Day 54, 55 & 56: Blah, boring, blah

Unfortunately another boring post. I have had hurried and uneventful cleaning, waaaa!  Day 54 I washed our kitchen seat cushions and cleaned up after dinner because JW was out.   Day 55 I wiped some counters down and today Day 56 is not over but I woke up very early and swept the kitchen, cleaned our dining tables, rearranged Ely's red dining table, unloaded the dishwasher and cleaned up after making waffles….all before 8am.  And now I am on my way to strip our beds to wash the sheets! Oh and I cleaned the potty in Sunday school about 5 times.  Whew!  I hope this coming week I will finally make time to mop my kitchen floors!!! And do some thrilling cleaning for a change

Day 53: Kitchen sweep

I know this is totally boring but perseverance often is super extremely boring and annoying.  I had  a full day that began at exactly 5 am, praise God for that! Wouldn’t you think that waking up at 5am would give me lots of cleaning time?? Nope. I worked out early, got Ely ready for Bible study then JW and I had a date to go to Winter Jam. When we got home (way after my new bedtime) I swept the kitchen. Isn't that so faithful?  I have wanted to mop my floors since Monday but have been prevented…so I swept again in hopes of mopping on Day 54. I will just have to wait and see.

Day 52: Patio, part 2 and then some

So this  morning when I stepped outside to see our patio, it was littered in leaves again! Ha! Oh well, but look how clean our bubble bucket is.

The stroller is totally baby doll worthy now. (Though not a great picture)

I had some help with the picnic table from Ely and her girlfriend Coco. Little girls cannot resist cleaning!

I also gave some considerable TLC to our window seats. My window seats were previously extremely cluttered with all my teaching materials for Ely's alphabet lessons. I sorted, chunked and organized it all.  What you see here are highly organized and streamlined window seats. Really. Seriously. This is neat. It's my downstairs home office  

Count the bags on this seat…yeah baby, just one!!

And perhaps my proudest DEcluttering today, I got a 3 drawer mobile organizer for the crazy overflow from Ely's educational materials. Maybe I can find things easier now.

Day 51: Patio cleaning, part 1

It was nearly 80 degrees in Cedar Park today. Praise the Lord!  With weather like this, it is a sin to stay indoors. Ely and I were playing when I noticed how gross all her outdoor toys are. The patio was  also in poor shape, littered with leaves and sand. And the furniture arrangement…a tragedy.  The weather motivated me to clean but also the fact that we have 2 gorgeous girlies coming over tomorrow and they happen to love playing with Ely outside!!  Who can play in such filth? Well actually they totally can but I need to clean!!

Ely was trying to blow bubbles with her non spill bubble bucket we bought last summer but it wasn’t working. I was disgusted when I opened it and found a mysterious mixture of brown rain water and bubble solution. Eeeeeww!  Tomorrow it will be as clean as new. I immediately dumped out the brown water but you can see a little grime on the blue bucket base.

The concrete pad I call a patio was covered in leaves and sand. I swept it all onto the grass. Don’t tell JW. I'm not sure if that’s good for the grass.

Ely's little picnic table is also filthy and will be cleaned tomorrow.

This poor little baby stroller…probably should have never been let outdoors but tomorrow it will once again be clean enough for a baby doll.  Can you tell I'm a sucker for extreme makeovers?

And here is my gorgeous girl delighting herself in beating Foofa as hard as she can.

And here is the after shot of the patio. Although I moved the slide OFF the concrete after I noticed a warning on it saying: Never place on hard surfaces. Oops. After a fun and soapy cleaning session tomorrow morning, we will be ready for our playdate!

Day 49, 50 & 51: Uneventful cleaning…

Day 49: I swept the dining room, whoop- dee-doo.

