I didn’t quite realize what I was getting myself into when I decided to do a series on Bonus Cleaning. This means I have to show the world the dirtiest parts of my home. Now everyone thinks my whole home looks like this, wonderful, my Mom will be so proud. Ha!

I really strive to keep a picked up home, I just like the extra motivation this brings to get every nook and cranny organized and cleaned out. Also, as we are transition to not having babies and toddlers there is a lot of stuff I can actually remove from our house. There are some examples in this very cabinet. So here we go….

Before.

OK, lets do this…the scary inside.

This cabinet is crammed full of towels and a few other odds and ends. My boys have not been using this bathroom for over a year (they shower in the Master Bath). Only my little girl takes baths in here so I don’t need quite as many towels as I did when there were 3 kids using the bathtub.

So first I will take everything out.

Now I have towels in 3 piles. A keep pile, a belongs in another bathroom pile and a donate pile. The donate pile is a bunch of towels that we just don’t use because they aren’t our favorite, some of them are newborn towels that are too small now…sniff, sniff.

Now lets see what is left…

I separate into keep and trash piles. All the front row in trash and the back row is keep. I moved the scrubbing bubbles to where I actually keep cleaners. I am going to list the shampoo on our neighborhood Facebook resale group since it is a fancy brand, is this Noodle & Boo Shampoo really worth it? Maybe someone will give me $3 for them. A little money in my pocket would be an extra Bonus for this Bonus Cleaning!

Now I can reorganize the cabinet and it looks so much better. Here is the big reveal….Ta Da!!

Let me know if you do any bonus cleaning. I love seeing before and afters! They are so motivating.

This is an embarrassing mess to show. My excuse is that it is the end of summer clothes season (yes it has still been shorts weather where we live) so this has been used all summer and now it time for the clean out and change over to fall clothes.

I keep most of my daughters clothes in our Master Bedroom. One day I’ll switch them into her room but this is where she mainly gets dressed so it is so much easier to have them in here.

Before:

The biggest mess is the bottom shelf

Let’s get to work. First I am going to remove all the clothes and make a bigger mess and put them into piles. Isn’t that how all projects go? First make a bigger mess, promise your husband it is going to be better in an hour I swear and then it all comes together at the end.

I made piles of outgrown clothes and shoes for my sister who has a 1 year old little girl. Then a pile of summer clothes that may still fit next year to put away in Britton’s closet upstairs.

Then I vacuumed and dusted the bottom shelf and went through her pajama basket on the middle shelf on the left and got rid of a lot of outgrown pajamas. Cleaned up the clothes that were just laying on the top shelf and Voila!

Much better! Now I need to shop for a few fall items. She needs leggings and casual clothes. All her dresses are hanging up. My daughter will only wear leggings so in the winter I mainly have her wear a dress with leggings underneath. I am now feeling much better about her clothing situation and our mornings will go much smoother.

I can tell that a Bonus Cleaning post once a week is going to really help my house. Today’s project was something that is right in our face every day and now looks so good that it makes me want to keep everything around it looking nicer too. Funny how that works!

This hutch is right next to our kitchen table and has become a big dumping ground for craft items, markers, etc. Here is the ugly before picture.

Yes, it is just a wee bit out of control!

I decided to jump in with the items I immediately knew belonged somewhere else. The tissue box went back to the bathroom and the small buckets went to our craft closet (that needs its own post at a much later date).

Then I was looking at 4 pencil boxes. Do I really need 2 boxes full of crayons? No!

Lots of trash and construction paper was next on the list. Paper went to the craft closet and then notice the big Napa coffee table book. It was gifted to us several years ago. I thought we would love it because we are planning a trip to Napa hopefully next year but we haven’t really looked at it, so it is now in the donation pile I am planning to take to Goodwill.

Yuck, the aftermath is not pretty. I cleaned this off really good and…

The beautiful result! Ahh….makes my kitchen feel and look great! Why can’t I keep on top of these things? How do you keep up with your kids crafts?