Meet my new BFF........

.........the Eureka Enviro Steamer. I am officially in LOVE.


Let me tell you how this relationship began. A few weeks ago I was running on the treadmill and watching an infomercial (I know........) about the Shark Vac & Steam (or Steam & Vac). I was instantly intrigued by the idea of cleaning my hard-surface floors using only water and not chemicals. I have wood laminate floors over the majority of our main living space and vinyl tile in a large area downstairs. I had previously cleaned my hard surfaces using a Swiffer with an old washcloth and spraying all-purpose cleaner on the floor. While that system was working okay I never felt the floors were truly clean. So......after my little informercial incident I did a little steam experiment. I boiled some water in a glass measuring cup in my microwave. Then I poured it into a plastic spray bottle and squirted it onto my floor and wiped it up with my Swiffer and washcloth. It worked brilliantly.........even my youngest son commented that the floor felt very smooth under his cute little bare feet. There was a problem, however. I did not anticipate how beastly HOT a plastic spray bottle is with boiling water in it. I had to hold it with a hot pad to be able to squirt it and it eventually caused the spray bottle (which obviously was not designed to spray BOILING WATER) to malfunction. Still, this little experiment convinced me to take the plunge and buy a steam mop. I did quite a bit of research on Amazon before deciding on the Eureka Enviro Steam. I just got it today and immediately ripped the box open and cleaned my whole upstairs and, later, the downstairs. This baby even gets the gunk up. If you come to a sticky spot you just hold the mop over that spot for....no less than 8 and no more than 15 seconds.....and the gunk pretty much comes right up. I can't say enough for this product. It is probably one of the best investments I've made in cleaning supplies. And now I don't have to buy floor cleaner anymore which will also save a ton of money.

Do you see how the camera flash reflected on the GLEAMING tile in the photo below?



Oh, I love you, Eureka Enviro Steamer!




This is what the pad looked like after cleaning the vinyl tile in my basement. Yuck! These can be tossed in the wash but have to be air-dried so they don't shrink. I would love to hear from you if you have had good luck with a steam mop.

Joyful Job Jar

You know those little decluttering and straightening jobs that always seem to take a back burner? Well, if you're anything like me you can think of about 20 things you'd rather do than declutter the junk drawer or the hall closet. I actually enjoy organizing things, but sometimes getting started is really hard for me. To give myself renewed motivation I decided to make a "job jar" for myself. I wanted it to have a catchy, alliterative name and since I couldn't find a synonym for "dreaded" that started with "j" I decided to be positive and call it the "Joyful Job Jar." Now I just need to generate some joy about using it. Haha

I used an empty peanut butter jar and printed two labels for it.






It's funny..........I don't mind doing laundry at all and I'm almost always caught up on my laundry tasks. Hey! Laundry is a joyful job for Laura!! Yay!!




I cut up a bunch of slips of paper and wrote a decluttering type job on each of them. When I have an extra 15-30 minutes I am committing myself to reaching into the jar, pulling out a task and tackling it.




See all those innocent little pieces of folded paper? I am about to reach into this very jar and pull out a job. I am on my second snow day in a row and didn't accomplish much yesterday. I am determined to make today more productive. Here goes.................and the joyful job of the day will be..........."declutter cabinets in basement kitchen." Our home has 2 kitchens. Not because I am a prolific cook but because that's what it had when we moved in. We use the cabinets in the downstairs kitchen to store a VARIETY of things which I guess I will now go and sort out. Can you sense my joyfulness? Me neither. Oh well..........off to the basement. I would love to hear how you discipline yourselves to complete your most dreaded and annoying of tasks.

Proud owner of a............

