Cleaning My Home Sweet Home

 Today was our first day back from Florida with our feet really on the ground. So, we decided to drive back down to the airport after a deep sleep (we got in at 3AM Saturday) and ship A off to California. We are all sad to see him go and are shuffling along towards normal but feeling very strange without him here to shuffle too. In his absence I have decided to CLEAN!

On my way back from the airport I bought a new vaccuum cleaner and then I hit the house like a brace of foxes with their tails tied to torches! I got both full baths done and started the master bedroom. Bedrooms always take longer to spring clean just because of all the linens that need washing. On our bed we have not only the dust ruffle and regular assortment of pillows and sheets but also a pillowtop and double pillows which I always think it smart to wash too. Shezam! Things are smelling fresher...windows have been opened, rubber gloves have been squeaked into and little boys have been pressed into service.

I took pictures for posterity. After I finish a room, as a reward I get to freeze the moment in a photo. These pictures are the most lasting evidence that any cleaning happened. Good thing I am not too attached to results. Have you heard about what it is like to clean a house with kids in it? So true. At least for my house and my kids. Today, I am processing Florida and making spring come by scrubbing and not worrying too much about how long the floor stays free of pee or the sink without spots. 

Florida was divine, as it will be. All sunshine and palm trees and shells on shells on the white, powdery sand. We met new friends, hung out with old and even had a little time with family which is the pinnacle of perfection. 

Am chewing on the things I learned from this trip. 

Lots of little things, and some larger things:

• Winter recovery trips should be to one cabin/cottage AT the beach, no hopping and driving about.
• Paprika is a great spice and deserves more of the limelight.
• So does lime! Its good for so much more than avocados and ice water.
• Nib is not really ready to go on airboat rides to see wild alligators.
• The older two kid are really getting to the point where they have opinions and want input into vacation choices.
• Having a washer is a must in a vacation house.
• Florida has SOOOO much stuff to see! We must go back.

In between thinking fondly of Florida, sorting our shells we brought home, dumping sand out of swimsuits and cleaning madly....I boxed off some time for a walk outdoors with my bevy of scrubbers and shell gatherers.

 

We trotted around the block in only our sweaters, mind you! And admired the melting snow, the empty sidewalks and the feeling of fresh, moist air on our cheeks. And then we found it. The first flower of the spring! Just around the corner from our house there were snowdrops actually out of the ground, blinking whitely at the world. We had a little jumping up and down celebration and then promptly ran back home to make the Very Last Tiny Snowman Of Winter with the remains of the snow in the backyard (our house faces south so the back always holds the snow). 

Spring is slowly creeping along and starting to look like its on its way and my man has promised he'll bring us all some more sunshine when he comes home from California. Power on! Tomorrow I tackle the upstairs floors and take my first big load to Goodwill.

Greening and Cleaning

The world is greening, the lawn wants mowing already and our new baby guinea pigs are living high on boy offerings of dandelions and grass blades by the fistful. We have been spending a lot of time outdoors. The garden is in, all but the tomatoes, the corn and the possible melon plants which I am waiting on just a little, little while. I feel quite accomplished....as long as I don't think too hard about my spring cleaning plans.

 Spring Cleaning is hard. It's grueling, back-breaking, mind-bending, knee throbbing work by design...that's why it's only done once or twice a year. We can't really put out this sort of effort very often and when we do we go all out. I'm not sure how much pressure to put myself under while pregnant.
There's a piece of me that says:

          "You better push hard now girl! You think its hard to clean this house when you're shaped like a beach ball and everything aches? Just wait till you're trying to heal up from birth and nurse in all your waking hours. This is the time. Don't whine. Just get it done." 

And then there's the voice that says:

           "Heh. Right. You're enormous, everything hurts, and who really spring cleans anymore anyway. All your friends think you're insane! Just mop the floors and give yourself gold stars for even attempting the job. There's always later."

Which little shoulder voice to obey....what to do, what to do? At the moment I am weakly still claiming to be cleaning and making tiny, little feeble stabs at the list every day now for the second freaking week running. Am I duping myself or am I a Spartan of a woman, fierce in my stubborn desire to make it through, even if it means accomplishing it all at a crawl? I'm not sure. Maybe I'll still give up. It remains to be seen.

 In other news, A is off work this week...he took some time for sanity segue before his new job he's starting (cue confetti!) so we have him around the house all week in varying measures which has been super productive and quite fun. His new position will be similarly geeky (programming extraordinaire) but at a local company a little closer to our house, right in our own city no less. He just breezed into the house from a test run rollerblading to the new job site....30 minutes by blade from our front door. Not bad....honestly its exactly the same by car minus the exercise credits.

