Clean house, clean mind.

For the last few months we have been having disrupted sleep thanks to Miss A so I have found myself spending odd hours at night thinking and planning. One night I got thinking about a command centre for our house. I was looking through Pinterest for ideas but found most were at the front of the house. We come in through our garage directly into the kitchen.
I wanted a place to store the day to day without having to go into another room to find them. In the end I created something that worked for us. I have posted pics on Instagram and Facebook and when completely finished I will add some here. I use it to store the kids bags, my nappy bag. I have a letter holder and key rack for day to day notes and mail. I used 3 photot frames as message birds for the kids. I write notes to remind myself about appointments, things to buy and people to ring.
So far it has worked well I just need to get some more 3M hooks to hang the last photo frame-saves drilling holes! Another night I was thinking about the rooms in our house and how best to use the space. We have a large open plan home with 2 main entertaining areas. The front of the house has an interesting shaped room that very rarely gets used and has slate flooring. The middle part is the combined kitchen/dining/living room. We use this the most as it is the entry point from the garage and also the door to the backyard and to the kids room. This room has lovely dark wooden floors that have been scratched to buggery! When we moved in we saw the damage to the floor but didn't get it fixed as we knew with young kids it would get scratched again. We did put protectors on our furniture but over time it keeps getting marked. We have our TV in the end part of the room and the side is the dining area. The problem we had was the kids didn't use the front room for toys and playing they always bought toys out to where we were. So I decided to move the dining table in the front room and put the toys in the main living area. Even though it means being further away from the kitchen I feel it is going to work better for us. The kids loved the novelty of eating at the "new table" and definitely liked the new toy room.
Now I get to decorate the front room and finally put up some photos. While having my clear out I went through some boxes of keepsakes and found all the photos I had printed over the years plus every professional photo ever taken! Hmm money well spent. I felt so much relaxed about things now knowing I have systems in place to keep us organised and on track. Miss A's therapist on Friday commented on the command centre and said what a clever idea it is. With 3 kids and so much going on in their lives she thought it a great way to keep it all together. I certianly hope we can keep it up now.