Spring is Here! – Keeping Up With the Allens

Spring is really in the air here in Seattle. The cherry blossoms already peaked, the daffodils have come and mostly gone and now it’s tulip time! The weather is showing signs that it’s starting to turn into “spring” – which means still chilly temperatures and a lot of rain with a few nice days interspersed throughout the week. I’ve been loving watching the buds quickly turn into leaves and less so the weeds starting to multiply on our gravel driveway. Time to get out my gardening gloves, I guess!

In any case, it is truly spring here. Ben celebrated his first Easter {I don’t think we even acknowledged it last year?!} this year. It was fun to use Easter as an opportunity to welcome spring, eat some ham and freshen up some of his toys.

{No candy in this Easter basket! A cuddly lamb, some books, dot markers and sidewalk chalk for our tot this year.}

We’ve gotten the spring cleaning bug in more of an organizational and out with the old in with the new kind of a way this season.

{Traded in my “Let it Snow” mug for this one! And then we tossed out our sub-par coffee maker and traded it in for a less fancy, better quality producing Bonativa coffee maker.}

I did a major pantry overhaul and completely re-arranged the shelving in our black hole closet under the stairs. It’s amazing how making a few tiny adjustments can go so far! I also re-arranged just one shelf in my baking cabinet and it has made it so much more organized and easy to find things {I already had the containers on the bottom two shelves}. Now we just need to re-design Ben’s closet to make room for his sister. It’s so overwhelming even contemplating how we’re going to hold another child’s wardrobe in our little house!

Some of my favorite organizational things have been little clear organizational bins for food {you can see them sort of up on the third shelf above}, along with adding baskets and a big canned organizational system. My absolute favorite change, though, was being able to stand up my baking sheets vertically instead of stacking them on top of each other. These changes have made a world of a difference in our house!

There’s always a never-ending list of things to do, especially as the seasons change, and we are happy to welcome the warmer weather, birds chirping and the thought of sunshine. Oh, and thank goodness the window washers come this week!