Just following along....

  

So, who am I following?  My good friend Melissa at Mindful Homeschooler.  I think she may be following along with another blogger but without clicking over and double checking, I'm not really sure.  In all, what matters is not that I'm following but that I'm actually getting something done around here (and not just enough to get by). 

Those that know me well will tell you that I am always cleaning.  With 3 little boys, if I don't stay on top of things, this place gets to looking like a tornado went through it within a matter of hours.  I pride myself on trying to keep my home company ready at all times.  I fail often but I do try!  I have piles everywhere of things that I need to get done.  I have lots of creative chaos in nearly every room too.  This month Melissa is writing about her journey through cleaning and organizing her home and I've decided to follow along.  She started yesterday with the Kitchen and Living Room.  I started today with my kitchen.  The living room needs a day all to itself in this house!  I took my before pictures while 2 of the boys were eating breakfast, I then ran a load in the dishwasher and tidied up just a bit.  I tidied up a little bit more before dinner tonight and then after dinner I went to work.  I spent about 2 hours tonight cleaning the kitchen. 

I had a cake pan on the counter that has been there for about a month waiting to go back to a friend.  I took it back today (this was partly due to the fact that she's got a newborn baby and I wanted to see him)!!!!  I also still had so much clutter on the counters that just needed to be put away.  Under all that clutter were Kool-Aid stains so out came the BarKeep's Friend and now the counters are back to white!  The floors were less than clean so they got a good vacuum with the stick vac and then scrubbed with the FloorMate (this is the greatest invention EVER!).  Two hours later and I have a sparkly clean kitchen that I actually look forward to cooking in tomorrow evening.  I am so glad that Melissa has decided to challenge herself this month to clean up her house because I might actually get some of my junk cleaned out!  It may take me a bit longer but I will be following along at my own pace. 

Note:  A friend is in the process of making my curtains.  I have one set up already and the others should be ready by this weekend.  I also need to recover the chairs to my table but that too will come with time.  We live in a home that was built in 1910 and our list of things to do is quite long.  We are working on it a little at a time and have made great progress in the 2 years that we've been here.  I look forward to the day that I can say, "We've finished the house," but for now the baby steps are all pretty exciting.