apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I became obsessed with repainting all the trim in our house. I will never forget scooting along the floor (8 months pregnant) to paint the base trim. My husband thought I had lost my mind, but I was a woman on a mission.

I sat on the floor and went through each cupboard and took everything out, washed it again, scrubbed the inside, and methodically organized each one. I wish I had that kind of energy now!

I never really went through a nesting phase, which was probably a bummer. I forced myself to clean before the baby arrived, but it wasn't something I felt compelled to do. I think I was the only one who didn't "nest!"

I decided to start a crazy quilt, by hand. I think I really thought I could finish it too.

I sorted my husband's collection of 300 CDs into genres, took the discs out of the jewel cases, freecycled the cases, and put the discs booklets into organizing binders. Had I had another burst of energy, I would have alphabetized the whole lot and loaded each disc into iTunes, too!

The day before my firstborn was born, I woke up and said to my husband, "We're having a yard sale today." And we did! Made a lot of money, too. Nobody likes to haggle with pregnant ladies. :)

In the last trimester of my second pregnancy, I went on a serious decluttering, purging and re-organizing bender. I re-read Maxwell's book and did an almost full-on home cure. I say "almost" because Will was born a week early. I was woken up by my water breaking. My first thought: Holy cow, my water just broke! My second thought: Dang, I won't get to clean the bedroom closet today.

(For those who like closure, the closet finally got cleaned six months later.)

i know i am ready for the baby when i get the urge to rearrange the living room furniture. no joke. with my first, my husband came home from work and his jaw hit the floor when he saw i had moved the couch, loveseat, piano (in my defense, it has wheels and we do have wood floors!!), etc. alas, with my second one this spring, the same urge! this time i waited for him to get home and directed from a chair. much easier, i must say!

I'm 7.5 months along and in the middle of power sanding and painting a 6 foot wardrobe for my kids' room. I've just recently cleaned out my studio and rearranged my space three times and have grand plans to get rid of all clutter in my house via goodwill and craigslist.org before the end of October.

We were on the road during most of my first pregnancy, and I found myself standing in all sorts of motel bathrooms in tons of towns arranging & re-arranging the free tolietries into pleasing orders. Now I'm 7 months pregnant with #2, and I have to say it's much more gratifying to nest in a house of one's own.

Two weeks before my due date with our second child, we made an offer on a house, had it accepted, and I to cleaned out all the closets in the house and completely staged the house to sell all in one weekend. Phew!

I just bought a labelmaker. Nuf said.

Our lease ended April 30 and our son's due date was May 1. Yep, you do the math. My husband bargained with the baby to "hang in there" until he accomplished the move, while simultaneously trying to keep his pregnant wife to not move so I wouldn't go into labor.

So...needless to say...I nested...in secret so I wouldn't get fussed at. :)

Thus, long story short, I ended up stuck atop our new house's kitchen counters, trying to place some dishes on top of the cabinets...at 5:30 a.m. in the morning out of ear range. great.


Good thing our son came a week late.

It gave mommy time to get down.

Bought a house at eight and a half months pregnant.

And hand stitched/repaired a quilt

I made about a gallon of pico de gallo. WHY?

I removed all the dustjackets from our extensive book collection and arranged the books by color to achieve that once-trendy (?) rainbow look. I was a week away from my due date. My husband came home from work and found me on the floor in the middle of a pile of books and jackets. I just looked up at him and said, "I think I started something I can't finish." But I did finish the project. And then I realized that I hated it.

We just finished going through and decluttering/cleaning our entire house, except the master bedroom. It took us two weeks, because I absolutely refused to let anyone go anywhere not absolutely necessary until it was done. I've also painted most of the rooms, and we tore out a closet in our entryway.

Now we are tackling the master bedroom. I'm in the middle of decluttering and painting (yes, at the same time. No idea why). It is taking every ounce of my husband's superior (at least right now) reasoning skills to keep me from tearing out the carpet in there, even though deep down, I know that six weeks isn't enough time for us to do anything with the floor under it.

i am in the throes of nesting insanity right now! i swept under the boiler (furnace) this morning. i re-decorated our main floor this past week. i'm not done yet...9 more days!

I'm only at 6.5 months, but I've already washed all the spice jars and reorganized them, purged a ton of clothes and other stuff, and can't wait to get the last desk out of the nursery so I can obsessively clean the wood floor before the baby furniture goes in...

man, i wish i had that nesting instinct...i have lots of ideas, but that's as far as it ever goes!

I'm a DIY enthusiast (like almost all here) and yet I didn't have a bit of interest nesting in either of my pregnancies. Not sure exactly why. The bedding I ordered for the first baby was out of stock and wouldn't arrive until a month after the birth, so maybe that let me off the hook. I didn't even paint the walls till she was 2 months old.

