Week 4: Choose Your Own Adventure--and Where' I' ve Been

 Once again we are linking up with Simple Mom  for Project Simplify 2012.  This week we were to choose our own adventure. I mentioned that and my plans here --and then disappeared for the week. Uh Oh. Making a face here. Bad blogger!
  Well, I'll tell ya. The week started out great. I had lots of energy, The Hubby was home to help out. He took J's room and completely cleaned it up minus shampooing or replacing the carpet, which it badly, badly needs. 

 This is the after picture because I forgot to get a before picture. Not showing the floor, sorry, but you do get to see my dear sleeping boy who chose to nap before the sheets were put on his bed. See the part of  the daybed there on the side?  Still not up. Dad needs to get something for it first.

Still, a lot did get done. Two bags of trash came out of there, we found some Tupperware that had gone missing, and also some clothes in bad need of washing. J is great at hiding things but I'm happy to say that J has kept it fairly clean since dad did the big purge, and has been "helping" to keep it neat by throwing unwanted (by him) items out the window. See, this helps mom get more exercise by going outside to pick them up, which is a great idea because....whoa. Wait a minute. Enough of the shenanigans! Mama has enough to do! Time for J man to go outside and pick up the stuff that gets tossed. 
  Next my Sweet Hubby tackled The Bathroom. Miss Dottie, why did those two words get capitalized?  Because Dottie lives in a house with two men and is too lazy terrified to go clean it herself, that's why. Nuff said.

 This right here is NOT a picture of the before of my bathroom. Nope, that's a picture of a sunset I tried to capture with my cheapie but loved camera. I can promise you I DID take before shots which showed all of our mayhem and foolishness in the bathroom, but in uploading pictures to my computer, they somehow disappeared.  Please forgive me, I'm still learning some of the ins and outs of blogging and computers and such. 
 So to get an idea of what the bathroom actually looked like I'll tell you what was done in there.

• all the laundry that wasn't in the basket was picked up and taken to be washed, along with the stuff that miraculously was in the basket. 
• The toilet was scrubbed clean.
• The walls were scrubbed clean (with autism sometimes comes toileting issues. Nuff said)
• The shower was fixed so that we can actually shower again.
• The sink was cleaned and cleared of the hair trimmer, the shaving stuff, etc.
• A new shower curtain was put in place.

For what it's worth, here are the after shots. It's a tiny bathroom and its hard to get great angles so hopefully this gives you an idea.

 Yes, that is a throw on the window instead of curtains. Sorry. That window faces the road which would give anyone a clear shot into my business. I tacked it up when we first moved and sadly haven't bothered to replace it with blinds or real curtains. The whys and the wherefores are an entirely different blog post. If you're wondering, the backwards letters spell out Lampasas. We used to live in Texas several years back.
  So where was miss Dottie during all the cleaning that took place? I was in the kitchen cleaning up some hotspots and clearing out some more clutter. Two bags (from the three rooms) went directly to the trash, two are currently near the front door headed for the thrift store.  
  And then it was time for The Hubby to go back to work...and Dottie started battling low energy and sinus headaches yesterday. I'm still battling a headache today so I'm laying pretty low at the moment. 
 All in all, I've enjoyed Project Simplify 2012. I want to thank Tsh from Simplemom.net for hosting this. While I didn't get as much as I wanted accomplished, I did get a huge head start and am happy with the results. I've also learned that in projects I tend to want to do a lot more in one week than I actually can get accomplished, but that's good. It shows me that I can get things done and also what still needs to be done. I plan to continue challenging myself to make this a better place for my family.
 What about you? Have you followed along all month and spring cleaned along with me, Simple Mom,   and all the other bloggers who have linked up? Are you all done now, or are you inspired to continue? I'd love to hear how your week went.

Confessions of a Disorganized Housewife: Project Simplify Week Four Plans

Good morning!
  After all the warm weather last week it finally dipped down into the late 60s, early 70s yesterday. While it felt/ feels good, I'm still looking forward to more 80's weather. 
  This is the final week of Simple Mom's Project Simplify 2012. Because of it I've gotten a few things accomplished and I'm liking the results. I've gotten motivated each week as I worked on the spot of the week and I want to continue that. Having a deadline helped me to focus on the task at hand, and because I stated publicly on Simple Mom that I was going to do the project, I felt accountable to do so.  So, next Monday morning I'll let you know what my project of the week is.
  As for the last week of Project Simplify 2012, Tsh is proclaiming it Choose Your Own Adventure. That means we get to choose what we will be cleaning/ organizing/decluttering for the week. As always, I have a lofty goal in mind and look forward to seeing what actually gets accomplished.
  I have The Hubby at home with me for the next few days as he is on his long weekend of the month (gotta love shift changes...sigh) so he has been recruited to help me out. Bless his heart, he deserves a medal already. He cleaned J's room for me yesterday and today gets to tackle the bathroom for me. 
  So what will I be doing while he slaves away, sitting on my fanny eating bon bons and typing away at the computer? Nope. While I will be typing some, I have my own agenda for the week. I want to tackle two hotspots here in the kitchen that have begun to experience clutter creep once again --my baking center and my table. That's just an appetizer as it will take maybe half an hour to restore tranquility to those things. 
  This week I plan on working in two rooms: the living room and the master bedroom. Both are screaming for help right now and there is a lot of interconnection. Specifically, the laundry needs to be put away, the closet needs to be cleaned thoroughly since Angie moved her babies once again (she's now in the kitchen by the washer and dryer. But at least she's out of the way). The dresser is in serious need of declutter. And The Hubby needs to get his tools out of my living room. 
  That should keep us both busy for awhile. So what am I waiting for? I've got dishes in the sink (not happy about letting that one slide for the last few days. Dishes get done everyday, I just lapsed into letting them sit overnight sometimes. Enough of that!) and hot spots to deal with before my two favorite men wake for the day. So what have you got planned for today? Are you in spring cleaning mode? 

Confessions of a Disorganized Housewife: Week 3, Clearing the Clutter

  Yup, this is week three of Simple Mom's Project Simplify  . Well this week she instructed us to work on closets, cabinets, and counter tops. I was going to work on my bedroom closet because it needs it badly.

 Don't go too googly eyed at Miss Ma'am and her striped babies. In real life her fur isnt that orange. Miss Ma'am, aka Mama, aka Angie, is the reason my closet did not get cleaned this week. She didn't give birth to the kittens in my closet, she just decided to bring them in the house to the safest place she knew of. Oh joy and wonder. Want a kitten? Want two? In about 5 weeks are so the darlings are adoptable.
  Okay, so this is supposed to be about what we actually did. I have a set of shelves one might see in a pantry or garage. It's in my kitchen.

  This is the shelving unit known as the catch all. It brings this reaction to mind:

Its over three minutes long so you dont have to watch the whole thing. But if you do, look for King Kong. The woman screaming there is Faye Raye.

Yes folks, I wanted to scream every time I saw that thing. It holds incoming mail, pots and pans and such that I have no other place to store, and in general, junk! This is what it looks like after two separate sessions of purging, cleaning and organizing. Not perfect, but lots better.

Lots better. My kitchen is almost making me happy to be in it now. Things are coming together nicely. I'm not going to kid myself or you and say that I'll be doing nothing other than cleaning a few other corners of my kitchen all weekend while waiting patiently for Monday's arrival to start the next challenge, but I will be maintaining the progress made and working on a few things today. 
Have a great weekend, all.