Project Simplify…I Know You Wanna!

Fair warning: this is about to get SUPER mom-y.  I am going to talk about spring cleaning and even provide details of some of the nastier aspects of my home.  You’ve been warned.

I’ve been following Simple Mom on Facebook now for a while, and I occasionally read the blog posts, but today I got incredibly excited about Simple Mom’s “Project Simplify.”  I’m not sure why I am so pumped about it, but I am going to tell my lucky readers ALL about it.  Basically, Simple Mom is providing the framework for spring cleaning.  This is not the most mind-blowing idea, but it does provide an impetus for something I am sure all of us need to do.  I have always been a firm believer that your mind can remain un-cluttered if your environment is un-cluttered.  For instance, I never did homework in college if my apartment was dirty.  Prior to my husband and I moving in together, I told him that I would no longer come over to his apartment to do school-work until he and his roommate did some serious cleaning.  I need organization or I get kinda pissy.

That being said, I am not unlike many people in that I have pesky areas of disorganization that persist simply because they are “out of sight” or at least, not in my direct path of daily routine.  These things are not “out of mind” because they pop up time and again and I think, “I really need to work on that,” but then my son wakes up from his nap.  So here I sit with piles of unorganized clutter in my bedroom, cobwebs in all of my corners, and several drawers full of items that “might” be useful some day.

So we have now arrived at the point in my post where I am going to break down this project and share a little bit of my preliminary thoughts on getting cleaned up!

Drawers and Shelves (Week of April 9):  One drawer that I certainly plan to attack is the ubiquitous “junk drawer.”  I’ve got all kinds of things in there: mouse traps, wine bottle holders, mop heads, extension cords, and a plethora of left-handed rubber gloves.  Yup, every time I rip or otherwise destroy my right-handed glove, I stash the left-handed one just in case I can use it later.  Funny story: in the two years I have been practicing this, I have never once needed a left-handed glove.

That Pesky Closet (Week of April 16): All of my closets could use a good gutting, but I think I am going to tackle the closet in our half-finished “basement room.”  We have been stashing things in that room since we moved here a few years back and it is really starting to drive me nuts.  There is all kinds of crap in there, including a community of spiders that need vanquishing.

Piles (Week of April 23): Though not nearly as bad as my father’s nasty habit of piling, I do have piles at different points in my house.  It seems unavoidable; we all do it.  I’ve got knitting piled behind my recliner, bags piled in my bedroom, books piled in various places, and my husband has an ever-growing pile of god-knows-what on top of the refrigerator.  That HAS to go.

That Put-Off Project (Week of April 30):  This is most definitely my bathroom.  The calking needs to be redone, I need to wash the walls and ceiling because we have no fan so tiny little bugs have met their death getting trapped in condensation on my ceiling.  Paints and yummy picture doesn’t it?  I need to wash the tub thouroughly…I put this off all the time because I freakin’ hate it.  And the shower caddy could use a good scrubbing, too.  Bathrooms gross me out as a general rule so I keep mine functionally clean, but there are all those tasks that a person HATES that have been left unattended.

So there ya have it folks, a brief run-down of my spring cleaning plans.  Wanna join?  Feel free!  When the house is fully clean you will be free to enjoy doing whatever the hell you want out-of-doors as the sun returns this summer!

Related:

http://www.simplemom.net