Another Week Off

Last week was the second of three vacations scheduled that were going to interrupt my summer cleaning lunacy. At least this time, I had the sense to realize I wasn't gonna make it and just happily took the week off from cleaning as well as work and other stuff.

And, I am gonna cut myself another break. We are leaving next week to go visit the Holts - yay!, and Fletch's birthday falls in between, so I am not even going to try to double up this week and get an extra one done. The stuff that is left is far too hard, and I just have too much other stuff to do. But, I am gonna tackle a bathroom. That's gotta count for something.

In the meantime, we had a great time in Taos. The kids were awesome in the car, and it was a great time: hiking, eating, teaching the kids dominoes and card games, and just getting out of this doggone heat! The high temperatures there are the lows in Dallas. I honestly don't know how much longer I can take it. Anyway, here are a few highlights of our trip.

Week 6: The Family Room (of Doom!)

So I'm about half way in, and after cleaning out the toy room, I was hoping to make the next week an "easy" room. But, a couple things have happened. First off, there are no easy rooms left. The small rooms are full of stuff (like the laundry room), and the big rooms, even if they aren't too cluttered, just take a lot of time to cover all the corners.

But, I knew that next week we'd be heading out of town, and it might be nice to open the door and come into a family room that wasn't a giant clutter-bomb. And really, I think the biggest challenge in this room was going to be the dust. Up-high shelves, recessed lighting, a ceiling fan, and a never used fireplace were great places for dust to settle that wouldn't get cleaned up in the regular tidy up sessions that happen every once in a blue moon.

Using gravity to my advantage I started high and worked my way down. Removing and dusting everything from (and including) the top shelves of the display area and sneezed my way down through these shelves. I also sorted the pictures and knick knacks to try to give things amore cohesive look. And, I removed a few of the bigger photos - I am thinking there might be a wall that could use them.

Here's the shelves before and after:

After that, I tackled the recessed lighting, vents, ceiling fan, and fireplace screen. Crazy amounts of dust. Dust elephants were marching through the air on their way to the carpet.

Putting away the things on the tables, and Violet's toy kitchen wasn't too tricky, and that made things look considerably neater. The cabinet on one side of the display area was easy too - as I could move all the games into the newly cleaned toy closet from last week.

The cabinet before and after:

But, then there was the yarn closet. I have a lot of yarn. Compared to some ladies I met while working at the Shabby Sheep for 5 years, maybe not so much. But, I try not to buy things I am not going to use right away, so the fact that there was a cabinet full, plus books, 3 kits of needles and a smattering of knitting bags and gadgets was a little disheartening. I got to it though - sorting things into "special" and "left overs" and moved the books to the craft section of the toy closet. Still, there was a lot in there. Maybe when I am done cleaning, I can spend a year knitting on projects from the yarn I already have - maybe 2 years? I feel guilty to think about it. Maybe the next time I am tempted to buy yarn, I will try to remember what is down there and spend the money on shoes instead.

Since none of those things were really that bad I decided I would take a little time and clean the couches. Our distressed leather couches are older than our marriage. Kevin got them back when we were dating, and they are still some of the best pieces of furniture in the house. They just get a little grimy from time to time. So, I put together my soap solution, and then wiped down each cushion. From there, I unzipped and unhooked all the cushions so that I could get up the dust that was under them.

Imagine my shock - SHOCK! - when it wasn't just an odd cheerio or sock in there, but piles of dirt. Real dirt! Full of dog hair and rocks(?) and clumps of the dirt similar to what you would find in our yard. Not to mention Han Solo's blaster, a wooden snake toy, countless hair bands, almost a dollar in change, and the plastic flag from some toy (although none of us could say which toy for sure). I am truly mortified that Fletch's teacher sat on that couch during a visit not too long ago.

Still, after all that cleaning and dusting, and a fair share of vacuuming the family room is now pretty darn great. I have also noted that someone could come in my front door, and walk through my house to the back door and only be in rooms that are neat and tidy. This must be how normal people live. I am looking forward to it myself.

I am starting to feel a bit like "Extreme Dirt Makeover" but here are the rest of the before and after shots from the family room...

5 Across and 8 Down

No, these aren't the clues for a crossword puzzle. They are the number of tiles width and length of my toy room closet. I realized that there were 40 of these 12 inch (?) tiles under all that mess while I was cleaning out.