..........Hoover SteamVac Turbo Power Carpet Cleaner. Yes, I've owned one of these babies for about 4 hours now. I am very excited about it!! However, the reason I finally took the plunge and bought one of these is really sad. Our dog, Buzz, started having severe seizures last night. He had approximately 7 seizures within a 24 hour period of time. We are talking grand mal, losing control of all bodily functions-type seizures. Needless to say, this has been really traumatizing to him as well as to DH and me. Luckily, the boys did not witness the seizures. Buzz went to the vet today and they did a bunch of bloodwork. So far they've ruled out a lot of bad scary things that could have caused the seizures. We were up practically all night with him last night since he was having one about every 2-3 hours like clockwork. He had one while at the vet's today and has been placed on Phenobarbitol. He is staying there overnight for observation. Our poor little Buzzy boy. Since he lost all control during each seizure, suffice it to say that we had a lot of yucky spots to clean up. When we went through all this just over a month ago with our dog, Magic, I rented a carpet cleaner, then ended up borrowing one from a friend a few days later when we had a mess again after I'd returned the rented vac. The borrowed vac was a Hoover SteamVac and I LOVED it. So after the events of the past 24 hours, I headed to Bed Bath and Beyond this evening and bought one. With 4 animals that poop, pee and barf a lot, it is a good investment. The other great thing is that I had a $50 gift certificate to the mall where the store was and I signed up for the Bed Bath and Beyond emails and got a 20% off savings certificate. So we ended up getting the SteamVac for just about half price. I immediately put it together and cleaned up our yucky spots when I got home. This steam vac works GREAT! I cannot recommend it enough. It cost us about $45 to rent a rug cleaner for 8 hours and after a few uses, our new one will pay for itself. Hopefully Buzz will come home tomorrow. He is a really sick little guy and we are so sad about what happened. We hope it will be controllable with meds. We cannot bear the thought of going through what we just went through with Magic all over again.

Otherwise, I've been enjoying my summer vacation. I had a pleasant surprise visit from my friend, Tammie, today. She reads the blog and was in the neighborhood and decided to stop by and see my new paint job and drapes. THANKS, Tammie! It was great to see you!! I've been working on some more projects that are not quite ready to post about. Going through all that with Buzz has put an abrupt halt to all other plans. I'll write more soon!

Continuing the Bedroom Makeover

Even though Flylady has moved on to the next "zone" this week (the living room), I have continued to be busy working in my bedroom to make it a haven. I am really happy with another little corner that I've decluttered and redecorated using things I found when I shopped my own house. Below you can see a wooden bookshelf that was originally in this space. As I mentioned in a previous post, I got rid of a bunch of books, moved some to my son's room, and consolidated the rest onto another bookshelf that was in our bedroom.

Below you can see the "new" bookshelf in its new spot. Previously the top of this shelf was stacked with books and covered with dust. I decided to intentionally decorate it to prevent me from cluttering it up again. I found the lamp, the candle cozy, candle, velvet runner, Jesus picture AND frame all in my own closets during decluttering. Who knew?

I love this picture of Jesus laughing. My mother in law gave it to my husband and I many years ago. I had forgotten about it and was pleased to find it in a tub in one of our closets. The frame it was in was bent, but I found the wooden frame in the same tub. My husband was really excited to see this picture in our room. He thought it was lost for good.

I found the velvet runner shown below in my youngest son's closet stashed way up on a top shelf. I have childhood memories of this runner. My mom always kept it on top of a marble-topped table in our living room with a certain lamp on top of it. She gave it to me a while back and I just threw it up on a shelf and forgot about it. Turns out it is perfect with the colors in our bedroom and fits just right on top of this bookshelf. I love the nostalgia of this piece (and the fringe is fun too!).

Here is a close-up of the electric candle cozy I found in our hallway linen closet. I bought this years ago to have in my classroom and had forgotten about it. I was actually about to toss it in the donation pile when I realized it would be great in our bedroom. I used to light candles a lot before kids but haven't much lately. This is great because it melts the wax in a jar candle and distributes the scent without having to light the candle. I've been turning it on in the evening after the boys are in bed and it feels like such a treat to curl up in bed with a book and to smell a fragrant candle.

