Spring is here and I am so excited! I love spring, the newness of everything! New growth, new babies (my 13th grand baby is past due by 5 days, but God’s in control of that. LOL), spring flowers and yes, spring cleaning. If you are anything like me (a lil OCD) then you are ready to get started.
Now, I know everyone is not excited about spring cleaning but I love “out with the old and in with the new” and if I can’t have new then I at least want to know where the old is and give it it’s own special place. You know the place where when you need it you can always go and find it. I know most of you are overwhelmed with spring cleaning and don’t even know where to begin and sometimes won’t start cleaning because you are so overwhelmed. So you just give up before you even begin. It gets put in the Scarlet File, you know the one where “I’ll think about that tomorrow”. And what happens to that file? You just keep pulling the Scarlet File and moving it to the bottom of the files until you feel like you are drowning. Well, let’s think about eating an elephant. We just eat it one bite at a time until he’s all gone. This is how we should look at the spring cleaning.
Where do you begin? I like to take one room and stay there until I’m convinced that I’ve done all that needs to be done. Now don’t get me wrong, I do chase a lot of rabbits when cleaning. I’m going along and find something that goes in another room in the house so I go to put it up only to find something in that room that needs cleaned up or put away and I get side tracked really fast. So you have to make up your mind you are in for the long haul of cleaning that one room. Here was the room we were about to tackle.
So after surveying the room, we brought in some storage tubs. One for “Give Away, one for “Storage”, one for “Trash”. We actually had several other tubs as well. We had a tub for clothes that they had outgrown but we want to save for younger sibling. We also had a tub for toys that they had outgrown but want to share with younger sibling. So when you are purchasing tubs you have to think about what items you will find in the room and what you would like to do with them.
We put all the DVD’s in a tub, the books in another. In the toy box we put any toys that they would play with everyday or are their favorite toys. We also made 2 more tubs and put them in the garage so that we could rotate toys in and out of the their room. Every month bring back one of the tubs and rotate some of the others out. This way they think they have new toys to play with every other month. We also had a lot of toys that needed to be outside so we moved them to an outside tub.
Once the room was emptied we went through all of the drawers and removed any clothes that they had outgrown. We re-folded and moved things around to make room for a new sibling that was moving into the room. We moved the older siblings clothes into the lower drawers so they could reach their clothes and the younger siblings in the upper drawer for mommy to reach.
What’s next? Time to get to the nitty gritty. We took the vacuum cleaner and went around the baseboards then took a wet rag and wiped them down. Make sure you do the top of the baseboards and along the carpets edge. There was some writing on the walls and you know, I hate to erase kids artwork BUT we do want to make the room look cleaner so bring out the Magic Eraser. It took most of the artwork off. We dusted and made the bed. We cleaned the window and window sill. We washed the doors. Wiped off all the walls including removing Charlotte from her web. Don’t forget the ceiling fans or light fixture. Make sure you clean them as well. Then we added an extra rod to the closet. On the lower rod is the older siblings, so he can reach his clothes and on the upper rod is the younger siblings so mommy can reach them. Then we start bringing back in the toys for the toy box. We added a trash can between the wall and the toy box for all the swords that Peter Pan has to have to defend the kingdom. AND above is the finished room! Mommy was extremely happy! And the young man that lives here was pretty proud as well! He even called me a couple of nights later to tell me how he was keeping it clean. He was pretty proud of the room himself.
One of the best things that made this clean up special was being able to work with a mommy that was feeling overwhelmed but we had a great time together! Find someone to help you and find ways to make clean up fun!
I know this was just one room. We did proceed to other rooms in the home and if you’d like suggestions on how to improve other rooms in your home let me know.
Ladies, I know this seems SO overwhelming when you think, “But you haven’t seen my home!” I agree it is overwhelming. And you think, “I just can’t do this.” OR “Think of the time I can’t spend with my kids” OR “We have baseball or ballet or etc!” I understand that too I’ve had lil ones but once that home is all in order just think of how much more time you will have with those precious little ones. Teach them where things go so when you say, “Go get your shoes,” they know exactly where those shoes are. OR when you say, “Where are you pj’s?,” they run right to that drawer to pull them out. They are fresh, clean and put in the same place each time so both of you can find them in a short amount of time. What a relief you will feel!
So take a deep breath, grab a friend or a family member, grab the trash bags and let’s get started!
Renee Nealy
PS. Do you have any other suggestions on how we could have made this room any better? I’m always looking for easier and better ways of doing things.
