my kind of day

It’s my day off of school and for once, I have nothing to do. Nothing… EXCEPT STAY HOME AND CLEAN!

WHOO-HOO!

Seriously, I’m almost shaking with excitement. I’ve had so many things going on lately (school, interviews for the paper, grocery shopping, school, trying to work out…) that I haven’t had a chance to keep up with the regular day-to-day cleaning (and trust me, it shows). Couple that with extra dust from a house project, clutter and the fact that I’m completely OCD about it all–and you’ve got one crazy girl who can’t take it anymore.

My Thursdays are usually full of errands and things (or 24 hours of painting!), that I can’t just CLEAN.

So, that is what I’m doing today. And I’m making a loaf of garlic french bread in the breadmaker (what a life-saver that invention is!), and plan to make some zucchini bread if time permits as well. Other time-permitting events include a trip to the post office (I will get Summer Rental back to you at some point, Emily!) and painting doors and trim in the guest room upstairs. If I don’t get to them, oh well 🙂 There is always this weekend…

Speaking of this weekend–Andrew says I might be painting the laundry room, too! FINALLY. Cannot wait to post pictures of that!

I snapped a few photos to show you all the craziness/mess I’v been living with for the past few weeks…

Other tasks include:

-switching my Scentsy warmers to fall smells

-hanging our sheer curtains we just got in the mail

-paying our local school taxes

-moving houseplants from unheated porch to regular house

-wall repair/prep in the bedroom before touch-up painting

-a walk/visit to the Nyes with Hadrian?

I’m not sure I’ll be painting this afternoon…

The “Great Closet Clean-Out of 2011”

I cleaned out my closet last night. And my dresser for that matter.

Between my semi-annual need to purge EVERYTHING in my house (I blame my OCD tendencies), our upcoming move and my recent weight-loss (again, yay!), I figured it was time. I had wanted to wait until I lost the last five pounds, but I was running out of pants that fit…

This is what I came up with:

I love cleaning things out. There is just something about de-cluttering something, anything, that brings me great joy. It’s is so cathartic it isn’t even funny. If I ever slip into depression, all you’ll need to do is hook me up with a hoarder and tell me to go to town.

Here is the “pants” section of my closet:

All of those hangers had had jeans or other pants on them. They don’t fit anymore! (And to be honest, the three in the middle you see hanging here are too big, but not falling off yet.) I packed away the best of them (for, God-willing, I gain the good kind of weight that begins to come off 9 months later…) and will donate the rest to Goodwill. I found some great Gap and Nine & Co. jeans and pants yesterday there, so I’ve been able to re-populate some of my closet with size 8’s–HOORAY!

*A moment about Goodwill: Before you write it off and think you’d never shop there…give it a chance. Obviously, some Goodwills are better than others, but you never know what you’ll find. I have a friend who has gotten multiple pairs of Lucky jeans for herself and her family, and there are tons of Gap, Banana Republic and J.Crew gems out there just waiting to be discovered. The trick is to go often (up to a couple time a week) and get to know your store. Once you know where your size is in all the sections, it doesn’t take long to buzz in and see what treasures are waiting. You would not believe what some people give away, with the tags still on them!

I do have two pairs of dress pants I may try to get altered. I just can’t bear to part with them (they are almost brand new since I never wear them) and one of them has a matching blazer. And I did have some great pants…a pair of Lucky jeans (tear) and some J.Crew khakis… It’s almost sad. Until I put them on and am in shock at what a difference 10 pounds makes. And I guess I’ll just have to replace my favorites 🙂

(In case you’re a pessimist and think I’ll just put the weight back on…think again!) I’m pretty determined, self-motivated, and I can’t wait to change my goal in Livestrong to “maintain,” instead of “lose.”

For Goodwill:

Yay for purging!

Help! I need my life back…

I’ll just go ahead and say it: I’m a neat freak/control freak/clutter-phobe. If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know this is true.

We’re in the process of tiling our master bathroom floor (something we should have done when we moved in THREE YEARS ago), as well as trying to get our house ready to list with a realtor. Translation: I’ve started boxing random things up, neglected cleaning ANYTHING (because I’ll just have to clean it all over again when we take the listing photos) and the tiling project has somehow spilled into all the other rooms in the house.

So, for those of you who swear my house is ALWAYS clean, here you go:

Kitchen–I can’t live like this much longer…

Don’t miss the TWO vacuums in the photo… Not that I’ve been using them or anything.

Guest bath–we’ve moved in during the tiling project, but not very neatly

Notice the master toilet in the lower left of the photo–makes using the bathroom and getting in and out of the shower interesting…

Office–who am I kidding? It’s never been clean…

For once, I would just like an organized office! I would swear up and down that it’s all Andrew’s fault, but I’m as much to blame as he is. We never “use” the office, so we just throw things in there and when we can’t see the floor anymore, we eventually clean it up. This is AFTER I did that and didn’t know what to do with the rest of this stuff… Moving on…

Master Bedroom–it’s seen the brunt of the damage from the project

I’m embarrassed to admit it’s been like this for more than a week. The piles just keep getting bigger…

My half of the bedroom–it’s just as messy!

And finally, the actual bathroom…

Unfortunately, you can barely see the tile for the mess. But, it was the right color (beige) and the right price (58 cents/sq. ft.)! Thankfully, Andrew is a fantastic tiler. He’s already said he’s buying his own tile saw for the next project…here’s to praying there won’t BE a next project. At least not any time soon.

Pray for me… I think my deadline to get ALL of this cleaned up is Saturday!