The lamp on the bookshelf is also one I found in a closet. I was just about to put it in the donation pile too when I realized that it would be great on top of this shelf. My bedroom looks so cozy and inviting at nighttime now with my new bedside lamps and this additional one. One of the decorating blogs I've been reading really emphasizes collecting a lot of lamps to scatter throughout your home to boost the coziness factor. I think I'm starting to see what they're talking about! Some bloggy decorating divas even have cute little lamps in their bathrooms and laundry rooms. That could be on the horizon for me too! I love the look of diffused light that a lamp provides. So much better than an overhead light!!

Now I'd like to show you what became of the shelf I removed from the bedroom. It is a little too country looking with the heart cut-out and I'm thinking of painting and sanding it to "shabby" it up a bit. However, we needed a place in the kitchen to store our produce. Originally we had our produce in a hanging basket that broke several months ago. Since then we've been piling them all into a large plastic bowl on the counter. This is taking up a lot of counter space that I wanted back. I had a lightbulb moment and realized that my bookshelf would be perfect for this purpose. The photo below shows the shelf with some baskets I already had on hand which I'm using to hold the veggies and fruits. I took the photo in front of the door, but the shelf is actually positioned against a wall.

This divided basket was originally on a hutch in our kitchen. The hutch was on my list to declutter this weekend and I realized I could find another use for the basket. Now it is just right for holding our produce.

Thanks for joining me on my little bedroom (and kitchen) tour. Maybe I'll post a decorating challenge complete with Mr. Linky one of these days. It would be so fun to see how others are beautifying their living spaces.

Update on the Bedroom Makeover

Last Sunday I wrote about my plan to makeover my bedroom during this past week. My main goal was to clean and declutter; however, I also wanted to at least start "shopping" my house for things to use to make the bedroom a more inviting space. I have made pretty good progress even though I had a super busy week, DH was out of town for a few days, and our beloved dog passed away. I am not finished with what I want to accomplish in this space, but I thought I would post what I've done so far.

Below is a photo of one of the two lamps that I originally had in this room, one on each nightstand. I found new ones today at our local dollar store for $10 each and am planning to place the old ones on Craigslist. I originally thought I would spray paint the bases of the gold lamps, but decided that I wanted a different style. When I found the ones at the dollar store, my decision was clinched.

Below is the photo of my new lamp(s). I actually wanted red shades but thought I'd have to purchase or make them. I was really excited to find these with the red shades already included. When I picked these out at the dollar store, I thought I would spray paint the bases white, but once I put them in place, I think I like them as is. I'll live with them a while to be sure, but for now I'm planning on keeping them just the way they are.

The next photo shows a bookshelf that was originally right next to my bedroom closet. I had already purged some books from this shelf before taking the photo.

I consolidated books from the shelf shown above with some books from another bookcase I had in the bedroom and moved the other bookcase into this spot. I forgot to take a photo of it, but did take a photo of the wreath I hung above the bookcase. You can see that below. I've had this wreath for years, but it's been in a closet not being used. It adds the perfect color and texture to my room. I have some plans for the top of the bookcase right below the wreath and will post about that later.



The quilt rack shown below and the metal decorations above it are now in the space where the bookcase was before. Removing one bookcase and repositioning the other has really opened up the space in the bedroom. I had forgotten to take a before picture of this part of the bedroom. The metal squares are ones I've had for years that I rediscovered this week when decluttering my writing desk. It's amazing what you can find when you declutter and shop your own home!

The next picture shows how the top of my dresser has looked for the past several months. Totally cluttered! It has about killed me to walk past it in this state each day since starting Flylady. But I was determined to wait to tackle my bedroom until it came up as a "zone" which wasn't until this week.

The next photo shows a close-up of the mirrored tray that I've had on my dresser for years. As you can see it was a resting place for odds and ends (and lots of dust!).

Yay! Now my dresser is decluttered and beautiful. I will be so motivated to keep it this way. You can really see the surface of this antique piece and the amazing detail of the birds-eye maple. My dad used this dresser as a child. I am so grateful to have it.

This is a close-up of the mirrored tray that was previously so cluttered. I am now thinking about painting the whole thing antique white. I think that would look much better with the other accents in the space.

