Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Cleaning

We moved into a brand new home 2 years ago. Since it was never lived in I wiped out the cupboards but I didn't do much cleaning when we moved in. Just about the time it was time to really deep clean we began doctor's visits and therapy with Lamb 2. I decided this month was the time to tackle that job as we could see Lamb 2's therapy starting to decrease.

This project really started a few months ago when we took everything out of the play room to build the train table. I tried to get the Lambs to go through things before putting them back in the play room. One of their big projects was to go through every single sticker. Lamb 1 couldn't have lollipops when he had caps on his teeth so the bank and other places gave our boys stickers instead. They have a huge bag to donate to our church preschool of new stickers. They saved the ABC letters and ones that were special to them in a small drawer. This is so much better than an overflowing box. We are still working on some projects like the stickers and have set those aside to work on a little each day instead of tackling it all at once.

Then I took all the stuff to donate out of the guest room and began delivering it to different places. We still have a pile if we ever get to Fort Wayne, but the guest bed is actually uncovered for sleeping now! Then I did a thorough cleaning of the guest room.

Then I worked one room at a time, first decluttering, then organizing, then doing a deep clean. It was disgusting how much dust and grime gathered in 2 years here. I cleaned everything, dusting, vacuuming, washing all bed coverings, cleaning ceiling fans and light fixtures, and washing walls. I reorganized some of our books but that project never ends.

There is still much more to declutter here and a few more serious cleaning jobs to do, but this is the way I want my house. Since we homeschool we are here more than the average family. I told Ram that after I vacuumed the hallway it felt nice on my bare feet-not watching for Legos especially, but also the carpet felt softer and cleaner. Ram thought that was crazy, but it is true.

I saved the bathrooms for last and yesterday I really scrubbed down the boys bathroom. I overdid it and today my hands were sore from all that scrubbing.  No one told me when my first was born how terrible it is to clean boys bathrooms. They really can't control it when they go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I'm just glad they are using the toilet so I'll deal with cleaning it. Pumice stones and Magic Erasers are necessities.

Usually when I do projects like this Ram helps some in the evenings and on his day off. This time he broke his foot (when he was paying attention, just walking around a corner in our house) and had to have it elevated. I think he just didn't want to vacuum.

Now the trick is to do routine cleaning so it doesn't get this dirty and I have to deep clean the entire house at once again. And after all this cleaning we misplaced our Skipbo cards. You would think that we would know where everything is after cleaning the entire house, but the Skipbo cards are missing. So the next project is to search for those.

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