Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Spring cleaning in July

One of my goals - well, really, my ONLY goal - while the kids are all on vacation is to go through the house and throw out a lot of stuff. It's so much easier to throw away broken toys while the kids aren't here to pull them out of the trash can and say, "But this is my favorite left arm of a soldier guy that I haven't got the rest of!"

Over the last week and a half, Tai and I have gone through most of the toys in the basement and thrown out two big garbage bags of broken toys, toys that are too young for the kids, and crappy McDonald's toys. We've gone through the dress-up clothes and thrown out a bunch of those, too. This is only in the basement playroom. We still have to go through their bedrooms. Ugh.

We also started cleaning our bedroom last night. I'm ashamed to admit it, but my bedroom is often the very last room in the house to be cleaned. It is the least likely to be seen by anyone besides Tai & I, so we leave it for last. Not only that, but it's also the place where we throw things that we don't have time to put in the attic. Things like winter coats. It's July, people. It's July and my bedroom floor is littered with winter coats, gloves, boots, and hats. Laundry is so backed up around here that I actually took the electric blanket off of our bed months ago, and it's just been sitting in the corner of my bedroom. I haven't washed it yet. I haven't folded it and put it in the linen closet. It's time.

When we're done with that project, it will be time to move on to the clothes. Everyone in this house owns too much clothing. Everyone's dressers can be full, and I can still have six loads of laundry waiting for me. That's just WRONG. It's time to get rid of the excess clothes, methinks. Nobody needs forty shirts! Nobody!

I've been slowly catching up with the laundry since the kids have been gone. They cleaned their bedrooms shortly before they left, and they all brought me at least two or three loads of clothes each. Add that to our usual laundry, and the pile was nearly as tall as me. I finished with all of the clothing that we had in the basement, but I still have a huge tub full of sheets and blankets that need washed. I'll get to them. Unfortunately, while cleaning our bedroom, we easily found another two or three loads of dirty clothes. So those come first. I call it laundry triage. Wash things you will need soon first. THEN do the other crap like kids' bedding.

All I know is that we have entirely too much crap in this house. It's impossible to keep a house clean if you have too much STUFF. And believe me: "stuff" is what this house is stuffed with.

In other news, my mother-in-law called last Wednesday to say that she and my brother-in-law were going to be here on Friday. Two days notice to clean for my mother-in-law. Yipes! The main floor wasn't too bad, since we'd just had Perrin and Darcy's biomom & her boyfriend, plus our friend Jon here the weekend before. The floors were nasty, though, so I spent a day and a half shampooing the carpets & scrubbing the wood floor. Of course, most of last week was spent sucking water out of the carpet in the basement, so the basement was a mess. And I hadn't even touched upstairs. Let's just say it was a rush job trying to get everything done before she got here.

We went to see the National Cathedral on Saturday. It is lovely. The stained glass windows are something else. We were there mid-afternoon, so the sunshine came at the church from all directions and showed off the windows beautifully. Sunday we went to the theater and saw Lady in the Water. The characters were fabulous. Lots of diversity. It was funny - not scary as the commercials made it out to be. And it had an interesting story. Not one of my favorites, but worth renting when it comes out on DVD.

So our company went home yesterday morning. While I was still sleeping, I might add. LOL And now the house is quiet again. Guess I'd better get to throwing out more stuff, huh?