Since I've been FLYing with Flylady and decluttering, I am getting really motivated to not only declutter and deep clean my living space, but also to fill it with beautiful things. I don't like a lot of "things" to clutter up a space, but I'm talking about some intentional decorating to make things more pleasant and finished. I've found a few great blogs that are totally devoted to frugal decorating and I have a bunch of pieces that I can't wait to repurpose and restyle with some spray paint. I've already bought the paint, but was totally bummed out that it's been damp and rainy today (and will be tomorrow) so I can't paint this weekend. Oh well............ Here are the links to a few great decorating blogs I've found. Be prepared to spend a lot of time looking at the great ideas.

The Shabby Nest

Enchantresses Three

Nesting Place

Southern Hospitality

Thrifty Decor Chick

The gals who write these blogs are SO creative. I am so inspired to get busy and create some great things for my home. I already have plans to spray paint a shelf from our kitchen antique white and hang it over our bed. I have a bunch of old photos from my family and DH's family that are in mismatched frames. I am going to spray paint all the frames antique white and place them on the shelf above the bed. I also have some more great items that are waiting for sunny weather to get their spray paint makeover. (BTW........I've never spray painted anything in my life that I can recall. Should be interesting..........)

I let the dog back in

OK..............there's a backstory here. When my sons and I arrived home tonight around 7:45 p.m. following my oldest son's soccer game, we were greeted by the stench and sight of dog poop all over our basement carpet. I haven't written about it here, but our dog has lung cancer. He was diagnosed about 7 weeks ago. He also has spinal arthritis and recently it is becoming increasingly difficult for him to stand up by himself. He is a nearly 80 pound dog. I usually come home on my lunch break to let him out because the medicine he is on causes him to eat and drink a lot and, therefore, pee and poop a lot. And I did come home to let him out today. However, he had to wait a longer time than usual to be let out again because my son had soccer pictures and had to be at practice early, my husband is out of town, and I had to get my son at his school (which my DH usually does) which is about 1 1/2 hour round trip for me. Anywho.........that's what greeted me when I arrived home with the 2 boys. Trying to stay calm, I had the boys go straight upstairs and asked them to stay there while I dealt with the "situation" downstairs. My first goal was to get the dog outside. He was getting poop all over his rear end trying to stand up and then smearing it further into the carpet. So..........I dragged/carried him out and started to deal with THE MESS. In the meantime I called my mom and explained what was going on. It was soon evident that my carpet spray and rags were not going to sufficiently clean our carpet. So my mom (bless her heart!) stopped at our local grocery store, rented a Rug Doctor and brought it out to our house. She hung around and helped get the boys in bed and also stayed most of the time that I cleaned the carpets. Before she arrived with the Rug Doctor I had pretty much decided that the dog was going to stay in the garage all night. I am not physically able to bathe him by myself nor do I have any place downstairs to bathe an 80 pound dog. And I didn't want him tracking more poop in the house, getting on the wet, newly cleaned carpet, etc. My mom totally agreed with this plan. (She has never had indoor pets.) In the meantime, my husband called me from New Orleans (he flew there this AM for a conference) and I relayed to him what had happened and what I planned to do. He was not pleased about my plan to keep the dog in the garage. He was worried about how upsetting that would be to the dog, etc. And I admit that I WAS feeling guilty about leaving the dog in the garage too. I told him I would probably let the dog back in after I got the carpets cleaned.

After I cleaned the whole basement with the Rug Doctor, I tried to reach my husband in his hotel room to report my progress. I was pretty proud of myself for cleaning the whole basement, not just the yucky places. However, I couldn't reach him. I left him two messages within about 15 minutes.......something along the lines of, "Hey, party boy........it must be nice to be out on the town in New Orleans while I'm up here getting $%&* out of the carpet......" (that looks worse in writing than how I said it; I was kind of jokey about it). It wasn't long before he called me back. When I answered he said, "Hey, pooper scooper!" And luckily I have a good enough sense of humor to think that was funny! Anyway, the upshot of our last conversation is that I decided to let the dog back in the house. My husband convinced me to go outside with a wet soapy rag and try to clean any remaining excrement from the dog before letting him back in. I DID ask him how he proposed I clean poop off a black dog at 10:00 at night outside, but he seemed confident that I could do it. So, people, I did go outside to scrub the dried poop off my sick dog before letting him back in the house.

