No "If Only"

For years, I have struggled with being content with just where God has me.  Constantly living in the "if only" stage.  "If only" we had a bigger house. "If only" we had more money. "If only" Tim had a better job.  The "if only" statements are never ending.  Since I no longer want to be who I once was, I am trying my hardest to make the best of EVERY DETAIL of where God has me right now.  With a family of 5 being in our near future, I am trying desperately to make the best use of all of our space so that we can make our "too small" house work.  

My least favorite room of our house has got to be the "utility room."  Thats what we call it anyway.  That is unless its laundry day, then its the "laundry room," or if the kids ask where Daddy is, we might call it, "Daddy's office" or if we have to go to the bathroom while we are outside and run in it might be the "half bath."  As you can see, its the room with many purposes and is just packed FULL of stuff!  I despise its clutteredness yet we can't get rid of anything in there.  There is a whole wall of perfectly good storage cabinets but its completely full, mostly of cleaning supplies, rags, table clothes, etc.  So, my goal is to be able to completely empty out those cabinets and then have Tim build a platform for my washer and dryer to sit up on and then build new cabinets that would be more designed for the things in the room that just sit on the floor (sewing machine, crocheting stuff, fabrics, patterns, etc).  Anyway, I need to just take a picture of the before utility room and hopefully in the next couple months I'll have a beautiful after to show you. :)  

In the meantime, this is what I have decided to do with my cleaning supplies.  Found the shoe holder on clearance at Lowes and I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out!

I feel like I can better inventory what I need more of and its easily accessible therefore hopefully making it more convenient to deep clean, my least favorite chore.  I also got some stackable drawers that I have put all my rags and dishtowels in.  This also cleans up my under the kitchen sink area (where I did have my dishtowels in a basket) and makes that look a lot nicer too.  I put the stackable drawers under the bottom shelf in the pantry.

I love the changes and am loving my pantry even more now! :) Next step is to find something to do with the tablecloths.  I am thinking hanging them on hangers in the living room closet?  Ideas appreciated! :)

Also, little side praise in this whole project was that in cleaning out the dishtowels under the kitchen sink, I found a HUGE puddle of water and then Tim discovered a huge hole in the side of our garbage disposal.  Though the purchase of a new garbage disposal was not on our list of things we wanted to buy, we are thankful that the problem wasn't worse than it was and no damage was done to the cabinet or anything else!  And, my new garbage disposal is super quiet and can even tackle apple peels and potato peelings. :)