the paint and just let my daughter go wild. Before we started doing the cards, I had seen some beautiful homemade cards online where the children's painted handprints make raindeers and other festive objects. But it soon became apparent that my daughter just wanted to do her own thing, and seeing as it was her craft session. I didn't see any harm in letting her do that. After she had finished her masterpieces and they had dried, in an attempt to make them slightly more presentable I simply either drew over the top, or cut out shapes and let her put stickers on those before sticking them on as well. (Good mess tip, don't use glue, use double sided sticky tape. Still sticks really well and saves you both getting extra messy. Plus you can get 3 rolls for £1 from Poundland!) If you want something a little less mess, might I suggest something as simple as drawing around your child's hand and then creating something like a tree. (What's great is, if you have a highly active child that isn't likely to sit still for long. You can draw round their hand once and then use that as a template.) Then all you do is just add some decoration and it's done.
What i really liked about doing this, is its not only fun for your child, but also those that are receiving them truly appreciate the effort and that you have taken the time to do something so personal for them. (Great if you weren't planning on buying them anything!!) And they never have to know that it only took 10 minutes. So thats one of the crafts I am doing with my daughter this festive season. I'd love to hear what creations you are all doing! I bet some of you are much more creative than us! Please comment and leave your pictures, id love to see what you are doing to get into the Christmas Spirit! Georgia Day of Knights My parents spilt up whilst I was a baby, and my mother and step-dad split up when I was still very young so spending special occasions in different places was the norm for me. (Like it is for many children nowadays) But Christmas was my most favourite time of year, mainly because I got to have twice the amount of food (not to mention presents!) However now with that I am older with a family of my own, I find myself worrying about the holidays for that very same reason. Last year was our daughters first Christmas and so naturally everyone wanted to be a part of her day. However leading up to the big day I had been in hospital due to an infection so I was still quite tired and weak. To make things easier it was decided that both our families (on our mother's sides) would visit us to save us the double journey. We spent the morning just us 3 (and dodge the dog) unwrapping gifts and listening to Christmas tunes. My fiancé then cooked the Christmas dinner and we ate in peace before finally that afternoon our families arrived. Now we don't have a dining room in our house, so to say it was crowded was an understatement. Just take a look for yourselves. Thankfully everyone gets along from both our sides and it turned out to be a great afternoon. Isabella was throughly spoilt and everyone enjoyed seeing her on her first Christmas.
Boxing Day is usually the day when we see the dads of both or sides, however last year my fiancés dad was unavailable and so we just split the day between my dad and step dad. Seeing one in the morning and then the other in the afternoon. (As this is basically now our tradition.) This year our Boxing Day will probably be the same, (as I said it's now tradition) however to save our lounge from looking like Asda on Black Friday we've decided to visit our mothers separately again. We will wake up at our own home and open our presents and eat breakfast together, before making our way to Ben's mums and seeing his family and eat Christmas dinner with them. Then mid afternoon we will head back home and meet my family here where we will open the remainder of the gifts and have some festive snacks. And thats our plans basically it. I hope if you have a similar situaton with your family this has offered you some help. There are a few less-stressing ways to do it. I'd love to hear about how you all plan to spend your Christmases. I still can't believe that this time next year we will be catering for 2 little ones. (By the way: any tips on how to do that are defiantly welcome!) Georgia Day of Knights |
About Me.Hi, I'm Georgia. Working Mum and Fiance. Join my Family as we try and navigate this roller coaster they call life. Archives
August 2017
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