Before I let the dog back in I was washing our dishes (Flylady would be so happy!) and thinking about what, if any, spiritual lesson could be gleaned from my poopy evening. And suddenly the lesson seemed very obvious to me. As you recall, my initial reaction to finding the poop was to get the dog out of the house and not let him back in. Essentially, I was throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. I was immediately humbled as I realized that the God I believe in would never do that to any of His children. Regardless of the "dirt" we create, God is ready to forgive us and welcome us back with open arms. He loves us unconditionally despite the ugly stains we leave as a result of our sinful actions. Like my oldest son said when I put him to bed tonight, "We shouldn't just remember that Jesus died for us on Easter; we should remember it EVERY day of the year." Couldn't have said it better myself. And I let the dog back in.

Here's a photo of the Rug Doctor I rented. (Every post needs a photo, dontcha think?) Just be glad I didn't take a photo of the pile that caused me to rent the Rug Doctor! And to be honest, I kind of thought about it. If you write a blog, you totally understand why I would think about it..........I knew it would make a good blog post. But.......since this is a nice clean family kinda blog..........no poo-poo pictures. Just the good ol' Rent-A-Kent.

Bedroom Makeover

OK.........I really hope DH won't be horrified by this post because truly in these photos our bedroom looks worse than I thought it did. As you know if you've been reading for a while, I have been trying to follow Flylady for about the last month. I've been diligently going through my house room by room, closet by closet, cluttered surface by cluttered surface, drawer by drawer and de-cluttering. It feels really good to purge and even better to thoroughly clean the newly decluttered areas. I knew our bedroom needed work, but I was patiently waiting until the Master Bedroom came up as a Zone on Flylady's schedule of zones and I was meanwhile working my decluttering magic in other areas of the house. Flylady really emphasizes staying focused and not getting distracted. It's been hard because as you see in the photos in this post I have been walking right past a lot of clutter in my bedroom every day. So I'm writing this to come clean once and for all. During the next several days I am going to be focused on decluttering my bedroom and making it a haven within my home. Flylady says you should treat your bedroom like a hotel room and I hope to get ours closer to that by the end of the week. So here are the "before" photos. Hopefully my "after" photos will show a good contrast to what you see here.
This is the view of our bedroom from the doorway. I purposely didn't move anything before I took the photo. So there's clothing on the bed (along with a cat) and a bunch of stuff on the floor.



Here is this awesome writing desk I bought many years ago in an antique store. I recently spent some time going through it on the inside and reorganizing it. The paper clutter on the floor is actually headed to the burning barrel after being purged from the desk.



And here is one of the two dressers in the room. It is from my dad's childhood home and is a beautiful piece. Sadly, it's covered with clutter as is the floor next to it. But not for long!



This pile of hangers is from a closet decluttering experience in my oldest son's room and I just need to add these to my stash of adult-sized hangers. Not sure why my little one's tool box is sitting there, but it has been for a long time. It will take me about 6 steps to put it in the right spot........HIS bedroom! And about 10 steps to put the 2 pairs of shoes into their right spot........MY CLOSET!



This is one of two bookshelves in our room. I have recently purged a bunch of books and am actually planning on finding other homes (either in our house or someone else's) for the books shown here. I plan to remove this shelf from our bedroom completely. Not sure why there's lotion on the floor.........hmmm........should be easy to fix that one.



UGH! I hate this next one. This is the clutter that has accumulated between the wall and my side of the bed. It will probably take me less than 3 minutes to fix this.

Here's the top of the dresser I showed a few photos ago. Being a horizontal surface, it tends to collect a lot of "stuff." By the end of my makeover, I hope much more of the surface will be visible and that it will look neat and pretty. The wreath in the picture is one I found during a recent decluttering episode. I am thinking of hanging it above our bed along with three white metal pieces I found when cleaning the writing desk.