We had only been in our house we built for a year and a half, so there were plenty of projects to finish, too. The only thing I remember insisting on was that the wide plank floors HAD to be stained and sealed BEFORE the baby came, or the baby would be staining them in a way we might not want. So at 3 weeks left, we stayed with family across town and had the floors done. It's the laziest way I've done a project yet.

Bought a house, moved in 2 months before the baby came. I worked in real estate for years and never understood why all these pregnant purchasers could be bothered moving house at such a time in their lives. But I sure understand it now. When my baby was 3 months old I got the clean out bug and decluttered my house from top to bottom and had a fantastic garage sale. Wish I could get that bug back again!

Love all the comments!
I'm about 3 weeks from my due date now and a couple months ago I had a burst of energy and started decluttering like mad. However, it has since disappated and I'm forcing myself to slowly work through some projects. I really need to clean out my fridge/freezer so I can get some freezer meals in there. Oh and the nursery isn't done yet either. LOL With my first I had it ALL done before I hit 8 months.

With my first, I washed all of her clothing and linens in baby detergent. Then I sorted them all and folded them neatly into lovely little piles in the changing table. Then I realized that the horrible little tags would irritate her perfectly delicate skin. So I cut out all the tags. Then washed everything again. Then folded it again. Then put it all away again.

In retrospect, with my second I realized that this removal of tags was a little sort sighted, because I now had to guess what size everything was.

My second child was due Dec. 4th and I had ALL the Christmas cards written, addressed and stamped and waiting in stacks by the front door by Nov. 15th. I couldn't help myself I had to do it. I also made a spreadsheet with all of the contact information including address and phone number and whether the person/family would get the 'deluxe' or regular card.

I'm expecting our third in seven weeks and nothing really pressing has hit me yet. Although, I'm really trying to make several meals worth of every dinner so that I have at least one meal to put in the freezer. Perhaps once the older kids start school and I've got all that organized I'll start realizing that the baseboards need to be dusted or some such nonsense.

At 36 weeks I was told not to go to work by doctors so I took advantage of the day off and went to the DMV to renew my drivers license. Um, I was admitted to hospital bedrest the next day and delivered 3 days later.

I seriously felt this overwhelming sense that if I didn't renew my drivers license then I was going to get arrested.

baby #1, i took all the stuffing out of the six couch cushions (three seat cushions, three back cushions) so i could wash them in the washing machine, even though i knew i wasn't supposed to. (turned out great.)

baby #2, i called a post-partum doula i know and asked her if she would be my "pre-partum doula" and come over and clean with me once a week. i didn't want a cleaning service, because i wanted a piece of the action, but with a toddler around i knew i also needed help if i was going to accomplish everything i wanted to.

With my second pregnancy we moved into a new house and our back yard had "gone to the dogs" literally. All gravel and poo, so I gutted and re-landscaped the whole thing with grass, flowerbeds and hardscaping. I was a little ridiculous to be out there every weekend while being 6 months pregnant but I wanted a place for out kids to play that wasn't filled with doggie landmines. I'm glad we did it but realize now that it was a little crazy.

I definitely got into more cleaning and organizing but what is funny is I think about my husband more on this topic - because men sometimes do nest too! One day I left for work knowing he and my brother-in-law were going to replace the bathtub in our 1920's house. I came back home at the end of the day to find the ENTIRE bathroom ripped out. That was a hard time with me w/o a bathroom in my third trimester! BUT we did have a nice new bathroom for when baby came.

Thank you, this is great fun !

I'm three months pregnant with my first, and we're moving in our own house a week from today, so my nesting instincts are pretty much limited to packing everything neatly in moving boxes.

I have a (secret) document on my computer where all the rooms are designed, plans are drawn, decorations are listed, and so on...

But tight now, in between boxes, I'm playing Worlds of Warcraft. At 27, that's probably laughable, but then again, when you get 6 visits a day from poeple who may or may not rent your appartment after you, fighting bad guys is a question of mental sanity. Or not.

Love these stories. My husband has told the story of my nesting of 23 years ago so many times....we were living in a lovely old two-story apartment. I ripped out all the carpeting, the floors were gorgeous and only needed waxing--it was only three rooms. Then I painted two bedrooms and bathrooms. THEN I called the landlord and told her. She was okay once she saw it. I can't imagine doing all that by myself now! My 22 year old daughter would have to help me a lot!

These are hysterical. I am 7 months pregnant but for the past month, I have been allotting every weekend to some cleaning task. My planner has something written on it for every saturday or sunday "clean out the freezer", "paint the trim", "organize storage space". I hate procrastination in general, but i know this is a bit insane.

