Spring Fling and a Preview to Spring Cleaning
Spring is coming and announcing itself with a flourish. Temps finally broke through the 70F mark here in the Northeast this past weekend. My kids even got to play outside unhampered by bulky clothing! Tomorrow temps will plunge back into the 30s again, with some snow thrown in for good measure, but I don't care. I've had the taste of spring and I know that she'll be here before we know it!
With the great weather the past weekend, my hubby and I decided to celebrate it with some preliminary spring cleaning. Wish I could say that we spent an afternoon in the park, or even just carried on lazily while the kids played between themselves. But no. The rise in temperature made us rise out of our lethargy and prompted us to put a bit of order into our perpetually dishevelled home.
Bruce, our family car, must have heaved a big sigh of relief when I vacuumed him and buffed him up inside and out. Poor thing hasn't received such TLC in weeks! If plants could grow on discarded cookies, crackers and the like, I would have a rich and diverse fauna growing in the backseat. Lucky for us, Bruce is a patient car even if we do treat him like the workhorse he was intended to be. So far, he's never given us big trouble and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he never will.
Next item on the list was to clean up the garage. It was finally time to put both our Halloween and Christmas decorations in their respective nooks in the garage. The oversized scarecrows and Christmas posts were just leaning against one of our garage walls near the door, greeting us everytime we pulled in. It's scary how long we've been turning a blind eye towards finding a proper place for them. My hubby and I are definitely not the most organized people, but we've come to a point where the disarray was just too much. Halloween and Christmas stuff greeting us at the (garage) door, tools on the floor, box upon box piled on top of each other sans labels, clearly we were quickly descending into domestic chaos!
After we finished off with the garage, which we've cleaned up as best we can, we tackled our basement and its quickly diminishing floor space. Imagine, we still have unopened boxes from when we moved in... and we've been living in our new home for nearly a year and a half! We've certainly brought on a new spin to the saying, "Out of sight, out of mind." After rummaging through the different boxes and what-have-yous in the basement, my hubby and I decided that we'll need help in organizing.
Thus off we went to DIY people's nirvana, a.k.a. Lowe's. We got ourselves shelves. Shelves for shoes and shelving units to bring some semblance of order to the dense forest of cardboard that is our basement. Hubby shopped while I chased AT, my toddling diva, around who took it upon herself to inspect every aisle of the warehouse. I think that I may have lost at least 100 calories chasing her up and down the store and trying to get both her, and her equally fidgety brother, out of trouble. With this strenous exercise, I suggested that we stop by the nearby Barnes and Noble where they serve Starbucks coffee and Cheescake Factory goodies. A perfect pairing for stressed-out moms like me. Having thus regained the 100 calories that I've burned, plus an extra 700 more from my carrot cake and coffee frap, we trekked back home with our supplies. By then it was late evening and we decided to continue our mission the following day.
The next day, with our tummies once again full from lunch (and our dear little AT napping away), we attacked our basement with a vengeance. First step, weed out the junk. For a couple of broke homeowners, we've definitely accumulated a lot of stuff. To think that we came from a much smaller apartment before we purchased our home! We had boxes of AJ's old clothes that were saved both for posterity's sake and in case our second child turned out to be a boy. Naturally, with AT being the princess that she was, she got a whole new wardrobe and these boxes of AJ's baby clothes languished in the basement. Then there were our boxes of books. I've already posted that my hubby and I are bookworms. Even with our tight budget for purchasing new books, we've accumulated quite a bit over five years' time. Naturally, my all-time faves have gained instant entry into my bedroom, but the others... well, you know the rest. After these, there were boxes of toys that my children have outgrown, or waiting for AT to grow into. There were at least three large boxes of my parents' knickknacks (I swear, they're making our home their storage space away from home!), seasonal items and of course, my packing materials for my eBay sideline.
Finally... finally our in-between things (in-between because we're either too lazy to find a place for these items in our home or we're too much of a packrat to throw these items away just like that) have been properly sorted out. After arranging them in hopefully a much neater fashion, my hubby and I patted each other in the back and tiredly collapsed on the sofa. Funny how we're proud of ourselves when we've barely scratched the surface! Everywhere I look, things need tidying up. My home office is still a mess, my children's bedrooms have just been haphazardly put together, and please don't let me get started on the living areas. So I guess that all this exercise in organization in precisely just that, an exercise. It's a preview of things to be done once the warm weather finally sticks in.
I can't believe that I'm actually not dismayed at my growing list of things to do. Rather, I oddly feel a little excited about it. Maybe it's because I am not as helpless as I once felt when I was still pregnant and subsequently gave birth to AT. Or maybe I just can't wait to be rid of the winter blues and feel a little more sunshine on my skin again. Of course, I might be singing a different tune tomorrow or the next day when my growing list turns from being a challenge into an overwhelming burden. But with the coming spring, I'm trying to inject some positive thinking into my system... hoping that it'll translate into action. In the meantime, let me put on my socks and try to bundle up for the cold night ahead.