I found the mirrored tray shown below at a thrift store many years ago. Over the years it has become a repository for my necklaces since I haven't had a better way to store them. I recently bought a belt hanger that will be used to store my necklaces from now on. So be prepared to see a shiny, polished tray here in the near future. I have a perfect little candle that I am planning to put on this tray. You can see it kind of in the photo above on the far left.

You can see I have some great pieces of furniture in this space. Hopefully they can become more of a focal point once I'm finished with my "missions" from Flylady this week. A main reason I'm posting this is that I really believe in the Flylady system after trying it for the past several weeks. This is a really crazy week for me. DH is out of town for a few days and my oldest son has soccer games 3 out of the next 5 nights. I will be spending more time than ever running/driving from here to there and keeping on top of everything. However, I truly believe that I'll be able to tackle this project even in the midst of it by taking Babysteps. I'll try to post daily to keep you updated. If I can do this during the next 5 days, then any of you reading this can tackle those tasks you've been putting off.

Aaaahhh............much betta!

After MUCH effort, the craft room has been reorganized! Yay! I actually reorganized it last summer and wrote about it on my other blog (which was my ONLY blog at that time since I wasn't crazy yet!) and you can read about that here if you are so inclined. This time around I dug into things a lot more and got rid of a bunch of craft supplies that I didn't think I would use. Believe me, I still have enough to outfit a Brownie troop for several years. Below you can see one view of my newly organized space.....this photo is taken from the doorway. I decided to allocate one long wall to my scrapbooking materials and the opposite wall to sewing since I have so much more room now. This photo shows the scrapbooking side.



And this photo shows the sewing side (on the left) and a shelf that I moved downstairs to hold all the boys' scrapbooks. I used to have them in the white cabinet that you will see in a moment, but decided to put a bunch of them on a shelf that kind of displays them and makes them more accessible. My oldest son immediately pulled out two of his books to look at when he got home from school today and realized he could actually walk into the room now without stepping on stuff. So I'm really glad I put their books on the shelf.




Here's a better photo of the sewing space. The table on the left is for cutting fabric and the one on the right will hold my sewing machine which is now in the case beside the chair until I pull it out for my next project. I am getting pretty motivated to work on something in this new space!



The next photo shows a close-up of the scrapbooking table with easily accessible paper and tools and a little lamp for extra lighting.

To the left of the scrapbooking table is a cart with drawers that hold my rubber stamps and stamp pads and the white cabinet which holds a BUNCH of stuff including more scrapbooks that didn't fit on the shelf.

Here is the inside of the cabinet with sewing and scrapbooking things neatly organized. I love this cabinet. We bought it several years ago at Menard's and it holds so much and was pretty cheap.

This photo shows the two shelves above the scrapbooking table. The drawer organizers you see on the bottom shelf used to hold my 8 1/2 X 11 scrapbooking paper and paper scraps. I have reorganized the paper and now these drawers hold various scrapbooking and crafting supplies along with my sticker collection. I also love the little clear boxes on the top shelf. I bought them at Wal-Mart and they have many sizes. The lids are attached and snap shut. These are really inexpensive and are great for organizing. I use them all over my house.

This is the left side of the shelves with my crafting books on top and my 12X12 paper organizers on the bottom. I recently gave up my cart which had lots of my larger scrapbooking paper. It has been repurposed for use by my oldest son. You can read about that here if you want. So.....I bought the 3 drawer organizer at Hobby Lobby and divided my papers by color. I had originally bought the case you see with the pink suitcases on it, but it didn't even come close to holding all my 12X12 paper once I pulled everything out and started sorting it.

The next photo shows how I've organized my scrapbooking paper that isn't 12X12. I had two large file organizers from my days as a Creative Memories consultant. I used one to hold the 10X12 inch paper that CM sells and one to hold my 8 1/2 X 11 inch paper that used to be in the drawer organizers. The paper is organized by color and sits on the left side of my scrapbooking table.

