Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Battle Plan

We were gone from home for 3 weeks.  With the exception of doing laundry while on vacation, and a brief 48 hours at home, for 3 weeks I didn't cook, do dishes, or clean.

You would think then, that coming home to a clean house with clean laundry would make it easy to jump back into routine.
Instead, as I pick up and clean each day, all I can think is "Why do we have all this stuff?  This is ridiculous!  I shouldn't have to take care of this much!"

I've learned this past week that extremely hot weather is as bad as cold weather - your kids need a place to run, but can't go outside for long stretches at a time.  And my house is crowded.  So while it is hot out, and before the cold comes, we're cleaning.

So here's the battle plan:

Clean the basement and attic storage areas.  Sounds odd, right?  But you can't effectively clean your living space if you have nowhere to store the things you don't need every day.

SUPER clean the bedrooms - yep, we're all going to have to part with more stuff.  But this way, we can empty our closets into a clean room and get rid of things shoved back in those corners we don't need, and organize the things we do need to be more readily available.

Clean out/organize the coat closet/sewing space and the desk.  This will help our living room look less cluttered.

Clean off the bookshelves in the dining room - they collect junk easily.

Clean off the laundry room shelves - pretty sure there's a ton of stuff we can get rid of there!  And a clean laundry room (the back porch area) can make doing laundry so much more enjoyable.

Store the furniture we no longer need - dining room table (post about our new table coming soon), hopefully dining chairs (we also want/need new chairs), changing table, crib and twin bed (the boys will soon have bunk beds, can you believe it?) and possibly a rocking chair.  Though I like the idea of making cushions and a quilt for the rocking chair and using it to snuggle with my kids as I read.  Right now it sits next to the shelves in the dining room and is great for holding laundry baskets of clean clothes that need to go back to the bedrooms.

Clean out the pantry - I'm sure there are foods in there that we won't eat that haven't expired yet, and I know there is expired food we just need to throw out!


My goal is to have this done in the next month (yes I'm giving myself a full month!).  My hope is that by posting it here, I'll feel more inclined to actually get it done!

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