Less is More, It Just Is.

Tonight A and I are going out for the night, just the two of us, our last date night alone before the zaniness of family travel and other celebratory activities hit us full in the chest. I'm not sure if that's what's doing it or if is intention to focus on what matters in the middle of this holiday season, or even just new thinking about the coming excitement of New Year's Resolutions and the clean slate that is a crispy new January.

Suddenly I'm thinking about all the new toys and sweets and "stuff" we'll be bringing home for our little ones and I'm feeling the unstoppable urge to purge. Time to go wildly through our goods and take boat loads of things to Goodwill! Time to create empty, clean spaces! Time to set things in order in our house so that we return from Michigan to a calming space instead of insanity!

I am remembering that the things children like best are the simple ones....the ones that don't cost much or anything at all. Cookie cutters, shiny pebbles, string, the wrapping paper...you know. Am off to sort the playroom, to vacuum all the corners and to take bags of stuff, stuff, stuff to the trunk of our van for a thrift shop drop-off.

Less is more. It just is.

Poetry Friday: A Laundry Poem

Today, a laundry poem that I chuckled while writing, because I am working on my own mountain between attacking the last of the last of the moving boxes. And we all need a little touch of comic relief + heroism now and then, don't we? Sometimes it is just the thing.

Joan of D’ark and Dirty

Laundry is the great monster

Mommy wrestles; her eternal foe.

Every day, long tentacles flailing from the

Hamper, dripping ooze in the form of

Socks and spotted onesies, by the pound.

She hacks at it, vigorously sorting its many limbs

Into piles: whites, darks, reds.

She rises periodically from the latest fray,

Ceremoniously mounting the stairs,

A badge of crisp pillowcase on her arm.

She strategizes the endless new advance,

Not faltering in the face of the grim smells

Of covert hand grenades the enemy leaves

Moldering in the depths of the diaper bag.

We are polished, lest the monster take our very skins

And admonished sternly of his wily ways

She sprays over us her protective elixirs:  

Tide (jumbo, extra concentrated)

And Shout, in little rhythmic squirts.

Laundry sometimes roars and beats Its chest

Rattling the floorboards with the throaty,

Conquering cry of a monster that has

Boldly taken our last dish towel to his bowels.  

But, Mommy rallies with a Monday morning war cry.

There is a great clanging of machine lids and

The sound of lusty Patsy Cline yodeling from the basement

And before we know it, Laundry is only a simpering

Trio of washcloths and a single pair of underwear

Slinking there behind the dryer hose.  

My Inner Neat Nick

I am not pregnant, but I have a few friends who are at the moment...among them one of my sisters (Hi Doubleddog!!! *waving*). And the other day a few of us were sitting around sympathizing with one very pregnant pal over her irresistible nesting urges.

"EVERYTHING must be done now. It is really important. It will not be okay if we plan on doing it later and I think I'll cry." 

You know, that sort of thing. And I we all ended up in stitches laughing about how dire the whole thing feels and how ridiculous it sounds out loud, especially when you're not pregnant...and also how fabulous it is to know that other people have been the same sort of mutant life-form you turn into when you're making another small human. Golly there is hope in solidarity. Such a great word.

And then tonight A and I went out for dinner and I told him that although I'm a mildly messy person and not very organized about my housekeeping systems and methods I recently put my finger on the fact that disorder really bugs me. On some deep psychological level that is not very overt, I come undone and begin to unravel at the seams. Its just like how some people get grouchy when they're too hungry. I do that when there are too many dirty dishes and none of the toys are in the toy box anymore and the floor hasn't been swept in four days. I am not sure if this is a new part of me emerging as I become neater or if I've always been this way and just noticed, but I've found that if I notice I'm feeling ultra-grouchy and snappy and think about why, sometimes I realize that I think the house is driving me nuts. And then, if I find a little space to work on the house, I magically feel better.

And yeah. Its a tiny piece of that same mania that I feel when I'm at the end of a pregnancy. Except I don't feel that way all the time, around the clock even at every potty break in the middle of the night. I just feel that way when things get too out of control. But, yeah...its the same feeling.

And then today, while blog browsing....I bumped into a cartoonist's blog and they had this fantastic entry that made me giggle, but my favorite part was this drawing which perfectly captures "the feeling."

Occasionally, this beast is me. I feel it coming on.

This Week, We....

 

Had the biggest snowstorm of the winter...

 

(Here's our patio garden under wraps...turn your head sideways for correct perspective. Sorry! *wince*)

 

 And so we took the kids to a local estate-cum-extensive park for a little late afternoon/evening sledding...

  

 (Cute man in snowstorm)

  

Three cute men, sledding...

