Project UnPack: A Welcoming Foyer

I work nights, but when I have a couple days in a row off, I sleep at night with the fiancé. So I woke up with lots of daylight still to go. The fiancé wanted our bedroom unpacked first. He made a noticeable dent in the room himself on Tuesday. You can actually see the floor!

You can actually see the floor! Not much of it, but it's a start.

I need a bit more fortitude than I currently possess to attack that room myself, but I was feeling inspired, so I went after the foyer. I don’t know if you remember that section of the disaster from the slideshow, but I’ll remind you. You may want to view this through spread apart fingers.

All those unpacked boxes. And coats. And boxes. And purses. And boxes. Sigh.

But this is just one view; it’s what you see when walking down the hallway. It actually looks worse from when you see it when you first open the door.

This is what our guests saw when they walked into the apartment. We're so sorry!

I unpacked the boxes and hung up the decorations. Once I could actually get to the closet, I put up the Christmas decorations and finally hung all the coats. For about 2.5 hours of hard work, I fully unpacked our foyer. Would you like to see it now?

No more boxes!!! Just an unpacked and welcoming foyer!

I was very proud of myself for hanging that coat rack by myself. My last apartment had carpet for me to balance on the step stool on, and I don’t have great balance.

This is what you see now when you walk into our apartment. You're Welcome!

Now my mom won’t judge us when she comes over. Well, at least she won’t until she looks to her left and sees our bedroom. Wry smile.

Wall art hanging up finally... And still my birthday party decorations. Those will stay though. For now.

When the fiancé came home, he was so surprised. He stopped in the doorway and just looked around for quite a while. I think he was really pleased. Well, the big grin he had on his face stayed big even after he saw the huge pile of boxes he had to take down to the trash, so I know he was really pleased. You can see the silhouette of those boxes against the kitchen door if you look to the right in that photo. The stack was like 6.5 feet tall!

It made me happy to show him that I wasn’t just talking when I said I’d really get our apartment together. I get on him a lot about keeping his word even on small things. I want to be accountable too. We’re building a foundation for marriage here; we’ve got to be on best behavior in the hopes that it will magically become our permanent behavior.

He wants me to tackle our bedroom next. I’m making no promises… Maybe I’ll finally finish our kitchen.