Last week, my husband and i had this discussion:

him: "we are going to have to get that storage space organized before the baby comes"

me: (matter of factly) "oh, i have that scheduled for 2 weekends from now".

him: "wait, you scheduled cleaning the storage space, like in your planner?"

me: "yes. next weekend we are cleaning behind the stove"

im glad i am not the only crazy pregnant woman out there. this post actually made me feel a lot better.

herland, my husband was a nester, too. During the end of my second pregnancy, he re-drywalled two ceilings in our house, painted our kitchen (including a blackboard wall, which I'd always wanted) and our upstairs/downstairs hallway, installed new bookshelves, and totally cleaned the basement (a truly heroic undertaking). It was pretty incredible to witness.

I am loving reading all of these comments!

Well, I had three weeks to go, and all of a sudden I just had to buy groceries. My plan was to make meals and freeze them for after the baby came. I bought about $300 worth of ingredients. While I was standing in line, I felt some twinges in my back and belly. Needless to say, the next day my water broke and the baby came incredibly fast. I never did make the meals, since we ended up going back into the hospital/nicu.

I also cleaned and scrubbed out our big rolling trash can. I don't know why, I just felt this need for everything to be clean.

So we were at one day shy of 39 weeks and duh, my first child was still going to be at least two or three weeks. But I still felt compelled to scrub the corners of the kitchen and the bathroom. With a toothbrush.

The dentist's assisstant called to schedule my 6 month cleaning. "I'm having a baby!" I squeaked. "Right now?" she asked. I calmed down. "Not now. But soon!" So I scheduled an appointment for the next week.

Needless to say, the baby was there the next morning. I didn't get my teeth cleaned for almost a year.

I didn't nest. Felt like a rip-off, too, as I'd been looking forward to a clean house! :)

God you make me feel so guilty!
http://www.notyourgoddess.blogspot.com/

I also scheduled cleaning and organizing tasks every weekend from about 12 weeks prior until my due date. I only got through half of them because my daughter was born 5 weeks early. We'd been using the nursery as a storage room and had the crib (still in pieces), but nothing else. We did some frantic nesting during the 5 days she was in the NICU. Five months later, I'm still nesting.

I arranged & rearranged my daughter's nursery till the wee hours of the night the day she was due. I, finally, went to bed because I was in serious pain because I'd pulled a muscle in my back scooting furniture around in every imaginable combination. I just couldn't understand why my "pulled muscle" would hurt like the dickens for a few minutes and then the pain would resolve...then come back.
It took me an hour of trying to get comfortable in bed & being so mad at myself for "pulling a muscle" so late in my pregancy when I was already so uncomfortable, to realize...duh. (obviously my first child/pregnancy!)

I didn't really nest with my first child but I sure did with this one! There were about 15 major items on my list including putting a hardwood floor in our major play room (I was tired of pulling playdough out of the carpet). Don't worry - my hubby was nice enough to put in a floor and NOT let me help.

Otherwise, I seem to be average per previoius comments...cleaning, organizing, getting rid of tons of old stuff (having a garage sale this weekend).

Thankfully I'm healthy at 32 weeks, because I still have three more major day projects left. (Cleaning out the bathrooms, getting rid of all old products, etc, and re-organizing kitchen cabinets and scrubbing the walls).

my mom has the worst one. my parents live on 14 acres. when my mom was pregnant with her 2nd baby, my dad had to replace a fence on the property. my mom went to help (i can only assume my dad didn't tell her no, because no one really tells her no!). anyway, after a long day of fence repair, she (surprise!) started early labor - at 5 1/2 months!! needless to say she spent the next 3 months on bedrest. by the time she had me (her 3rd), i think she had learned her lesson. i was 10 days late!

These are wonderful stories!

I'm 15 weeks along now, and have grand plans for the next month, mostly involving throwing away about 1/2 of our belongings. We had the floors refinished 2 weeks ago, and we're still putting everything back... which makes it a great time to sort out what we want to keep, I think.

I haven't felt this huge urge to purge before, and I find it very exciting! (Wish I could have a stoop sale. I'm not sure what my building would say if I set up outside...)

My husband is the nester. We just started our third trimester and he's already put in track lighting; hung a chandelier; rearranged the basement (twice!); turned a wall into a magnetic chalkboard; installed a tv and computer in our bedroom and is now planning to buy, make and hang theatre curtains (our guest room is becoming a nursery so our sun room is about to become a guest room). He also bought new cabinets for the bathroom and is planning to hang those. He plans on painting the nursery with the same magnetic paint.

My contributions: organizing all of our digital photos and obsessing over nursery tours and etsy.

Mind you, the nursery is a pile of boxes... I'm thinking there will be a weekend task sheet in my future...

Y'all are so funny! My nesting is usually limited to a hermitage. Just avoiding people as much as possible for the last week or two of the pregnancy.

I gave away our cats to my parents and our dog to my husband's parents. I consider myself an animal lover, but when I was at the end of my pregnancy, I couldn't stand to see animal hair EVERYWHERE!