  

 The snowman we built just before hustling off the car in the dark.

  

 Aunt Sheila came by and saved the day. Elbow grease, homey homemade lunch, listening ear and much anticipated playmate about covers it. (and doesn't she have a chic haircut?)

 

My house got very clean. *grin*

 

 

See?

 

 We made hearts and painted them.

  

 We wore out one little valentine.

 

We met the newest calf at our local dairy farm.

And we made it more than halfway through The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. He's riveted and every time we have to stop there are tears. Makes his mommy's heart go pitter pat.

Just another fabulous week here at the the homestead. Looking forward to another!

The Scrubbing Begins

Well all, I am not vanquished yet but, I'm to the really mirey stage of The Big Clean. This is the part where I get weepy and almost quit five times a day. Things really slow down here. I was clipping merrily along yesterday but today I got to the jobs that are really grubby (scrubbing down the toilets, really, really well....cleaning the oven within an inch of its life...etc.) and they take a lot of time.

I spent all morning on just the refrigerator and by lunchtime I think everyone was on the verge of crying between the buckets and buckets of murky water I kept dumping out and refilling and the hunger level of various toddlers. Whew. Some things are nice to have over.

The hard news is that tomorrow is another hard day. After tomorrow (assuming I get tomorrow's stuff done tomorrow) I will be down to the fluffier finishing up tasks. Today, I began scrubbing with the kitchen appliances and bathrooms, and tomorrow I do glass (windows, mirrors, picture fronts and the like) and then hit the floors, walls, light plates, and skirting boards. Am trying not to think about that as I head to bed. Must just focus on rest at the moment. In the morning my aunt arrives to bolster the forces and fill our tummies with comforting food.

I will survive!

In the vein of distracting oneself...I thought you'd like to see the pictures I never posted from Dee's second birthday celebration.

Fruit and Scrub Brushes

Meet one of my new favorite fruits. It looks like an orange (until you see them next to each other) but its not orange...its a minneola! Also known as a tangelo, also known as a Honeybell, also known as a cross between the Duncan grapefruit and the Dancy tangerine.

I'm not a big fan of tangerines...they have this strong, tangeriney flavor that I don't really dig and I dunno, they always have a lot of seeds. I do like grapefruit although I wouldn't imagine it to be the genetic remedy for what I dislike in the tangerine. Seems like you'd get an off flavored, giant, slightly bitter fruit with a hearty tang. Instead...you get a really juicy, sweet, sweet fruit with a thin peel and delicate membranes separating the slices which makes them really tender and yes, again, extra juicy.

I love how rich red the orange is, I love how easily they slice, how briskly they disappear off the serving plate. And seriously, how could you not find that outie bump on the end appealingly cute? They are my new favorite fruit...right up there with the leaf and stem satsumas.

 

Here's a minneola and a regular naval orange, side by side.

And here's a shot of my rubber cleaning gloves and my new scrub brush, my little motivating gift to myself to spur on my cleaning. As I told a friend on facebook yesterday, I feel like quitting the scrub about four times a day BUT...I'm not to be defeated. I've done it all before so I know I can do it now. I'm halfway through! Today the actual scrubbing starts...I dusted high places this morning and have just begun vacuuming all the light fixtures, lampshades and blinds. Whew! See you all on the other side of sneezy!

 

Sunshine Day

I really like Jason Mraz' big hit song, I'm Yours, a lot, (its in my spring cleaning iTunes mix after all) but, I almost like this Sesame Street version more. Special props to Jane who introduced me to the original in the first place! Check it out though, really. Made me smile this morning when I opened the kitchen shutters to blinding sunlinght and I keep humming it as I check the cleaning list spread out on top of the piano.



If you don't know the original, just haven't seen the music video or can't get enough and want to see it one more time....here's it is.



Yesterday, I got all the beds stripped down to the mattresses and started washing pilllows, mattress covers, duvets...etc. I vac'd and flipped all the mattresses and have started putting them back together. I got rid of all the trash in the house, sorted through our food cupboards and fridge, and have sorted most of the drawers in the house. Today I get rid of the rest of the clutter in prep for real scrubbing. Purge the bookcases, sort the toiletry collection, and put away anything that's sitting out as well as collecting items with no home on the landing. Then we bust out the rubber gloves and the scrub brush!

Spring Cleaning Begins!

This is going to be a quiet week around the blog. I'm spring cleaning the house along with one of my favorite bloggy friends, Alison, from Brocante Home. If you're interested in joining in, either this week (as I clean or later at your own pace) then check out her fabulous Seasonal Scrub directions. I try to do this twice a year and when I get it done the house glitters in a very encouraging way and I feel very accomplished.