As I mentioned before, I had saved scraps of cardstock and paper from scrapbooking for many years and had it organized by color into individual drawers. While I do use my scraps whenever I can, as I reorganized I realized that the scraps were taking up so much room that could be better utilized. So I decided to recycle most of my scraps and try a new system. The clear box you see in the next photo will sit below my scrapbooking table to hold miscellaneous scraps. Once it becomes too full, I'll have to purge again.

Aaah.........it feels SO good to have my basement tidy again. It has been a big effort, but tonight even DH commented that it is so nice and relaxing to have the clutter cleared up. The back of my van is full of more items headed for donation. This will be my third big vanload since I started Flylady. I am making good headway though and may only have a few more trips to make before I can declare my house "de-cluttered!" I'm really excited to get to that point because then I can start really focusing on deep-cleaning the Zones as they come up. It is so hard not to get over-zealous. I still have some de-cluttering to do in our master bedroom and it's hard to walk past it every day and not dig into it. But I've tried really hard to follow Flylady's advice and not get distracted. Now that the craft room and basement are organized, I have a list of other places that need to be decluttered and I will diligently work on them a little at a time until they are all crossed off my list. Now I am going to sign off and go read in bed! Yay for me!

UGH!

As you know, I've been trying to incorporate the tips from Flylady into my daily life. I am tremendously excited about how much this is going to change my home life for the better. However, in the short term...........UGH! I think Flylady would tell me I'm trying to tackle too much and to slow down. And that may very well be good advice. However, I can't STAND for things to be completely messy (although I have been known to tolerate incomplete messes......haha!). And right now my basement is COMPLETELY MESSY. Let me explain.............when I started FLYing I decided to really dive in and tackle the clutter that was threatening to take over my house. So last weekend I listed some of our basement furniture on Craigslist and sold it within a few days. That allowed me to rearrange some things in our finished basement and, ultimately, it means that I have even more room in my craft room. The room pictured below in the not-very-good photos is my craft room. And I am VERY grateful to have a space dedicated to crafting. VERY GLAD.........seriously. Until our recent rearrangment, this room also held our piano and a pull-out couch which my MIL sleeps on when she visits. Both of these pieces of furniture have now been moved into the adjacent living area of our basement. So for the last SEVERAL DAYS (many hours of work each of those days), I have been trying to go through, weed out and reorganize my crafting supplies. Mostly this has meant going through oodles of scrapbooking paper and stickers. I used to sell Creative Memories and stopped selling a few years ago. Since then I've had my scrapbook paper stored in about 4 different places so I really couldn't ever find what I wanted nor did I fully realize what I already had. So although it was high time to reorganize, it has been a GARGANTUAN task and I am getting SO SICK of it. (Pardon me for the obnoxious overuse of capital letters in this post...........I really just need to get it all out, OK?) I'm posting the photos of what my craft room has looked like for the past several days to motivate myself to keep at it. Actually, it looks a lot better than this even right now. I am almost finished with my MISSION: Organization down there. I have to work for a little then take a break. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll have some great "after" shots to post. I have the day off of work, so that should allow a lot more time to finish. Until then...............I'll leave you with a few shots of utter chaos so you can be duly impressed when I get it done!

I'm still FLYing

I wrote a post about a week ago about starting to incorporate routines from Flylady into my daily life. I have to say that I am really loving it, and that is saying a lot since I usually profess that I don't like to clean. I have signed up for Flylady's daily emails and am finding them to be motivational and very doable. I love how she sends you little daily tasks in various zones (this week is the kitchen) in your home. I also love that these tasks only take a few minutes, but produce great results. Today's task for the kitchen was to scrub out the kitchen trash can. Hello! How many people do this regularly? Not me! I definitely look at my kitchen trash can and think about how yucky it's getting, but I never stop to do it. I am one of those people that sometimes just needs someone to tell me to do something. So today I am proud to say that my kitchen trash can has been thoroughly cleaned inside and out. I cannot remember the last time this happened. It took me less than 10 minutes to do and I felt so good after accomplishing it. I can't wait to see if DH notices.........he will be emptying the trash cans tonight to put them out for pick-up tomorrow. I don't think he'll read this post until tomorrow at work, so he won't be tipped off either. I'll let y'all know if he says anything.

Another thing I like about Flylady is that she has some really great cleaning tools available for purchase. I am going to tell you which ones I would love to have in case my DEAR HUSBAND reads this and wants to buy them for me. (I have been placed on a.......ahem..........spending freeze, so I can't just click over and buy them for myself. Mother's Day, however, is just around the corner!!) OK..............I have read several testimonials about the Rubba Scrubba and think that it would be a great cleaning tool to have. A main use in my own house for this tool would be getting the cat hair off the carpeted stairs, although from what I can tell there are MANY other uses for this tool. Also on my wish list is this Feather Duster. Everyone writes in to Flylady and RAVES about this duster. I have never owned a Feather Duster before and it sounds like this one would last forever if cared for properly. So if DH is reading this........please know I don't want a cheap knock-off duster..........just the real deal, baby. Ostrich feathers all the way! If you are reading this and happen to own a Flylady feather duster PLEASE leave a comment. I would love to know if it's worth the $$$ (I'd also love to hear from you if you have the Rubba Scrubba!).

In addition to doing the daily Swish and Swipe routine (described in this post), I am trying to keep my sink shiny (as described in the post I linked to above) and to do a little daily de-cluttering. Within the last week, I've already taken two BIG loads of donated items to our community storehouse. I am purging like crazy and it feels SO good. Once every room is decluttered, it will be so much easier to keep it clean. I am also hoping to add the Weekly Home Blessing Hour to my week. I may break it down into 10 minutes a day instead of doing the whole hour at once. To read more about this concept, click here........you will need to scroll down to find the description of the Weekly Home Blessing Hour.

Finally, I am planning to create a Control Journal as recommended by Flylady. I had one of these a few years ago, but didn't fully use it as I could/should have. So.........that's on my to-do list.

Edited at 9:22 p.m.: DH didn't notice the pristine nature of the kitchen trash can when he emptied it tonight. Oh well.............

My Life. In Pictures. Day 1: Something new

If you read last night's post, I predicted that you wouldn't guess what I was going to photograph for my "something new" for Amber's photo challenge. Well, if you guessed that I would photograph a toilet brush, either you have ESP or are an extremely creative thinker. And below you will see my new toilet brush in its cool little container. I bought it on Sunday at Target for $5.99.

I am excited about my new toilet brush because it symbolizes what I hope will be a turning point in my life. Specifically, it represents my desire to have a clean home and to incorporate cleaning into my daily routines so I don't become overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. I wrote a lot last night about using the ideas and checklists from Flylady to help me. One new thing I took from her website that I'm going to incorporate into my morning routine is Swish and Swipe. This is such a quick and simple thing to add to my morning routine, yet I would never have thought to do this every day without reading about it. I am so excited about how fresh and clean our main bathroom is going to be as a result. In case you don't want to or don't have time to click on the Swish and Swipe link, I'll describe it here in a nutshell and then you'll also know what the hot pink stuff in the bottom of my new toilet brush container is. OK........each morning as you are getting ready for the day, you grab a bottle of all-purpose cleaner or glass cleaner and spot clean your bathroom mirror with a paper towel or old washcloth (I'm going green and using old cut-up washcloths), then use the same cloth and cleaner to quickly spray down your counter and sink (easy because you have gotten into the habit of putting everything away when you are done getting ready.............this will be a new one for me.........I always just leave stuff all over the counter), then you quickly clean your toilet (the SWISH part) by swishing the toilet brush around in your toilet. Flylady recommends keeping some kind of cleaner such as old shampoo (I bought cheap dishwashing detergent) in the bottom of the toilet brush container and using that to quickly swish your toilet. Last step is to use the rag from the sink/counter to wipe down the back, seat, rim, and sides of your toilet, then the floor. 1-2 minutes and you are done! Doesn't that sound easy? The key is to have all the cleaning stuff right there in your bathroom so you can quickly grab it and do a Swish and Swipe. I LOVE THIS! My bathroom is already smelling really fresh just from the dish soap in the toilet brush holder.