Cleaning=Cleansing

On Sunday I got up feeling frustrated.  Like I have written before, Sunday's are hard.  I didn't want this Sunday to be a laying around day thinking too much, so Briley and I woke up and got to work!! 

Every since we found out Hadley was a girl I was ecstatic because I knew we would already have so much for her.  Briley has way too many clothes for as little as she is but I was excited to know we could use them all again.  Of course God's plan is much greater than ours, and so now that Hadley is with him I needed to clean.

And I mean CLEAN!  I put on satellite TV music and got to work.  What I love is that as soon as I turned it on, Sara Evan's song, A little bit stronger, came on.  I knew it was God giving me strength to do this.  Thank goodness for DVR because I recorded it and played it several times during my cleaning spree to help get me through.

I started in Briley's closet.  We had already packed away all of her newborn-6 month and 6-12 month clothes in bins.  But I still had all of her 12-18 month clothes in her closet and drawers and she has WAY outgrown all of that.  I packed those away in bins and put them in the garage for Daniel to put in the attic.  Briley's closet also had a lot of "baby" items still in it.  Things like extra mattress pads, boppy covers, hooter hiders, newborn chew toys, pacifiers not even opened, etc.  When I have gone in her closet the past 3 weeks it is SO painful to see these things.  I thought I was going to be using these again soon...

So instead of letting myself dwell in the pain, God asked me to do something about it.  Pack it up and put it in the attic for a later date! :)  It was painful and yet healing at the same time.  I loved looking at the things we used with Briley when she was little and it reminded me of how blessed we are.  

Briley is our healthy sweet beautiful daughter we get to see grow up here.  Hadley is our healthy sweet beautiful daughter that is in absolute paradise with Jesus.  

I also organized Briley's bow drawer and put away headbands and small clips that she has way too much hair for now.  I wish I had a before picture of the bow drawer.  It was AWFUL.  There was several containers to put bows in but they were all stuffed and not in any order.  It was not an easy task to find what you need in there!!

After....

 

All of her clips are together, rubber bands, and then bows are sorted by color and the last group of bows is all holiday ones.  My goal is to keep it like this!!!  It has been so easy finding her bows now that it is like this.  

I bet you are wondering where the pink bows are?

I decided they needed their own spot on the bow holder.  Plus it matches her room :)

After I had cleaned out most of her closet most of her bins were free for more things.  I decided to put shoes and swimsuit gear in 2 of them and then left the others for her toys.  I showed Briley how we were going to put all of her coloring books and colors in one, her baby dolls and their accessories in another, playdoh, dress-up clothes, etc.   She loved it!!  She kept going back to her closet to say "play, play".  I love it too because those things have an official place now!!

Of course not all of her toys fit in the closet and we have most of them in our fireman/playroom/office.  When Daniel and I first moved in we made it our office with all of his fireman memorabilia.  Well of course when little miss was born she and her TOYS took over.  The plan was that Briley would move into this room and Hadley would get her room.  I told Daniel that I still needed to do something with that room.  I couldn't leave things the way they were and keep thinking Briley should be in this room and Hadley in Briley's old room.  So we have decided to OFFICIALLY make it strictly a playroom.  We are still going to move the computer to our room (Daniel is getting close to finishing the desk) and move all the fireman things out.  I told Daniel in our next house we will make sure we have a room that is just for him and all of his fireman stuff :)  I called my best friend Tracy who is an AMAZING and TALENTED and CREATIVE artist.  Daniel and I decided that we wanted a mural on one wall and needed her help.  Last year for Briley's birthday, Tracy made her a felt playhouse that goes over a card table...

On the other side of the house is a school.  We loved it and have made it the idea for the mural we want to go on the wall.  Tracy went to work and drew up a sketch for us.  Can you believe she drew this and colored it in one day??  Would have taken me MUCH longer.  

Inside the tree leaves is an "H" and "B" and on the trunk is "M+D" in a heart :)

I can't wait to have Tracy get started on this and get Briley's playroom all fixed up.  We are going to make a trip to IKEA for storage and she is going to get a kitchen set for her birthday...so needless to say I think she will LOVE her new playroom.

In the future we know it will become Briley's room or maybe another baby's room but for right now, this is what is best for our family and for our healing.

So with my time off I'm going to enjoy my family and do a lot of cleaning=cleansing.

"Create me in a clean heart, Oh God; and renew a steadfast spirit within me". -Psalm 51:10

Hope your week is treating you well!!

In Christ's Love,