By far, this was the hardest room I had cleaned. Hard because there was just sooo much stuff. Also hard because there was a lot of decisions to make: how many of those 30 puzzles do we need to keep? Should we save or garage sale the die-cast Thomas trains? How many bolts of ribbon do I really need? But, 2 garbage bags, a giant garage sale box, and a few keepsakes later, the toy room closet has been tamed.

In the end, the room got broken into 3 zones. First (and by far the biggest) was the kid stuff: by getting rid of all the baby toys there is now room for the puzzles and other boxed games down low. The kids can actually get their own things out now. I also repurposed a set of stacking shelves I found back in Vi's closet during week 2 to hold all the kid craft projects, crayons, popsicle sticks, etc. Second was my craft section. Clearly, this section of the closet SHOULD be the biggest - after all, at one point we had considered making this whole closet a "craft office". Ahhh, maybe down the road. But I had a few tubs and my trusty little sewing dresser. A tub for yarn and a tub for sewing. And, then there was the printing/camera section. By having a place for everything, it became a lot easier to put all the monkeys back in the barrels, and the printer paper back on the shelf.

Oh, and THEN, after the 20 hours I spent (yup -half a work week to clean out that sucker!), I still had the actual room to do: dusting and sweeping and putting away. I didn't find anything valuable, but I did find some creepy things under the couch. The ecosystem under the couch, with it's sticky popsicle wrappers and empty gatorade bottles was apparently the perfect breeding ground for a ginormous species of dust bunny. Perhaps more of a dust jackrabbit. Those things were colossal. But they are all gone now, along with a bunch of old magazines, papers and scraps of junk that had taken over the toy desk.

To celebrate the room being clean, I splurged on a spiffy piece of wall art from Target - see below. (As a side note, I generally feel that if something is not for sale on the aisles of Target it may not actually be worth having. Little did I know this transcended into the category of home decor). The results are a clean and happy room that is pleasant to hang out in, and a closet that any child can enter without risk of bodily harm.

Week 5: The Toy Closet. Oh wait! There's a room to do too.

For the week of the 4th of July, our super awesome summer babysitter had the week off. It seemed like the perfect chance to get the toy room clean and not be in her way. The toy room is actually the newest room of the house. It used to be a screened in porch. Then the last owner turned it into a sunroom - encasing it in sliding glass doors and leaving the lovely astro-turf like carpet as a reminder of its former life. By the time we moved in in 2004, the room was having a bit of trouble. Rain started coming in through the skylight, then the electrical outlets. (I'm sure CPS could have use this room in the "don't" section of childproofing your home). So, in August of 2009 we bit the bullet, tore it down and put up a new lovely room. Since Christmas of that year we have been enjoying the new space. It now has normal windows and doors, its own A/C, and the feature that all visitors ooh and ahh over: a closet that is 6 feet across and 14 feet long. It is so big for a closet, I almost opted to use it as an office.

So, a mere 18 months later, how bad can it be, right? Crazy bad. Like, not get the door open, stepping on Legos, can't find stuff, pit of despair. A shameful closet indeed. And a bit dangerous. It is hard to be the cool place for play dates when safety instructions are required before toys can be accessed. "Be careful of the stapler perched on that shelf, honey, and watch that you don't step on the broken remote controlled spider." Yeah, just not cool.

Sadly, this wasn't the end of it. While the rest of the actual room wasn't nearly as bad as the closet, there was still a messy computer/activity desk and an entertainment center to get through. And the regular dusting, sweeping, etc. Still, I was motivated. We spend a good deal of time in this room, and the thought of actually seeing a flat surface or two had tremendous appeal.

The Blue Thing is BACK!

Trying to make up for Week 3 where I didn't do anything while we were on vacation, for Week 4 I decided to tackle not only the dining room, but also the back hall and adjoining bathroom. This is the part of the house you see when you enter through the garage. Piles of coats and bags and clutter meeting you at the door - sometimes making it hard to get in with armloads of groceries. There is also a little bathroom back there. It has a shower, but we never use it.

Two of my favorite things in the house are in this little alcove: "The Blue Thing" and the window with the pots of african violets. The Blue Thing is a giant pine piece of furniture that was painted bright blue. It reminds me of the walls in the family room of our first house. Sadly, it has been so over piled, you can't even tell there is a piece of furniture in there. As for the violets - they are doing ok, but there is lots of dirt and dead leaves cluttering it up. (And, as Kevin will attest, a curtain that is too small to offer enough privacy from the back yard).

