Cleanin' House

Let me tell you a little secret.  We're almost into our third month of marriage and we're still settling into our house.  As in, I'm still moving in.  My old bedroom still has quite a bit of stuff that I have yet to pack up and move over.  Plus, we still haven't put away all of our wedding gifts.  I think a few of my bridal shower gifts are still searching for a permanent home, too.  We have a lot of stuff that doesn't have a home yet and most of it is sitting on our dining room table.  This weekend, however, we decided to take care of an area that was haunting Matt: the garage.  His man-cave-to-be was filled with unfinished furniture, lumber, stuff to give away, tools, and holiday decorations.  It wasn't giving off the vibe he wanted, so he literally pulled EVERYTHING out of the garage.  I wish I had a before picture (like usual, I didn't get to snap a pic of the space before starting), but there was stuff everywhere.  In about a five hour span, he pulled everything out of the garage (except for the stuff in our awesome cabinets) and we worked together to put stuff back into the garage in an orderly fashion.  We still have stuff to recycle (our bin is full), stuff to donate, and stuff to sell, but each of those piles are separated into boxes and don't intrude on the rest of the garage.

Here are the soon-to-be poker table and the bar.  Oh, and I used a prop from our wedding to hide the water heater.  Can you see it hiding in the back?

Contrary to how this picture may look, all of the wood is well organized in this photo!  We have a lot of projects going on right now, including one hiding beneath the blue sheet.

Holiday storage (and extra carpet?!)

There's still some work to be done on these shelves, but we'll get around to it eventually!

Matt also intends to further organize the open storage area (above) as well as our paint/fertilizer/anything-that-would-be-harmful-to-dogs-or-kids storage area.  We keep that stuff (aside from sharp objects like saws and tools) in a single cabinet that we will be able to lock up before we get a dog and/or have kids.  Hubby is thrilled to have the garage finished!  Now he can move his movie and Simpsons posters to the garage man cave.

Then, our office and guest bedroom/craft room walls will be blank and ready for some decoratin'!  We finally agreed about what we will do with our two secondary bedrooms!  The current craft room/guest bedroom will become the designated guest bedroom (complete with my old bed) and the current office will get a complete facelift (because scrapbooking supplies are oh-so-pretty).  We've already started by moving the sofa bed into the garage (we don't intend for it to be used as a bed out there), thanks to the help of my parents.  It took all four of us to move the sofa downstairs and out of the house on Sunday.  The next step is to figure out how we want to arrange the office, which now has my desks in it as well as Matt's desk.  Here's to hoping that we figure out a good configuration for our desks!

Are you currently in the midst of re-purposing rooms? Have you given your husband the go-ahead on a man cave?  What's your best tip for merging households?  Leave a comment and let me know what's up in your house!

Hoovering like a Helicopter

My true colors are coming out today as I wait for our new vacuum to arrive.  So far, I've checked the UPS tracking website, excitedly texted Matt to tell him it's on its way, cleared several areas to vacuum, ran to the window every time I heard a truck anything drive past our house, and trimmed the bushes in the front so that our house number is visible from the street.  Am I overly excited? Yes, but can you blame me?  Matt used this old Kirby for the last two years and although it didn't work well even when he got it, the price was right (a coworker gave it to him for free).

Its new home is the garage until we either put it on Craigslist, sell it to a local vacuum repair/resale place, or donate it to one of our siblings.

As far as choosing our new vacuum, we set a budget of $150-$200. I scoped out Target and gave Matt a list of three vacuums that interested me.  He did all the research to choose the best option for us.  We needed a vacuum that was lightweight, easily turned off the bristles (I intend to use it on our hard floors downstairs), and had a HEPA filter (preferably a washable filter).  In my opinion, the HEPA filter was the most important feature since Matt has asthma and allergies.  Fortunately, most vacuums these days have a HEPA filter.  Our choices included the Hoover WindTunnel Air, the Shark Naviator Lift-Away, and the Shark Navigator Professional.  We chose... the Hoover!

We planned to purchase through target.com (though we could have purchased it in the store just as easily much easier) because we'd already used our 10% registry completion discount in store, but we still had our 10% target.com discount and enough gift cards to cover the whole vacuum (plus two sleeping bags for our upcoming camping trip!).

So, after six phone calls to target.com (don't even get me started!), and a few days of waiting, we received our sexy new Hoover!  Within the first five minutes, it was already set up and I was vacuuming upstairs.

What's your favorite household electronic?  Is it a vacuum, television, KitchenAid Mixer or something else?  Leave a comment; I'd love to know if I'm the only one smitten by a vacuum cleaner (although the KitchenAid is a close second in my book)!