With the great weather the past weekend, my hubby and I decided to celebrate it with some preliminary spring cleaning. Wish I could say that we spent an afternoon in the park, or even just carried on lazily while the kids played between themselves. But no. The rise in temperature made us rise out of our lethargy and prompted us to put a bit of order into our perpetually dishevelled home.
Bruce, our family car, must have heaved a big sigh of relief when I vacuumed him and buffed him up inside and out. Poor thing hasn't received such TLC in weeks! If plants could grow on discarded cookies, crackers and the like, I would have a rich and diverse fauna growing in the backseat. Lucky for us, Bruce is a patient car even if we do treat him like the workhorse he was intended to be. So far, he's never given us big trouble and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he never will.
Next item on the list was to clean up the garage. It was finally time to put both our Halloween and Christmas decorations in their respective nooks in the garage. The oversized scarecrows and Christmas posts were just leaning against one of our garage walls near the door, greeting us everytime we pulled in. It's scary how long we've been turning a blind eye towards finding a proper place for them. My hubby and I are definitely not the most organized people, but we've come to a point where the disarray was just too much. Halloween and Christmas stuff greeting us at the (garage) door, tools on the floor, box upon box piled on top of each other sans labels, clearly we were quickly descending into domestic chaos!
After we finished off with the garage, which we've cleaned up as best we can, we tackled our basement and its quickly diminishing floor space. Imagine, we still have unopened boxes from when we moved in... and we've been living in our new home for nearly a year and a half! We've certainly brought on a new spin to the saying, "Out of sight, out of mind." After rummaging through the different boxes and what-have-yous in the basement, my hubby and I decided that we'll need help in organizing.
Thus off we went to DIY people's nirvana, a.k.a. Lowe's. We got ourselves shelves. Shelves for shoes and shelving units to bring some semblance of order to the dense forest of cardboard that is our basement. Hubby shopped while I chased AT, my toddling diva, around who took it upon herself to inspect every aisle of the warehouse. I think that I may have lost at least 100 calories chasing her up and down the store and trying to get both her, and her equally fidgety brother, out of trouble. With this strenous exercise, I suggested that we stop by the nearby Barnes and Noble where they serve Starbucks coffee and Cheescake Factory goodies. A perfect pairing for stressed-out moms like me. Having thus regained the 100 calories that I've burned, plus an extra 700 more from my carrot cake and coffee frap, we trekked back home with our supplies. By then it was late evening and we decided to continue our mission the following day.
The next day, with our tummies once again full from lunch (and our dear little AT napping away), we attacked our basement with a vengeance. First step, weed out the junk. For a couple of broke homeowners, we've definitely accumulated a lot of stuff. To think that we came from a much smaller apartment before we purchased our home! We had boxes of AJ's old clothes that were saved both for posterity's sake and in case our second child turned out to be a boy. Naturally, with AT being the princess that she was, she got a whole new wardrobe and these boxes of AJ's baby clothes languished in the basement. Then there were our boxes of books. I've already posted that my hubby and I are bookworms. Even with our tight budget for purchasing new books, we've accumulated quite a bit over five years' time. Naturally, my all-time faves have gained instant entry into my bedroom, but the others... well, you know the rest. After these, there were boxes of toys that my children have outgrown, or waiting for AT to grow into. There were at least three large boxes of my parents' knickknacks (I swear, they're making our home their storage space away from home!), seasonal items and of course, my packing materials for my eBay sideline.
Finally... finally our in-between things (in-between because we're either too lazy to find a place for these items in our home or we're too much of a packrat to throw these items away just like that) have been properly sorted out. After arranging them in hopefully a much neater fashion, my hubby and I patted each other in the back and tiredly collapsed on the sofa. Funny how we're proud of ourselves when we've barely scratched the surface! Everywhere I look, things need tidying up. My home office is still a mess, my children's bedrooms have just been haphazardly put together, and please don't let me get started on the living areas. So I guess that all this exercise in organization in precisely just that, an exercise. It's a preview of things to be done once the warm weather finally sticks in.
I can't believe that I'm actually not dismayed at my growing list of things to do. Rather, I oddly feel a little excited about it. Maybe it's because I am not as helpless as I once felt when I was still pregnant and subsequently gave birth to AT. Or maybe I just can't wait to be rid of the winter blues and feel a little more sunshine on my skin again. Of course, I might be singing a different tune tomorrow or the next day when my growing list turns from being a challenge into an overwhelming burden. But with the coming spring, I'm trying to inject some positive thinking into my system... hoping that it'll translate into action. In the meantime, let me put on my socks and try to bundle up for the cold night ahead.
posted by gal in progress | 9:38 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home