So, cleaning back here was really mostly about putting things away. Now that there is room - out of season coats (pretty much all of them when were going through a month-long 100 degree stretch) can all go in the hall coat closet. Bags and purses were emptied and stored. I even managed to find a dozen pens in one old purse. I can't find a single pen in my entire desk, but there were 12 of 'em hiding out in last fall's handbag? Lots of old mail and junk to toss. I even managed to wash a few of the sports bags that were lost back there.

After a good wipe down, it was so nice in there. It has been a week since I got it clean, and I still catch myself being surprised - in a good way - when I come in from the garage and I don't trip over all the stuff on the way in.

The bath room was kinda the opposite. Not too messy on the surface, but really in need of a good clean. I busted out the rubber gloves and bucket of soap, and got to all the disgusting nooks and crannies. I even bought new fabric to make better drapes - but that'll have to be a project for another day. Still too much other cleaning to do. It is cute fabric though and I am looking forward to a little sewing. In the meantime - I'll just enjoy my little violets.

A Table to Eat on

I thought that cleaning up the dining room would be pretty easy. After all, there isn't a single closet, junk drawer, or shelf in the whole room. Just a table and chairs, matching bench, piano, wine rack, and china cabinet. For kicks, I added in the adjoining front hall that only has a cedar chest and closet.

The closet turned out to be a challenge all it's own. See the previous entry for the crazy things I found in there.

But the dining room was not too bad. Lots of little mementos to figure out what to do with, and an astonishing amount of clutter on the table. Still in only a few hours, I got all the stuff put away, and filled one garbage bag with junk. If I can find the super glue, I need to fix up a few little things that were in a shoe box waiting to be put back together.

The hardest part was the actual cleaning - sticky piano keys, splatter of a spilled milk all over the legs of the table and chairs. I am considering putting up velvet ropes to keep the kids out of here now that it's done.

But I won't. In fact, the opposite has happened. In the week since it has been clean, the family has eaten 3 or 4 meals in there. It's pretty darn nice. No clutter creeping in on us, no toys or junk on the table to distract my already-slow eaters, and nice views of the front trees through the clean windows. I could really get used to this.

Mary Poppins' Bag

Do you remember when Mary Poppins first shows up at the house of Jane and Michael Banks and to get settled in, she unpacks her giant carpet bag? She pulls out all kinds of things you could never imagine would fit into a bag.

Well, I didn't find a tiffany lamp or a hat rack in my front closet, but I did feel a bit like Ms. Poppins as I tried to de-clutter what was seemingly a tiny little front hall coat closet. Underneath the more than 4 dozen gift bags and "nice" shopping bags, wrapping paper, gift boxes, and storage tubs I found a trove of forgotten objects. First off, a ginormous vacuum thing I bought when we moved in this house to clean the tile floors. Didn't work so well with the style of grout we have, and it has been lost in the front closet for probably about 5 years. (Who loses a giant appliance in a closet so small?). Other winners: my beloved college backpack. Missing for a good 4 or 5 years. There is nothing in it, but it did manage to make its way around Europe with me back in 1994, and I was glad to have it back. And, I think my favorite find: a piece of Stolichnaya Christmas Wrapping Paper designed by Diane Von Furstenburg. Clearly saved for the Book and Booze club Christmas party.

Now that I have pared down the gift bags to the top 5, repurposed the empty wrapping paper storage tub for Fletcher's Legos, and put the giant floor vac in the garage sale pile, I feel confident that I will be able to put my hands on that wacky paper when the party comes aroudn this year. As an added bonus, I have actually hung some coats in this closet. Coats - in a coat closet - crazy! Now we're getting somewhere...

"Welcome" Home

While I was cleaning the big window in the dining room, I got sidetracked. First, I cleaned the inside. Then, realizing I could easily stand on the front porch and do the outside, I headed out with my trusty rag and Windex to finish the job.

The good news: the window looked great. The bad news: I took a second to look around out there and noticed that the front porch was in need of a good sweep, and a considerable wash down to clear out years worth of dust, cobwebs and dead bugs. So, even though it wasn't technically on my list of places to clean during my 11 week project, it just seemed like busting out the bucket and cleaner was a necessary evil.

And, I have to say, the place looks SO MUCH BETTER. Now, when people come over, hopefully they will feel "welcome" rather than freaked out that we are some weird creepy family who likes to keep the halloween cobweb decorations up year 'round. I am only cringing a little inside that I didn't make this discovery before we set up a photo booth on that very same front porch for Violet's birthday at the beginning of June. But, too late for that, I am just happy I can answer my front door with a bit of confidence now.