Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Clean Home Carnival---Well, Clean Room Anyway

OK so after reading JulieMom's Clean Home post this morning I very nearly decided that there is something wrong. With her. HOW can someone with 3 little ones, who homeschools, and does missionary work, make a statement like this:

My whole house is now organized. There isn't one area that I feel is out of control, including the kids' closets.


I'm forming a mob to fly over there and mess some stuff up. Wanna come?


I can make a statement too. Are you ready?


My whole dining room is now organized. There isn't one area that I feel is out of control, including the napkin holder.


I KNOW you are impressed.


Now, on to those pictures!


Here are some before picture of our dining room. I was going to tackle this room that day, and about 5 minutes into cleaning I remembered JulieMom's challenge and grabbed the camera. I always choose rooms like the dining room and the bathroom because they are small and I feel like I can accomplish something quickly. So, here is how it looked that day.



That pile on the floor was from a day I decided to get all caught up on paperwork and then I had to clean off the table for supper and.....well, you get the idea.

And here is the side of the fridge that you see when you are sitting at the dining room table. I try to keep all the magnets and stuff on this side because it makes the kitchen look tidier.
However, it doesn't seem to help the dining room.

I started with the ceiling fan. We are already using the fans here in Texas and I wanted to get all the dust off before we turned them on.


Then the girls wandered in and asked to help. I looked at the bottom of the walls and noticed some red splashes on the wall. I asked them to scrub the walls. The more we looked, the grosser it was. Goodness sake! I began to wonder if even 50% of the food I serve ends up in anyone's mouth!!! It reminded me of the time 8 month old Sweetheart sneezed with a mouth full of baby food at my mom's trailer. The wallpaper pattern was such that we were still finding that baby food dried on the walls months later.




Anyway it's a mystery to me how this much junk gets splashed on the walls, but they are clean now.

Sweetheart was sent outside to clean the windows while I cleaned the inside.
I dusted everything.



They scrubbed the table and chairs.



Then I used this stuff on it. This is GREAT stuff. The wood table just drinks it up and the kids think the table is wet for days afterward.



I also mopped and cleaned off the side of the fridge. It's still clutter-y but that's because I have kids. One day it will be nice and clean and I'll be sad. The magnets stay.



And now it's lovely.






Thanks JulieMom for encouraging us!!! Now head over there and join in the fun! You'll feel so good!

10 comments:

  1. Wonderful!! I love how your girls wanted to help...you are training them well :)

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  2. It looks like a bright clean sunny room now and it looks twice as big. Isn't it amazing how big our houses look and feel when we de-clutter them !!! I recently de-cluttered my side of the bed and had forgotten about the small rug I had there! I also found my eye glasses that I had been looking for over a month!
    Is that a piggie on your napkin holder? Too cute !!

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  3. Nice work, Brenda!! That paper pile looked all-too-familiar...we have a few of those around here. They usually end up in a box that eventually moves with us to our next location and sits in a closet for another five years...haha.

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  4. Great job Brenda!! And the Littles wanted to help me clean too, so I let them. It's great to see them WANT to clean!

    Your dining room is so bright! And I love your plate grouping on the wall. So pretty!

    And if you come over and mess up some of my stuff with a mob, I cannot guarantee that I will act like a missionary...m'kay?

    Well, but then I could show you how I clean it all back up and stay organized...ok, the idea has merit.. LOL

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  5. And then you can cook for us!!!! :)

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  6. Great job, Brenda. And lucky you have such willing little ones who do such a good job helping. :-)

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  7. YES! YES I WILL COOK FOR YOU!

    Nothing makes me happier than organizing and cooking. Seriously. But you'll have to do the dishes, if you don't mind. I'll make it worth your while though, I promise!!

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  8. You home is so much like mine! (: I even have the same placemats... plus 5 more. They simply did not have 8 different styles to choose from at Wal-Mart, so one of us "grown-ups" is without a cool placemat. And I want no more complaints that the older ones can not remember the multiplication tables (:

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  9. Yep. We have the multiplication one too! How can you pass that up for under a dollar? This one was the United States map--we learned a lot of capitals while that was on the table!

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  10. I, too, am proud of you! How happy I am that Julie instituted this carnival. It's cool to see everyone else doing the same thing.

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I don't get to talk to a lot of actual grown-ups during the day, so your comments make me really happy! :)