Professional cleaning

Lincoln pointed out to me today that we used to have our house professionally cleaned before my Mom came to visit. Now we just have the dog professionally cleaned before she gets here.

The miracle of cleaning!

Me: Jake, you need to clean up the kids room before Hannah comes home tomorrow.

Jake: But it's too messy! I can't do it all by myself.

Me: Well, you're the only kid that has been here all month so get cracking.

(a little while later)

Jake: But it's too much for one person.

Me: Just pick up one thing at a time and put it away and then you'll be one step closer to a clean room.

(a little while later)

Jake: Mommy, Mommy! Guess what!

Me: What?

Jake: Every time I pick something up there is more room to step in there!

Me: Go figure.

Mom, you may want to be sitting down when you read this post

My mother might actually pass out from the excitement of this post and the accompanying pictures.

I wish I had taken "before" pictures of the closet but basically all you have to do is picture three racks of clothing (one on each wall....one long, and two short) all crammed with so many clothes that you couldn't put anything else on the racks. Then picture stuff from the floor all the way up to the bottom of the clothes and from the shelf over the clothes all the way up to the ceiling. Picture boxes falling everywhere. Purses crammed under foot stools (yes, for some reason we had a foot stool in the closet) and boxes and unused wooden shelving sticking out in such a way you could barely close the door to get to the clothing bar behind the closet door. In short, picture a really full, really messy and there you have it.


We're not 100% done with the closet yet. Lincoln has two shelves he can use if he wants and there are two shelves that we'll probably moving the bedding to when we clean out the linen closet in the bathroom. Also, the empty top shelf above the drawers is where the Tivo and cable box go as they're fed through the wall to the TV on the other side. Finally, we actually have one empty drawer that I'm not sure what we'll use it for but I'm sure we'll find a use.

Okay Mom.....time to be proud of us!

The stuff from the closet. This is just the stuff from under and over the clothes racks.

Getting the supplies ready:

The old single rack across the closet:

The clothes from the closet:

Installing the new shelves. This process might have broken a lesser marriage. Note to self, don't start these projects late at night after a long day.

The new TWO-tier racks and four shelves. On the right there are four shelves. Two are currently empty (Lincoln's), along with my two, which contain my pajamas, sweatpants, and tank tops. Mom will recognize all those things as the items that lived on top of the dryer because we had no where else to put them. Under the shelves is the mini-fridge. We put that in when we moved into the house thinking we'd stock it with beer and wine for the Master Suite. Instead it ended up being a bottled water and formula fridge. We're finally starting to use it for it's original purpose.

Behind the closet door. There is a shoe rack on the back of the door and behind the door are these drawers containing belts, ties, and shawls, swimsuits and pool towels, and purses/backpacks. Underneath is another shoe rack. Yes, I have both lion slippers and rabbit slippers. I also have sock monkey slippers but those live under my desk in the office.

More behind the door stuff. The shoe rack hangs on the back of the closet door. Above the closet door is Lincoln's hat rack. Above the drawers you can see the additional empty shelves for the bed linens and the top shelf (and wires) for the Tivo/Cable box.

And that's it. Next up is the bathroom linen closet and under the sink cabinets.

Take a deep breath Mom. It's going to be okay. We promise to keep it this way until at least your next visit.

Lincoln and I may be bunking with the kids tonight

The good news: I got the closet emptied out.

The bad news: The bedroom is a mess.

Vacation style

Shower and wash hair: check

Blow-dry and style hair: check

Carefully applied make-up: check

Put on clothes other than yoga pants and a big warm sweatshirt: negative.

Hey, you can't win them all, right? Last year during my 2 weeks of holiday break I think I put on "real clothes" twice. The only time this holiday break that I've hit all four of the check points above was for Nate's memorial service. Even on Christmas day I didn't hit them all. More often than not my hair ends up in a wet ponytail and I go without make-up because not only is it a hassle to put on, it's a hassle to get back off again at the end of the day.

My holiday break hasn't been quite as productive as last year when we re-arranged all the rooms of the house, bought and installed new furniture and TVs, and painted the bathroom but I'm finally starting to begin on my projects for this year's holiday break. My two big goals are to clean out and organize our bedroom closet and the linen closet and cabinets in our bathroom. They're all disasters and badly need to be organized. I started on our closet this morning and it's funny to be digging out stuff from when I was pregnant with Jake. Like I said, it's badly in need of an organizing.

Today is also the day that I have to take Leopold to the vet so we've got to venture out into the real world today. Wish me luck.

Grandma Dena Clean

Tuesday night after the memorial service we're having a reception back here at our house for family and friends. That means we need to get the house "company" clean since a lot of these people have never been to our house before. We also don't know how many people will come so we need to make sure we have lots of room for everyone.

The kids were helping us clean and I set them loose with the instructions to clean up to "Grandma Dena standards". That's a pretty tall order.

I'm developing my own color coded chart like President Bush

I hate cleaning. I really do. Since I can't afford a housekeeper I just live with various levels of tolerance for my lack of housecleaning skills. Luckily my mother comes often enough that my house gets a deep cleaning on a fairly regular basis.

My levels of tolerance:

Mild: Blissfully ignoring the mess.

Moderate: Pick up the obvious stuff and pretend like we cleaned the house.

Severe: Deep, deep cleaning. Usually peters out before we get both floors done. In my opinion as long as one floor is clean we can live on that one and ignore the other one until the "Severe" mode passes.

Today we have a Code Red.

Jake: Why do I have to clean my desk?

Me: Because we're cleaning our house from top to bottom today.

Jake: Why?

Me: So that next weekend during the long weekend we can play out in the pool all weekend long and not have a dirty house hanging over us.

Lincoln: So we're not going to live in the house between now and then?

Me: Nope.

(A little while later Lincoln walks into the bathroom while I'm scrubbing the sink.)

Lincoln: Oh. You're cleaning cleaning today.

Me: Yes. I told you we were cleaning today.

Lincoln: I thought you meant picking-up cleaning.

Me: Nope. Now where is the toilet bowl cleaner?

It's going to be a looooonnnng day.