humble abode

Here are the updated pictures from staging the house thus far:  The paint needs touching up (pretty much everywhere).  Our bedroom is virtually the same but less cluttered because our realtor actually liked the blue color (yes!).  The kitchen has neutral towels that I'll hang for staging, not the maroon and orange you see in the picture.

Much less clutter, other than our red teakettle and coffee pot the kitchen is pretty clean.  And if you haven't been here, this is most of it, which is reason #1 for why I want to move.  I can't wait to have enough cabinets to store my things and enough counter space to cook a proper meal!  Note that there is another tragic floral "arrangement" on the shelves.  GROSS! 

The living room is where the most dramatic changes have occurred.  The orange couch is gone and this much smaller khaki one is in it's place.  The most fun thing about that chair is that it's a super comfy recliner.  The ottoman is also new and has storage space for our much needed blankets.  We also lost our mismatched window shades in favor of the sheer curtains.  Other than the obvious much more extra room because of the furniture, I could kick myself for not doing the windows sooner, it makes a world of difference in the room.

View from another angle.  We pushed the TV back and have the two GINORMOUS tower speakers now in storage.  Also in storage:  the Wii and the XBox, which allowed for far fewer wires and the entertainment unit to be pushed much further back into the wall. 

The lighting in the second bedroom was terrible this afternoon but you can get the gist.  This room used to be a catch all for most of the things we didn't use on a daily basis.  The "bed" is actually a futon that I put on risers and dressed up in this new neutral bedding.  We scooted the desk from another wall, where it didn't allow for easy flow into the bathroom and now the room serves as a bedroom/office.  I still use this room to get ready in every morning since I am up much earlier than Adam.  I love this room now, although, I can't lie to you and tell you I don't miss the bookcase.  That will be one of the first things I want to purchase again when we move.

So overall, you can kind of see from the below pictures that I posted of the things we got rid of on Craigslist just how much more "things" we had lurking around.  I wish I could say we decluttered everything but quite a bit of it is sitting in storage a mile from the condo.  Through this process, we did simplify our lives a great deal!  Adam is making our bed every day and I am forcing myself to leave the house each day and night as though we might have a showing coming up.  It's been difficult but good habits to be in since we have no idea how long the place could sit on the market.  It's also nice to come home to a rather immaculate house every day.  One of my pet peeves about this place is that there is very little storage space so we had big pieces from IKEA all over the place with just stuff in them.  Getting all of that out of here gives me hope for having a larger space in the future and being able to live a more organized life.

If we end up doing the kitchen backsplash this weekend as tentatively planned, I will definitely post pictures next week.