Day 50:  Was actually interesting but not for cleaning purposes. I fasted from food all day so I struggled all day with fatigue and low blood sugar. So early in the day at Sunday school I made sure to be the one to sweep and wipe the bathroom down after class was out. Isn't that convenient?  I also cleaned my heart out to God during my fast

Day 51: If yesterday I fasted, today I gorged. I really ate too much food, bleh.  I ate and and ate just out of compulsion!  Worse yet, I made a really yummy corn salsa and accidentally put 6 cloves of raw garlic in it!  I ate a lot of it then realized that eating that much raw garlic feels like pouring cement into my stomach. Part of why I ate too  much is because I kept trying to eat something to get rid of the awful taste on my tongue. Nothing works, not Jello, not chocolate, not dinner, not ice cream, not even brushing.

I felt yucky all day and did not feel like making a big cleaning production. Fortunately JW asked for a night off of cleaning up the kitchen so once again, saved by Provision. I cleaned everything up and had a scraping session with the stovetop. I used  a kitchen knife (don’t try this at home) because JW forgot to buy me a razor at Home Depot. He is not happy with me for using our kitchen knife to clean. Maybe now he will remember to buy my razor.  Our kitchen is sparkly…until morning.  Tomorrow I will read my Idiot book for inspiration because yet again it has left me high and dry.

Day 48: Closet Purification

Yesterday I needed a fresh dose of motivation for my cleaning craze, so I read my Idiot book.  There is a page that offered some tips on cleaning out  a clothing closet. My closet is sometimes my prayer refuge and other times my dirty laundry disposal. It is out of control. And if it is messy, I do not feel like praying in there AND I never know what to wear!! Both situations are unacceptable to my life.  Here is a before picture.

The book recommends taking EVERYTHING out of your closet. I am an extreme kind of girl so that sounded like a fabulous idea. It was important for me to start this project early in the day so that I had all day to work through the piles. I didn’t want JW to come home to the disaster but it happened anyway.  I took all the clothes out on this back wall and here is the bare result. Once it was empty I vacuumed and…drumroll please…cleaned the baseboards. I love cleaning baseboards. Does that make me weird?

Here are the piles. Both my Quinceañera dress an my wedding dress are among the rubble. 

Because I have become a Dust Hater, I sprayed a rag with all purpose cleaner and cleaned my shelf.

The book recommended sorting everything in your closet in 3 piles: Keep, Toss and Give Away. I skipped the Toss pile and gathered about 40 garments to give to Goodwill.  The author also recommended sorting clothes according to use. For example, office clothes, work out clothes, etc.  But I am obsessed with rainbows….

The author also recommended tossing out your shoe boxes and getting a shoe rack so shoes can dry more thoroughly. This step is hard for me because I love collecting and repurposing boxes but I cannot hoard 10 shoe boxes!   But fortunately I have a 3 tier shelf inside my closet that I was previously using for miscellaneous things. It is now my shoe rack/t shirt shelf.  Notice all the empty hangers above!  Just last week I was frustrated because I had run out of hangers, now my cup runneth over!

I even found room for towel storage and purses with those bulky shoe boxes out of there. Don’t worry they will get recycled .

I am very excited about my now gorgeous closet. Now that I have a better idea of what clothes I have (and where they are) I am going to spend some time tomorrow putting outfits together so I don’t fret every time I have to get dressed. Fun!

Day 47: New cleaner!

Isn't it cute? It smells lovely. It is made with grapefruit seed and orange peel and I got it because it was the first orange cleaner that didn’t contain limonene, which may be toxic.  I sprayed my shower stall with it, let it sit for about 10 minutes then scrubbed it off with water. I think it did a pretty good job. I want to clean our bathroom counters with it too but had no time today because Ely and I were blessed with some company by Frances, Baby Z and Hattie. Ely didn’t know her grandmother would be stopping by for a visit. I have never seen that child so happy.

Since my baby friend Zachary was crawling all over the kitchen floor, I went ahead and swept it. Babies are great at pointing out where the dirty spots are! Not the most ambitious cleaning day but we had a great afternoon with Frances & Hattie. Especially since Frances and her hubby helped me figure out how to use my laptop as a phone!