Cleaning: Almost Complete!

Happy Friday everyone! Hope you are all as excited for the weekend as I am.

It has been a looooong couple of days for me, with cleaning and hanging out with my family and trying to do everything in between. I had high hopes to have my entire room spotlessly clean by the time I returned to Wisconsin for the weekend, but I got a bit sidetracked (hello, two hour trip to Hobby Lobby #oops) and ended up not quite getting everything done. To be fair, my room looks a lot better than it did when I returned home on Sunday - there is hardly anything on the floor, my closet and bookcase are each holding about a quarter of their potential capacity, and I have done some serious unloading of all of my stuff (which means there is a lot to be sold and donated..... I just have to take pictures now or take it to a consignment place! Yikes). I feel so much lighter! Not to mention, extremely proud of myself for getting all of it done. Most of the time when I clean I lose my motivation when I give myself an impossible deadline and to do list, get depressed about my place in life or my body when looking at mementos of the past, or hit some major regrets with things I should not have bought because it's all hanging in my closet with the tags on. What  did I do differently? This time I gave myself a deadline and created reasonable to do lists for each day, had my sister come hang out with me to help me make decisions and keep me motivated, hit up Dunkin Donuts every day for a $1 iced coffee to keep me going, and I made ruthless decisions about what to keep and what to toss. My mindset was completely different when I went into this, and the results were amazing!

Since I have been so very focused on cleaning and making my living space beautiful, anything home decor-related has been on my radar. While I was cleaning, I found several sets of bedding that used to be mine (sidenote: I am 22 years old and still sleep on a twin bed while I'm home. Efforts to persuade my parents to buy me a full size bed have been futile.) and my winter bedding could stand for an update. My room is pink, black, and white so I have been looking for some affordable, girly, and vintage-inspired bedding to complement that. Luckily for me, Lauren Conrad just came out with a bedding line at Kohl's as part of her LC Lauren Conrad line and I think I have found my new bedding! It is a light gray ruffled duvet (so I can use one of my existing comforters), very similar to ones seen at Anthropologie, but with a far better price tag! Plus Kohl's frequently has sales and sends out coupons, so if I keep my eye on it and let my mom know, we can probably snag it for a deal! Check out the set here - it also comes in pink and other bedding options!

Secondly, I've been trying to think of how to re-work my closet when and if I return home at the end of summer. I have an Elfa closet system from The Container Store (which is absolutely fabulous and if you have a store nearby and are in the position to install one, DO IT!) and I've had the same system since high school at least and my wardrobe needs have changed a lot in the past few years. Depending on where I am at when I am home, I might need to make some changes. This is probably the closest to what my closet looks like in terms of closet elements: 

Source: The Container Store

But I am loving how this closet looks - matching slim velvet hangers, beautiful shoe storage, matching bins and baskets! 

Source

Next up, if I'm going to be blogging I want to make sure that my desk is a good spot for working. Right now, it's serving as a desk/night table and it's just accumulating a lot of clutter. I want to reduce everything on top of it and inside it to the absolute minimum, the bare necessities: a lamp, a couple of cute notepads, one pencil cup, a laptop, and a bit of inspiration. Ideally, I would have a beautiful pinboard of inspiration above my desk as well! 

Source. Okay, I just love the look of this but there's too much on top for me!

Source. Gorgeous pinboard! And desktop! Plus that glass box is divine. 

Finally, I have two sets of bookshelves in my room. Both are white but one is very tall with six shelves and the other is much shorter with three. I've cleaned both out and re-filled and styled the tall bookshelves  but the fate of the shorter bookcase remains to be seen!

I used this image as inspiration to style my bookshelves. I love adding different colors, textures, and layers to my shelves so I like to add in lots of "extras" and switch up the orientations of objects.

Source. I added a lot of framed pictures to my bookcase this time! Loved the look. 

For the three shelf bookcase, I have been debating adding the shelves to my closet or using them as another bookshelf. Right now I am loving the idea of putting my most beautiful shoes onto the shelves and using it as a display case-storage unit combination! I have a lot of beautiful heels so I wouldn't mind getting to look at the eye candy.

Source. Love, even if I don't add doors! 

