Thursday, July 26, 2007

Visable rooms and the process.

Today I am tackling all the visible rooms simply because a neighbor is coming over tonight. It is amazing what is laying around in them. The front room has become a between trip dumping grounds. Casey tends to leave his suitcase in it when he comes home from a trip, and then leaves the extras that he doesn't take with him on his next trip end up on the floor. The shear amount of laundry laying around downstairs is surprising to me once I actually open my eyes and look for it. That and the shoes, which I am the biggest repeat offender. I think I have about 5 pairs hanging out downstairs right now, ugh!



So what is my room cleaning/purging process. First, I start with two garbage bags, simply so I don't have to leave the room and further distract myself when one gets full. Then I assemble as many laundry baskets as possible. One for laundry, one for stuff that belongs upstairs, one for stuff that belongs downstairs, and if needed one for stuff that belongs solely in the office. I also have about half dozen of those plastic dishpan tubs, I use these for Alex stuff and garage stuff. they are small enough that he can handle them, and the amount of stuff it can hold is not overwhelming for him to put away quickly. And of course I have my bucket of cleaning supplies and a roll of paper towels. I then clear all the surfaces of random junk and pick up all the stuff from the floor. I also take this time to straighten shelves and bookcases, this is not the time to reorganize everything just make it look better then it did. Once the room looks like it should be and is cleared of everything that doesn't belong there, I clean from the top down.



With this mega cleaning I have been fully cleaning the walls, it is amazing how much dust collects on them, as well as little dangley dust strings that hang from the stucco ceiling. Gotta love my Dyson for this job. I next dust everything, wash windows and picture frames, have any pillow covers or blankets for this room in the wash, and finally end up vacuuming the floor boards and floors.



One other things I do to freshen the room is to clean with the windows open, which I have been able to do this week because of the rain, it keeps the temperature and humidity down to a bearable amount. Fresh air is critical to really clean a room. It gets out all the allergens and random stinkies for the room. I can all most see those stinkies shrinking down to nothingness and then pop into a speck of glitter. Ahhhh, clean!



One thing that tends to happen just because we have ALOT of stuff, is my laundry baskets I use for sorting fill up. At that point I take the basket and do a tour of the house to deposit just inside the door of the room anything that belongs there. I will only ever not do this is there is an easily accessible home for the object. I really have to be strict with myself on this one because I am so easily distracted with a "quick organizing" project that pulls me away from the room I am trying to focus on. So i do this as quickly as possible, like in five minutes or less.



As I finish a room I make a mental list of the mini projects I want to tackle later. Things like bookcase regorgs, cabinet purges, drawer organizations, under the sink mass exoduses, etc. These small projects are the one thing that majorly distract me from the overall room cleaning. So they have been pushed to other days. Days when I don't mind spending an hour on the cabinet under the kitchen sink. I just have to remember to actually get to those projects.

So today is all about the entire downstairs, except the laundry room. We have a fairly open floor plan downstairs, which means the mess in the kitchen is wide open to the living room, and if tea time is in the plans then the mess has to be dealt with. So see you later, I have cleaning to do!

1 comments:

MartyGentry 9:33 PM  

I seriously think I'm going to print this post out! great ideas and inspiration! tfs!

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