I try to do as much cleaning as possible, but each week it seems I fall further and further behind. Now that the weather has warmed up—not that it got very cool around where I live—I’m itching to do a little bit of spring cleaning. After all, my baby twins are starting to get mobile, and I feel like I need to give the whole house a good once-over before I let them loose.

Enter some lovely blogging ladies to give me some real inspiration. It’s the Spring Cleaning Challenge!

I’ve got the perfect section of my house to start: the kitchen/pantry/mud alcove/laundry section. This whole section of the house is a big mess. Even better, I have envisioned a big makeover for this area over the next month or two. I’ll give you a little preview, so you can see why this little cleaning blog entry is under the “Creative Outlets” section of the blog.

First: Here is an overview of the area. Note the bar with all the junk on top. This is our catch all, especially for paper. Do you know how much paper is produced by three little ones in daycare? I feel like they kill a tree every day with the amount of stuff that comes home—and two of my girls can’t hold a crayon yet! 

Also, note that we aren’t using the breakfast nook for eating, but for sanitizing bottle parts. I am hoping that in the very near future, we will be dropping those bottles like….like a hot potato, I guess. The floor is filthy, and I can’t find anything in the freezer at all. The fridge could use a good scrubbing, and there is too much stuff out on the counters!

I have two pantries in my kitchen, and they are both full to the gills. I think many of you are writhing in jealousy, but one pantry is very shallow (see picture), and the other was intended for a coat closet (it’s right next to the door to the garage), I think, but we use our closet under the stair for that. I know I have expired food in one of the pantry that has the majority of the food, so I’m going to do a big purge.

 In the other pantry there are a lot of samples of formula. Since I didn’t have enough milk for my oldest, I had just assumed that I would need to supplement for the twins. We needed some formula for a while to help them gain some weight, but formula companies love to send formula samples to parents of NICU babies and multiples. Since we had both situations, we got a lot of samples. Now, with only a month left, I think we’re going to be ok with the milk I have stockpiled in the freezer, so we’ll be donating the remaining formula samples. I’m also going to purge any kitchen appliances we haven’t used to clear out some space in there.

The laundry room is really a laundry closet. Nobody in our family is a fan of the location (right in front of the door to the garage. Any laundry left in front of the laundry room is in the way. All. The. Time. I am still having issues keeping up with the laundry of five people.

It’s all clean—I promise! But getting it folded and put away just seems to be beyond me. I need to get this area under control…like now!

Ok, so enough of the before pictures. I want to show a little of my vision of the after. First up, clean and organize, as part of this challenge. The reward: a redo for the whole area! Here are some inspiration pieces…

My Palette: