So much has happened since I last posted. I found out that my parents were coming for a visit. YIKES! Now my father wasn’t the neatest man when I was growing up, but he was raising my brother and me, working, and going to school! My mom (step-mom) is however the neatest person I know. Everything has a place and everything is IN its place! I didn’t grow up with her in my home so I didn’t get a chance to learn a lot of her tricks. Her two kids however are also very neat people. I always had a goal to be like them.
Anyway, so my parents are coming over, which means my house needs to be clean clean CLEAN! I know they know I’m not a neat person because obviously my father saw my bedroom. But I want them to think I have changed. I know I haven’t but I AM working on it. So the crazy cleaning session had begun. I immediately started working on the hardest hit areas that were not my childrens’ fault, my daughter’s room, the kitchen, and the hall way and entrance way.
My daughter’s room was difficult. Because she is not sleeping in it and wasn’t even allowed in it except for diaper changes and clothes changes we had been storing a lot of things in there that didn’t have other places to go. I emptied the room of all my stuff and put it in categories: to go in the basement for now (kitchen items and other items that were out of season), to go in the garbage (two kids in diapers means a lot of boxes from those diapers), and to go upstairs in my bedroom.
Now I know, I know.. I shouldn’t move clutter from one area to the other. But my parents were coming. I had to move it. The stuff in the basement will be dealt with as needed. A lot of it was decorations for the kitchen (we recently remodeled it) that I don’t know where to put up or that I had no room to store them in the kitchen. Luckily we had been working in the basement and made space for some items. My daughter’s exercauser also went down there. We have a lot of items that are still in good shape from the kids that we are going to try to sell at a tag sale, that is one of them.
The garbage was obviously put into the garbage. Luckily we have a dumpster because we’re cleaning out big items from the basement and garage from my husband’s grandparents. Now the items to go upstairs. A lot of it is my stuff. Stuff that was brought down stairs for me to “work on”. Some of it was baby clothes that I want to keep from the kids. Luckily there wasn’t too much that had to go up there from her room.
The hall way wasn’t too bad. I had cleaned it the week before and tried keeping on tp of it. I did do some major changes to it, however, after my daughter’s room was all cleaned up. I put the baby gate in the kitchen doorway and moved the one enclosing her in the living room in my son’s doorway. She has freedom! And she LOVES it! She runs back and forth so excitedly. It does mean more “kid” messes to clean up but it also means less “mommy” mess to be made in her room. I have to keep it clean so that she doesn’t get into anything.
The entrance way wasn’t too bad. But it had a lot of my stuff there. It was on the other side of another baby gate so a lot of things just got “put” there. If we didn’t want her to get into it.. there it went. I went through everything and put the garbage in the garbage. Most of it went upstairs to be piled in our bedroom. That is a MESS! But now that the downstairs is getting cleaned I can tackle that soon.
The kitchen.. oh the kitchen. I was trying to keep up with it but lost track after a few late nights at work. I worked my rear off to get the counters mostly cleaned off. There is still too much stuff on the counters for my liking but I need to clean other placed before I can get rid of some of the items on there. I had to sweep and mop the floor. And the dishes desperately needed to be dealt with. It’s the dishes that have to be hand washed that give us the most problems. But they got done. My husband did that part for me because he saw all the other work I was doing.
He also tackled the bathroom for me. My son likes to experiment in there with water. So there is often random items in there. The kids are the only ones that bathe in there so we don’t have to worry about many bath products other then toys.
The visit went well. My house was as clean as it was going to get. I still had some areas that weren’t perfect.. but I’m not a perfect person. I, in a way, want them to see that I am not the cleanest person and I never will be, but I’m working towards making my house neater and a happier place to live. I noticed how stressed everyone was today as we scrambled to finish those last cleaning projects that had to get done before my parents walked in the door. I didn’t like the feeling in the air. I didn’t like the tension.
Tomorrow I have to work at night, but I plan on keeping up with things. I also plan to work on my home binder and maybe starting a new cleaning project. I’ll keep it slow so I don’t burn out. I need to make myself a schedule and stick to it so that things that need to be done..get done.. Daily, weekly, monthly tasks need to be where I can see them. It’s getting thee. Slowly but surely. Sometimes we need a big kick to get us jump started. 
