Household - Brand New House without moving

As many of you know I was struggling with clutter and I was working through it. Then I left for Puerto Rico and my husband did the most amazing thing a husband could ever do. He remodeled the house when we were in Puerto Rico. He made a new Dining Room, A new Living room, a new home office. And for the first time in many years I must say that I have a peaceful place in my home to relax and do my work and I am so happy with it. I love my hubby!!! That was the best dating anniversary/mother's day gift EVER!!! I LOVE YOU!!!

And for those of you who are wondering and would like to see the transformation here I have a picture of the space before. The picture was taken while I was playing around with my daughter and the camera, it is actually a shot of my foot, but you can see basically the whole room.

And this same room was turned into 4 different spaces, 4 AMAZING SPACES!! :D

I'm proud of my new house! 

Do you ever think that remodeling could make such an amazing difference?

Household - Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

This last week has been an incredible success for me, not only was I able to broom and mop the house, I was able to get rid of an incredible amount of paper clutter, and I was able to organize all the school supplies that I had laying all over the house. Now everything has it's place and I am so proud. The living room seems so spacious now! When I need scissors or paper, or glue sticks or pencils I know where to find them. We went from not having enough pencils, or markers, or crayons or coloring pencils, or even pens, to having a whole drawer of coloring items and a whole drawer of additional school supplies. We have 5 scissors! more than 20 pencils, and countless other things. So now when one of us needs something, we know where to find it, and where to put it back soon after.
Today Elsie was able to finish her homework and choose some art supplies make some paintings, find the tape to put it up in the wall and then put everything back where it belongs. And that to me is priceless!
Have you had any breakthroughs recently dealing with clutter?

Saving The Environment can be a curse

OK, OK, I might be exaggerating a bit here. But haven't you ever felt like you HAVE TO BE Earth Friendly? Do Not Waste, Reuse, Recycle. Then when you look at a bottle of water you see how it can be recycled, when you cook dinner and the food gets burned you see how you have wasted the food, and how there are people in the world that don't have enough to eat. And you feel bad. How about when you buy food, and then your family doesn't eat it all, then you are left with all these leftovers that could serve a purpose, then what? How about the shampoo that you bought but don't like, should you still use it? It doesn't seem right to throw it. Toys your children have outgrown, books, magazines, toilet paper rolls and egg cartons. All these things can be re-used or recycled. What if your house is all cluttered, yet you can't find the time to research a place to take all these things, what if you don't have a car, and you have too much stuff to give away, too much stuff to carry. It makes me feel trapped and self conscious and it makes it hard for me to just close my eyes and throw stuff away.

Don't you ever feel like being earth conscious can be a curse? What is your opinion? I want to know.

Have you started your spring cleaning?

I decided to use once again the writing prompts of Social Moms and answer the question Have you started Spring Cleaning yet? I never grew up with the term spring cleaning as in Puerto Rico the seasons don't have such a drastic impact as in NYC. Here we have to start thinking about changing the seasonal stuff, like the clothes, switched and getting rid of the things we no longer need. This time I decided to take the time to hire a professional organizer that's going to help us clear out clutter and organize ourselves. I must say that I have a tendency to get frustrated and quit once I feel I have spent a lot of time and effort clearing out stuff and it looks like I have barely made a dent. So I feel that having someone by your side helping you out, someone who is good at it, it will make a huge difference. She already came to our house to review the situation and will be returning on March 22nd to start off with my home office area. She gave me as a homework to give away the exercise bike that I do not use, and move the 3 bikes down from the living room into the bike racks outside and to buy them bike covers so I don't feel worried about them getting ruined in the rain.
So I have to buy these covers and some good locks and start off. Once Amy comes back I will continue to let you know of my progress.
So, what about you? Have you started your Spring cleaning yet? Do you have a specific plan, or method? Please share.

Dealing With Clutter Part 2 - Not Giving Up

Last week I talked about how my lack of Security led me to accumulate clutter. Trying to hold on to things that only gave me a false sense of security, and realizing that I had given up on having nice things because I didn't feel worthy. I must say that there are days when you see the mountain of stuff and can't imagine how you are ever going to do it. But you must not give up.
Today I went into my daughter's room and cleared out a large garbage back the 30 gal black one. I threw away a lot of stuff and organized others into the closet. I saw so many other things that need to be dealt with. Things that should get donated, others shredded, or thrown. I didn't want to overwhelm myself so I took care of the things I could in the 2 hours I gave myself to do this project.
Continuing to clear out things and seeing improvements keeps me all excited to continue on my task one day at a time.

How do you deal with clutter in your home? Do you get help or do it by yourself?
I want to hear what you have to say.

Dealing with Clutter: Sense of Security

For the most part of my life I have lived with clutter. I remember growing up and having one room of the house to be the "cachibache" room. In there we threw everything we didn't use often. And when I say threw, I mean literally threw. That room was a mess. Random stuff piled over everything. Now that I think about it, it was basically a storage room but with no organization what so ever. We moved fairly often and this messy room of stuff would get packed over and over and over, unused, unchecked. Only on the rare occasion when we would have a flood would we weed through the stuff, and mourn the once forgotten stuff we had not seen since our last move.
And here I am now as an adult finding myself with the same problem, except here in NYC, we don't have the luxury of an extra room unless we rent a storage space. So all my "cachibaches" are spread around all over the house creating a chaotic mess. I always blamed it on being tired to clean, on not having enough space, or a good shredder (you know, identity theft and all). The girls are too little, they need my attention, I can't possibly spend the day cleaning. But these are all excuses, like the one I have used the most often "we are going to move soon anyway so why bother". But soon has been five years and we are still at the same house, and this takes me to another thing, sense of security. What I have come to learn is that throughout my life I've moved so much and my situation has been so random that I lost the sense of security that I should have had since I was a child and with this I developed and attitude of indifference. I never considered anything to have the ability to be mine long term, so I never found the need to care and keep anything in nice condition, because to me there was no point in making an effort for temporary things. But even life is temporary, why not make it the best, right? So now as I find myself weeding through clutter, getting rid of stuff, one room at a time. I propose to make my soroundings nice, and with this my family gets happy in return too.