On Wednesday, I attempt to organize our home

Now that we're home and settled back in from our incredible honeymoon, life is staring us smack dab in the face. And mostly it's staring at us in the form of stuff. Everywhere. Stuff we want. Stuff we don't want. Stuff we didn't even know we had. Empty boxes that used to house stuff. There's just a lot of stuff. 

And if there's one thing I hate, it's disorganized stuff. 

So the rest of the summer will most likely be devoted to organizing/decorating our home to make it look like our home. I'm trying to do this in baby steps, as it gets FAR TOO OVERWHELMING when I look at the big picture. I started with the basics. 

This week, I started by tackling our hall closet. We got lots of great new towels and sheet sets from the wedding, and it was time to purge the old and bring in the new! I started by taking absolutely everything out and organizing into keep and toss piles. After that, I decided to organize like items with like items -- all towels together, sheets together, miscellaneous items together. I found a small container to put candles, lightbulbs, etc. in, and that really cleaned up the look! Done and done! 

Before (on the left) and After (on the right)

After that, I moved on to the kitchen pantry. It had been a LONG time since I'd really gone through and purged, so the first thing I did was ditch anything past its expiration date. In the same fashion, I took everything out of the pantry, and then I continued by grouping like with like. I didn't snag a before picture, but I'm thrilled with the end result! I can actually SEE everything! 

Oh, don't mind that pink shoe box in there. That just holds our incredibly large candy stash. True story. Because you never know when you're going to need a little candy!

So what's up next? We have a sweet new bookshelf that I'm hoping to get together soon. We're looking at a new chaise lounge couch for our family room and then will be doing some major furniture shifting. We also have a completely full recycling bin (again), and will be doing some cardboard purging once it gets picked up this week. 

It's exciting to see our house coming together as our home. And lucky me, I have the best guy to share it with. 

Do you have any house projects you're working on over the summer?