Phew, so there's a lot of potential but I am very happy with what I got done this week! Also, I didn't spend the whole week cleaning out my room and closet - I also spent time in my family's basement and cleaning all of my stuff down there which is a whole 'nother ball game! And yet there is still more to be done... this is what happens when you a) procrastinate and b) wear the same size shoe since 5th grade and the same size clothes since the 11th. Yikes.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend! I will be spending my weekend out driving with my boyfriend and potentially helping him pick out a puppy!! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm SO excited!!!! Even if the puppy won't be mine!!!! So many excited exclamation points!!) I promise to take lots of pictures and to do an actual weekend recap on Monday.

xx, Amy

P.S. GroopDealz brought back these necklaces for TODAY ONLY! Get yours for $14.99 with FREE shipping! Coral is sold out, but I love the mint and yellow necklaces! 

Summer Cleaning

Hi everyone! Happy Wednesday!

Source: cococozy.com via my Pinterest

Sorry for being MIA lately - last week I was at home in Illinois returning things, actually going to a shopping mall, and taking care of all those things I can't do at school, and I returned again this week to tackle some major cleaning I needed to do at my house (my parents' house? When should I start calling it that...? Uhhhh....).

I've spent the past two days holed up in my basement sorting through the past four years' worth of college stuff, from old books and notes to all of those glorious twin XL sized goodies.

Okay, maybe not all of the past two days. I went out to lunch with my mom and sister. And taste tested the new ice cream flavored iced coffees from Dunkin Donuts (by the way, the mint chocolate chip is my fave). And went on a pinning spree or three (oops!). I needed inspiration for cleaning, reorganizing, and redecorating!

Check out some of my latest home decor pins here:



Follow me on Pinterest here! Amy H (leopardspot)

Today I am going to be tackling the biggest task of all (one that will probably take me two days, ugh): cleaning my room. Oh my gosh, what a task. I have to purge my room of everything that is outdated (hello, pretty much everything on my bookshelves and all of those old tshirts from high school) and reorganize things to make sense for me now (which means I'm going to have to move my furniture and my shelving in my closet). It's just a large volume of stuff to go through, full of memories and emotions, and it's more difficult to detach myself from those feelings when I'm in my room (as opposed to our cold, dark basement... yuck). But, I've gotta grit my teeth and do it. I'm not sure where to start exactly with the purging process, so I'm enlisting my sister to help keep me focused and motivated. I'm motivating myself by promising myself a trip to my absolute favorite home decor store, Home Goods, and the craft mecca, Hobby Lobby, once I get through with things today and Thursday. Who knows what I might need after I'm done cleaning!

A blog that has been getting me super motivated is I Heart Organizing by Jen Jones. I was originally drawn in by something I found on Pinterest and the combination of her fantastic home and brilliant DIY solutions kept me poring over her posts. Only later did I discover that she lives in Wisconsin and well, I cheese-d out a little bit! See what I did there? I'm so punny. Seriously though, check her blog out. Her ideas are so innovative and I want to do as much as I can with my cleaning and organizing without spending a lot so I will be following in her repurposing footsteps!



Wish me luck! I'll update once things are clean and tidy!

Almost-Spring Cleaning

It's that in-between time of year where the temperature goes from cold to warm and springlike and back again, classes are taking their toll, and the to-do lists are piling up. For me, crazy days of classes combined with hanging out with friends and my boyfriend have been leaving me feel like everything in my life is a mess - especially my room in my apartment!

A major source of my cleaning stress is laundry. It seems like I always have either a ton of laundry to wash or a ton of laundry to put away (and putting it away is ten times more difficult than washing it!). To be honest, I think I just need to do loads throughout the week to make it all manageable. I end up washing the same few items that I wear repeatedly (leggings, my favorite jeans, quarter zip sweatshirts, v-neck tees, layering tanks) and digging through all of my clean laundry just to find it, leaving my room in shambles.

But in reality, perhaps my biggest problem is that I love to shop - and I don't wear nearly as many of my purchases as I should. I decided (on a whim) to stop shopping for Lent. It's something I've noticed several other bloggers are doing as well. My thought was, "If they can do it, why can't I?" and after I decided to commit to it, I keep thinking how great it will be. I will be forcing myself to work with what I have instead of buying new things. I will be taking a good hard look at the items in my closet and getting rid of what I don't love (and returning anything possible!). And another thing that my shopping ban is doing is motivating me to work out more so I can look great in the clothes I have instead of taking the easy way out and buying new items (I have noticed that my clothes are not fitting the way I like anymore - I want to tighten up my exercise and eating habits to get myself to a healthier and happier mental and physical state!). Of course, the final bonus is that there will be extra cash in my wallet now - definitely something I need as a college student!

Put away all of my laundry. Do the laundry that has been piling up. Organize my clothes in my closet so everything is accessible and won't become a mess when I'm in a hurry! Return at least one item in my "returns bin" (especially the returns to the store I work at!).