20 Weeks: The Space Between

So you may have noticed that it’s been THREE WEEKS since I last posted an update on my 20 Week Organization Challenge.  The good news is that I’ve given you plenty of evidence to support the fact that I haven’t just been laying around this whole time.

I’ve entered into my third trimester with this baby, and the need to get projects completed has gone into some kind of overdrive.  Poor Rick.  We hammered out the garden and he’s been working hard at the tree, and we’ve been collecting materials for the various other to-do’s this summer. Mostly with the beautiful weather, my head and heart have been outside and I’ve let the indoor projects sit on the back burner.  I’m so grateful to the wise woman who suggested that my updated 20 Week list might have a couple of gaps in it for a reason.

As I sat with my midwives, giving them a run down of all we’ve been up to and all the projects on the list yet to do, they asked what we’ve done to get ready for the baby.  Um…. I looked at Rick.  He grinned.  The crickets chirped.

So, as prescribed, a shift in focus has come about.  Not completely or anything.  Outside is still getting plenty of attention, but working inside is alright too.  We ordered our birth kit, the new car seat, and a grub hoe (see).  I got serious about cleaning out the former office-turned-storage room that will become the new baby’s room.  That of course meant that I had to get the downstairs junk room (let’s just call it the “spare room” for simplicity’s sake) reorganized quite a bit as well.

I had stored craft supplies on the changing table in the spare room, as well as a 4Runner’s cargo area full of stuff for the Goodwill.  The bookcase from the office was going to need to move downstairs to the spare room, the end table Rick was mending needed to move up.  Half my canning supplies are down in the spare room and three chairs we’re trying to sell on Craigslist are still in the nursery, leaving no room for the crib.  The area rugs we used in the office will need to go downstairs too.  These rooms are, in other words, impossible to organize separately.

I’ve shifted and shuffled, and taken that load of junk to the Goodwill.  I painted a wall, set up a bed, and cleaned out boxes that I’ve gone through twenty times since we moved seven years ago but never gotten rid of.  I moved two book shelves, reorganized DVDs and board games, got the end table upstairs and my business library put in order.  I’m nowhere close to done.  And, to be honest, my back hurts.

I’ve enlisted Rick’s help.  He helped me set up the bed, and I’ll need him to tackle the organization of his tools that are in the spare room.  I’ll also need him to carry the remaining furniture pieces from one place to the other.  I knew all this was coming.  The after picture on it will be worth three week’s wait – trust me.