need new furniture and decorating ideas

Take one step by an other and see what you can get. There is no reason to get everything done within a few days. It's nice to make plans, to safe, to look forward to and to enjoy what you decorated. Don't put your house full of stuff if you are not able to clean it up or keep it clean.

Well to keep the house organized and neat you need to have a routine from day one. My rule is always put away something to where it belongs. As soon as you leave a cup on the table, and say oh I will take care of it later, that will be the start of the downfall in keeping the house clean. Clean flat surfaces daily also helps and get the kids to do their own pickup of toys and clothes(at least the 4yr can help now). If you want decorating ideas visit an IKEA or similar store in your area. They have great sets of furniture and can help you see what would work well in your place.

Organized and neat every day with at child is hard to do. I have a 2 year old and he has toys all over the house by the end of the day. I always make a point of making him pick them up at night but I don't even bother during the day unless there is company coming over. A neat solution I have for the toys is I give him a small laundry basket with a belt tied to it. He can pull it from room to room and gather his toys... (I normally help with this) and then he can pull it straight into his room and there I help him put his toys away. This way I make sure they are all going in the right place and he is not so discouraged by the vast amount he has to do. Decorating wise I would say the chalkboard idea is great (if you can keep them exclusively coloring/writing on that area). We found several inexpensive items by going to yard sales for our son's room. He has one of those neat 6 bucket shelves with the colorful buckets in them that we picked up for $5 at a yardsale. Online or at Walmart these things are $25 or higher depending on if there is some sort of cartoon character involved. On the same day we also picked up a free cubby hole type shelf from a family that was moving. The man had used it to put tools in. It has 4 cubbys on the bottom two shelves and then 3 then 2 then ends in 1... looks like a stair case. We brought that home cleaned it up and hubby painted it. Now my son keeps all of his cars and motorcycles on the shelves. He is a real big Cars & Cars2 fan but the bedding set & curtains were way too expensive so instead of that I bought the cheaper Cars blankets that sell for like $10 to $15 (they feel fuzzy) and I put one as a throw on his bed and I hung one as a curtain. I put the sticky no sew tape along the top of the blanket and hung it on a curtain rod. During the day I just gather the blanket up to one side and hook it. It looks like a curtain but thicker and alot cheaper than what Walmart or Disney were selling the real curtains for. I got a plain colored red bedding set for his bed and use the cheap blanket over the top of it. Add a Cars poster to the wall and his room is decorated in the theme that he wants.

I know exactly how you feel. My dining room has wallpaper that is starting to lift from the walls. I'm at a loss right now trying to come up with a new idea to decorate it. I hope your questions drums up a lot of answers since I need help in this area too!