Tidy Brown Wren, bringing order to your nest

Our home is a work in progress.  Actually, my whole life is a work in progress! Ha! Big projects in the house aren't in the works right now since work on the greenhouse is still continuing.  Here it is in it's half painted stage.  Yes, it really is green!  Anyway, as I was saying.  . .  Small projects are all we can handle in the house right now.  One of those projects was tackling the lack of towel bars in our main bathroom.  We haven't done much in the bathroom except pull out the dropped ceiling and add a few lights.   For a temporary fix, I added a quilt rack to hold our towels. I felt like it was always getting in the way and tended to be top heavy when holding wet towels. I picked up some hooks from Hobby Lobby (when they were 50% off) and hubs attached them to some leftover 1 by 4s.  Then the wood was attached to the wall studs for stability.  The wood was already stained to protect it - but ...

Most of the time, when I'm called in to help stage or organize a home, I encounter an overstuffed master bedroom. What I mean by overstuffed is too much furniture, too many clothes, and too many items that don't belong in a bedroom. A lot of people, including myself, tend to put stuff in the bedroom that doesn't belong because we don't know what else to do with it. It becomes a staging area for projects, laundry, exercise equipment, and "stuff". So how do we get from ransacked to restful? I thought you'd never ask! Here are some questions to ask yourself: 1. What do I want this room to feel like? Restful retreat, romantic getaway, or an inspired haven? 2. What pieces of furniture could be gotten rid of? Bookshelves, dressers, chairs, exercise equipment? 3. What items end up in your bedroom that don't belong there? Toys, paperwork, laundry? 4. Are there any repairs that need to be made? Loose handles, broken curtain rods, stuck doo...

So, if you're following along with me in the process of organizing and cleaning your entire house this year, we'll be working on the bathroom in February together.  Well, not really together.  I mean you work on your bathroom and I'll work on mine. I thought I would use some photos of bathrooms I've staged for my clients over the past year or two.   One of the things you will notice about all of these bathrooms is that I use all white linens and light colored accessories.   You'll want to work on only one bathroom in your home at a time.   As usual, you'll want to check out each bathroom and do an assessment.    Check out this post for the details. Staged bathroom in a home for sale. After you've done an assessment of the bathroom it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to work.    1. Remove everything from the cabinet or drawer. Wipe out the cabinet/drawer and line with contact paper if desired. ...

So. . . you've set a New Year's resolution to organize and deep clean your house this year.  Sure, sure - you said that same thing last year, but this year you really mean it.  But now it's almost the end of January and you don't know where to start.   Well, today's the day.   I'll be blogging each month about an area to work on .  We'll take one area per month.  Don't try to do more than that one area a month and overwhelm yourself  because you'll want to quit.   And quitters never have clean homes! Ready?  Let's go! In January, you should work on the area where you enter your home.  Front door?  Back door?  It doesn't matter.  We'll just call it your home's entrance.   1.  Evaluate what you need in the area.  Think through your daily routine of entering and exiting.  Think about what you need to help your family get what they need and keep it organized. ...

Our utility room is finally finished and I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out. We hired a contractor to remodel our kitchen last year but our budget just couldn't be stretched enough to work on the connecting utility room.   When asked what I wanted for Christmas last year, I asked if we could work on the utility room/pantry this year.  Poor Hubs, I think he would have rather purchased a gift from the mall.  Even with a very limited budget and schedule, we worked on it steadily all year and just finished last week. It took several months of planning to figure out the layout but my Hubs is a genius and is very good at space planning.  He was so sweet to carefully consider all of my storage needs.  He measured all of my containers to make sure everything would fit. Some of the walls and all of the cabinets and the ceiling were torn out during our kitchen demo.  We hobbled along with our little torn up utility room for almost ...

I almost forgot how to blog.  It's true - it's been so long since I wrote a blog post that I had to putter around to find my way again.   In reality, I've been blogging in my head.  I really have.  I've been talking to you and showing you things around The Wren.  Projects we've worked on. . . food I've cooked. . . crafts I've made. . . and of course, the grandchildren that won't stop growing.  But of course, if I don't put my fingers to the keyboard and download some photos, then you have no idea what's going on.   During the past year, my jobs have taken up a lot of my time and attention.  Most of my attention, actually.  The problem?  I had too many jobs.  I was teaching preschool, running the preschool ministry at our church, staging homes for Realtors, and helping clients with organizing their homes.   Something had to give.  I felt the Lord was telling me it was time to give up teaching.  I a...

Once upon a time a family bought a house that came with a wonderful little playhouse attached to the deck.  The youngest daughter in the family was married in the backyard of the home and used the playhouse as a backdrop for some of her wedding photos.  Read all about the wedding here . Alas, the family's children were already grown,  so the playhouse was used as a storage shed for all of the grown children's old toys.  You should also know that the mother of the family (aka "Honey")  had a tendency to hoard sentimental things.  She could not help herself but she is much improved now. It also housed folding chairs and Papa's  hammock - anything that didn't have a home somewhere else. It was dark, crowded, and spidery. So one day Honey had a great plan - have all of the grown children come over (dinner was promised) and insist they go through all of their old toys and get rid of any they didn't want to ...