I’ve crammed a lot of cleaning and organising into the last few weeks – partly due to the nesting instinct and partly because I’m sick of things being messy and disorganized. I never really ‘finished’the house after we moved in, but I’m making up for it now. I want most of the cleaning and moving furniture etc done by the end of October. I’ll have more antenatal appointments and just be a lot bigger during November, and I’m also doing NaNoWriMo again (a 50,000 word novel writing challenge). And it’ll be nice to have everything sorted before Christmas.

This is everything I’ve done so far:

1. Paint dining windowsill. It was all grotty and peeling before, and I couldn’t clean it without the paint chipping off. So I stripped, sanded, and repainted it.

2. Clean window above sink (I planned to paint this windowsill too, but it took a week to do the first one so I’m unmotivated)

3. Clean under sink, organise cleaning products

4. Wash curtains over sink, re hang curtain rail

5. Reseal behind sink. The caulking was going black and peeling away, so I removed it and used a clear silicone to seal it again.

6. Move table to spare room. We had two tables crammed into the kitchen, as you can see below, so I recently moved the square table to use a desk/craft table in our office.

7. Assemble kitchen cabinets. We bought some Kaboodle kitchen cabinets from Bunnings – they ended up costing three times as much as I thought, including the benchtop, but they look amazing and they’re a much better use of space than the old shelving unit we had for crockery etc. The benchtop is only a laminate, but it’s a beautiful finish.

8. Wash couch covers, throws & cushions. Because these all end up on the floor 😛

9. Wash mattress protector & blanket

10. Reseal shower (again the caulking was peeling away – even though the shower was installed not long before we moved in, it wasn’t done properly. They forgot to seal one side of the interior, so water seeped under the door and caused the seal on the outside to deteriorate).

11. Adding chalkboard paint to pantry doors.

And now it’s done, so we can write shopping lists put up quotes from Black Books.

12. Repainting kiddie chairs (finished except for the varnish). We were given these two small wooden chairs from my husband’s family, one blue and one green. Both had chipped paint and I wasn’t a huge fan of the colours anyway. So I sanded them back and repainted them a pretty light yellow. (Dulux Lemon Delicious). I bought a sealer today, on yet another trip to Bunnings, to ensure a lasting finish. My only issue is keeping them away from the kids long enough to put on enough coats!

13. Filing tax return – I did this for my husband because he hates doing them.

14. Hang curtains in Darcy’s room. We needed new ones so my mother-in-law gave us some covered in trucks and diggers and other things Darcy is quite fond of 😛

15. Putting up artwork/inspiration boards in the spare room.

16. Cleaning & organising storage units in living area

17. Cleaning out the boys’ clothes drawers – getting rid of off-season items and shuffling around the sizes, and making a list of anything they still need for summer. My boys were born in opposite seasons, so I haven’t been able to use all of the eldest child’s clothes for the younger one.

18. A lot of general deep cleaning, removing cobwebs, doing windows & sills, dusting, removing drawings from the walls, cleaning the bathroom, etc

And this is what I have left to do:

1. Clear desk (living area)

2. Move boxes from Darcy’s room. doesn’t make for a cute boys’ room like this, does it?!

3. Clean Darcy’s room

4. Install window gate

5. Organise craft in spare room (I run a small craft store on Etsy and need to get my stock sorted)

6. Organise desk

7. Organise paperwork

8. Cull storage crates. These contain all our random stuff like craft supplies, sewing, paint, old notebooks, laptops, about three hundred power cords, paperwork, tax stuff……just general junk. I really want this cut down by at least half, and have everything organised and labelled properly. So much of it we just never use.

9. Photograph craft products & add listings to Etsy

10. Patch paint over drawings/marks on walls

11. Paint wooden chest, for use as a toy box

12. Get my iPhone screen repaired! It shattered on one side the other day (Darcy accidentally pulled the power cord while it was streaming Netflix to the TV, and it hit the edge of our TV cabinet, which is toughened glass.) It’s in a heavy-duty protective case at the moment, to avoid any further damage, but the case is designed to be waterproof and has clear coverings over the camera – which get really dirty and smudged all the time and my photos aren’t as clear as usual.

I’ve got other things in the back of my mind, too – lots of painting projects, and actually decorating. I’m at the ugly end of home improvement,  but I am *so close* to finishing this list, and even getting it done on time (before the end of the month) which is awesome. Then I get to work on the fun things, like finding new curtains and artwork and framing photos, getting out the baby clothes, and prepping for Christmas!!! Which I’m ridiculously excited about.

Over to you – did you make massive to-do lists when you were pregnant? Or have things you need to do before Christmas?