Before Pictures

It is February. Littlest is due in early May, but I won't be at all surprised if he arrives in late April. And if it is February? And we have a baby in April? That's like saying the kid will be here in TWO MONTHS!!! TIME TO PANIC!!!

Okay, I understand the flawed thinking there, but Littlest's arrival is starting to feel decidedly closer and we are getting things done. If you have even peeked inside our "guest room" in the last few months you will know that completely emptying it was nothing short of a miracle. And, despite the illness which leveled Matt and I last week, we had to empty the room because today the painter showed up. I really wish I had thought to take before pictures when the room was full, but at least I remembered to do it pre-painting.

The bed in the room is going to become Harper's bed, although the bedding will change. Unfortunately the picture depicts rather accurately the heinous golden/yellow shag carpeting that will not change. We are putting room darkening shades in and updating the paint, but there was simply no budget for flooring. And really, the carpet in a kids' room is likely to be destroyed anyway, right? (Just go ahead and tell me I'm right.) The carpet in our master bedroom is ugly as well and I've gotten really good at ignoring it. So once the new bedding and pretty walls and other furniture are in place, we'll all just agree to avert our eyes from the carpet, okay?






This bedroom is nearly the only room in the house that hasn't been improved in some fashion (flooring, window treatments, paint, etc.) since we moved in three years ago. It will not be magically transformed into a complete room right away. We'll need to do some thinking about what to put on the walls and some sort of fabric to soften the look of the shades, etc. but I think it will still make a huge difference to have the painting done and windows covered.

My mom is coming to visit the last week of this month (Yay! Hi Mom!) and will probably be the last official guest in that room before it becomes Harper's. Her mission might very well be to help me clean out the closet (not as bad as doing the rest of the room, but still, yikes!)

So there you have our "before" pictures and commentary. Oh, and much to Harper's joy, the room will be pink. But, um, not too pink. As far as pink goes we picked a fairly subtle shade.

Thoughts/Questions Re: Organization, Finances, and Donations

Okay Internet types, I need your help!

Item the First: Organization

Littlest's due date seems to be approaching at a fast and furious rate since we turned the corner into 2008. As a result we are in the thick of rearranging and shifting to move Harper into the "guest" room and spiffy up the "nursery" for the next kiddo. Not surprisingly this has turned into cleaning out many of the spaces throughout the house. We have a bunch of rarely used sleeping bags on a shelf in the family room closet and they are being demoted to the basement. So do we store them in large trash bags (which has me thinking, "Ew! They will be so accessible to bugs and mice, and moisture.") or do we invest in a couple of humongous plastic bins and store them thusly? Past experience has me inclined to vote for bins, but Matt, the more frugal of us except in the part of his brain that desires a Wii, says trash bags. Thoughts? Opinions?

Item the Second: Finances

Okay, to call this a financial question is probably a little extreme, sorry. Here's the thing - I live in a pretty constant state of fear that Blogger will go kerfluey and all these stories of mine will be lost. Which may not be a tragedy to the world at large, but would make me sad because of all the hours lost, all the memories that won't be as vividly recalled, and I think that Harper might get a kick out of reading this stuff someday. I have recently learned about a service that allows you to download blog content into a template and have it printed as a book. I know we are in the digital age and all, but I would feel so relieved to have a copy of all of this that I could hold in my hands. So my question is: Do you think it's worth it to pay for something like that? Would you do it, you know, if you were me? Or do you have another way of preserving things? I know I could cut and paste most of it into Word and save the files on a DVD, but it just doesn't translate well that way.

Item the Third: Donations

Inevitably, with all the aforementioned cleaning out and shifting we are doing, we are coming across a multitude of things that don't feel so much worth saving. Now some of it is in good shape and donating it seems like a no-brainer. But then there is an entire category of items that I just don't know what to do with. For example a Consumer Reports book about baby stuff that has been handed down several times and has a copyright of about 1999. Is that worth anything to anybody? Or am I just passing my problem along to the Salvation Army (or whoever) by donating it?

We recently took a bag of videos to a local library branch after Matt had called and asked if they could use them. He was told they would either catalog and use them or put them in their used "book" sale. However, when I showed up with the bag to drop them off, they were not well received. Oops.

I find outdated books, like the Consumer Reports thing and old textbooks, and video tapes the most troublesome. Can I recycle paperback items? Can I tear the pages out of hardcovers and just throw the covers away? Is there someone somewhere that might actually want my math methods for elementary school textbook from 1997? How about VHS copies of 37 different Disney movies? I don't know!!!

I should probably clarify by saying that I'm not looking to sell the stuff, I just want to avoid adding unnecessary junk to the landfill if it isn't just to someone else.

Your turn. Please use your collective wisdom to guide me. Or at least let me know if you are interested in my old textbooks.