Word of the Year: Simplicity

My 2014 goal is to live a life of Minimalism with less Superfluous, unnecessary, esp. through being more than enough, stuff surrounding me. It's really because I know I spend way more time then I really need to cleaning & reorganizing my "stuff" and what I want to be doing is cleaning less and doing doing the things I love more and that's why I want my word this year to be Simplicity.  I want to live a simplified life and set small goals each month that will get me to 50% of my possessions by the December 31, 2014.  

I plan to donate items and then use Craigslist, and eBay to sell the majority of the items that serve no function or meaning to me and this will allow money to be used towards bills and fixing up my home so it will be ready for the market in 2015 and I can move into a smaller dwelling.

I'm not sure what this year in the end will bring, but I do hope that it entails more time with friends and less time cleaning.  I do also know that it's not going to be an easy journey and that they're will be a lot of work ahead and new habits to form, especially since I have quite a stockpile of Superfluous items spread about my home.  

The Basic Plan:

Start with a Room.
Yep, room by room is the basic start for me and my first room to tackle is My Bedroom mainly because it has the least amount of items in and it's really the room I want to contain as little as possible.

As I've taken time this last week to sort through my room I realize that I have a lot of clothing and jewelry that I really don't wear so my main goal here is to photograph them in the best light, which will include ironing. 

This coming week my plan is to begin the ironing process and then hang all my shirts in one area so that when I'm home and the sun light is shining I can snap out the photos without having to stop. 

Then I will take another day to edit the photos and yet another day to post them on eBay and package them.  Yep, I plan to pre-package everything so that way I have the exact weight of the items and I can easily store them until they sell. 

{10 minute} Fabric Letter DIY

There is nothing like a little color to put a smile on your face and that's just what this little project did.  Yep, I'm smiling one because I completed a DIY project and two I have color on my walls!  It all started with in April when I finally installed my Run Strong gallery wall.  It included a few inspiration quotes and images that revolved around running.  I was was over joyed at how it turned out, but a few weeks ago I was trying to think of a way to add some color since mostly everything is white.  

Well, as I was sorting through a few things in my spare room I came across a few pieces of vintage fabric given to me earlier this year.  I wasn't sure what to do with them so I had them in my spare room and just this last week I knew exactly what I wanted to use one of the fabrics for as soon as I read this fabric wrapped letter DIY.   So the other night I gathered all of my supplied and while watching a movie I began wrapping my R. 

Supplies:

* batting

* fabric 

* scissors 

*staple gun
* cardboard or wood letter

I also came across this Fabric Letter DIY Fabric Art that makes using the cardboard letters a bit more interesting. I will definitely have to try this when I find a coordinating fabric to wrap around the sides.

I first started by wrapping the batting around and stapled it to the letter, though I think using spray adhesive would have worked nicely to.

As you can see it doesn't look very pretty from the backside, but the good thing is that no one will ever notice unless you take it down and show them.  I had already had a command strip Velcro attached to the letter so I made sure not to cover it so I can hang it back on the wall.

 

You can still see where the fabric was to short to go around the thick side of the letter, which is why at some point I will do some coordinating fabric to adhere around the edges so it doesn't look so rough.

 Ah, now isn't that better.

{Weekend Organizer} Bedroom Overhaul

It seems like I've been living in chaos in my bedroom for months and finally Tuesday I managed to begin the process around 8:30pm Tuesday night.  Once I put away my overflowing laundry basket full of clothes I started clearing out of the room a few of the large items & some little things that were lying around the floor.  As spaced cleared I made sure to vacuum.   

On the second photo you can see that I forgot to snap the before photos before removing some of the main chaos.  I tried playing with my 3 lights and was having a hard time getting the photos to turn out without the light glare even after adjusting my camera phone options and the lighting.  Plus, there wasn't any natural light since it was about 9 at night when I took the photos.  However, I'm super excited about how my stuff animal collection photo turned out {no adjustments required}.

Yes, I'm ashamed to admit that I actually slept in this mess.

After taking a few minutes to sort through my boxes of frames I found a few that I liked for the wall and now I finally have hanging art and I feel like a grown up now.  Now that I found the frames it was time to lay them out to determine how I wanted them to look and then made paper templates that I hung on the wall with blue painters tape.  I also finally got around to wrapping my vintage t-shirt in my larger frame, but I'm not a fan of how it looked on the wall.  So my plan b is to use the tee as a pillow case for my living room since the colors are more on par with the scheme.  

After

I really liked where I had the dresser, but thought that I would try it between the windows, but after moving my bed out of the way I forget about the dresser and ended up liking how my TV looked there on top of my previous bed side table. 

My thrift store finds add a unique and feminine touch all of which I love, especially my $6 mcm jewelry box.  The headband, clear plastic turntable & make-up brushes are from Target.  I also have a gold shelf that will make it's way up on the wall above my workout schedule (where the red owl is currently), which will hold my milk-glass vase with the copper watch and two glass canisters with red lids (seen above in my large dresser photo).

 Plus, my dvd player fits perfectly on the bottom shelf and with the open back it allows the cord and back to stay cool.  I can't believe now how much room I have. 

I hung my copper frame on a nail I used to have my orange clock now located in the kitchen for now and at some point I'll figure out where it's real home will be. My mini fridge stayed in the same location, but found a few things on top. I also found some really amazing vintage curtain panels at the Salvation Army last week. Currently, they are hung, but they will be moving to my main windows, but I will need to go back this week to see if the matching pair is still there.

Check out how clear my floor is.  I even have enough space to workout without tripping over anything.   I'm glad to have repurposed my IKEA TV stand as a bedside bench where I can layout my gym clothes on each night. 

I love the lighting and angle of this photo and that it captures a few of my favorite stuffed animals including my beige GUNN bear {back left} that I've had since I was 4.   I can guarantee that this image will end up on one of my walls very soon.

Here are a few shots of my tall bookcase, which includes my thrifted retro table clock, teddy bear, and Japanese oriental dolls.  The large one was actually given to me from my principle when I attended Japanese school back in the early 80s.