21 Days Update 3

More like update 2.5 - I skipped my Mega Project assignment for day two, but did my assignments for days 3 & 4 just now. I'd given myself some easy assignments for those.
Day 3's assignment was to find a place to store the stuff I'd held on to for a garage sale when we took a bunch of stuff to donate to Goodwill recently after not being able to sell it to any of my facebook friends. A few of the picture frames I sorted on day one got added to this box. I also have the box of incomplete frames to donate yet. I put both in the storage room & discovered I have at least 1 or 2 more boxes that were earmarked for garage sale already in there! I hope to tackle the storage room soon in my organizing attempts, but I may just hold on to that stuff & hope we can actually have some things for the garage sale next summer.
My day four assignment was to find a new home for all the extra lightbulbs that had randomly accumulated down there. I'd forgotten that I'd already found a plastic crate thing to put them all in, so I just moved them to the furnace room. I think it'll fit on that shelving unit in there once we move the tools to the peg-board.

Last night we opened up Amber's bed so she has a big girl bed. She did great at night! She slept & stayed in there until Paul went in this morning. She doesn't seem to realize that she could just get out yet. *Fingers crossed*
Now it's nap time. She went up there quite willingly & was quiet for a good 15mins before she started talking & moving around. She's been doing that for a good half hour now, but staying in the bed! We moved her video monitor so we could see more of the room in case she did get up, but we can't see all of the bed now & it's driving me nuts that I can't actually see her!
She keeps saying "Uh-oh! I dropped something!" ("something" being her Elmo doll, a binky & now she's actually just saying "something") and not seeming to realize that she can just get up & get whatever it is. She was pretending there's a door on her bed where the crib side used to be, but she can "open" it. *shrug* I prefer this to all over the place!

The Day 3 challenge (aside from part 3 of the Mega Project) was to chose one chore to tackle for the next 18 days as a "life hack." That is, some small change made one day that's meant to help start the next day with a positive outlook. Crystal's example was to make sure the kitchen is clean before bed.
This is supposed to be a small & easy change & the state of our kitchen right now... Well, Idk if that would be small enough for us. Plus, the kitchen is my hubby's domain. He does a pretty good job of keeping up with the dishwasher safe stuff every day, it's just the plethora of sippy cups & other plastic-ware that has to be hand-washed that piles up... and the fact that the kitchen counter "peninsula" is our catch-all area.
I think what I'll commit to, is picking up the toys. I've tried to do this before, and I think especially if I can get Amber more in the habit of actually playing with one set of toys at a time & not just dumping out as many bins as she can & then ignoring all of it.... we could actually accomplish this. I've timed myself, & before I was pregnant, I could consistently get all the toys on the main floor picked up in 10-15 minutes.
Before I timed it, it seemed like such a gargantuan task; especially with the whole two-steps forward, one step backwards progress when Amber is "helping." Even when she's actually on board with helping & trying to do what I ask I have to constantly give her very specific directions and be working alongside her. Most often, though, she loses interest in cleaning up after a while & suddenly whatever I just put away is what she desperately wants to play with at this very moment.
Now that I'm in my third trimester, it's even harder to keep ahead of her when she's doing this. I can't just wander around picking up things like I used to. Every time I bend over or sit on the floor, it's an effort! So, now I have to work on an area and just clean/sort all that's within reach & then move on to the next area. I can clean during nap time, but sometimes the noisy toys disrupt her and then we still have plenty of hours until bedtime for her to undo all that I've done.
At any rate... that's my goal.
I unknowingly made a teeny bit of progress on this yesterday. Not only had I worked on picking up the toys, but as we were getting ready to go do something Amber had pulled out her toy toolbox & I said "We don't need that right now, can you please put it back away? Where does it go?" and she actually put it back where it goes! Yay! Hopefully we can take these small victories & build on them!