2 posts tagged “spring cleaning”

Are you planning on doing any spring cleaning this year? If so, please share a cleaning tip you swear by.

What do I swear by? Have someone else do it!!! No, just kidding :) I'm actually pretty "particular" about how the cleaning is done around the apartment - which is a good thing because Paul is not. His family was very different from my family when it comes to cleaning - and I fight with it all the time.

All joking aside though, I was considering having someone come in and really clean the apartment before we left for Scotland. Both of the animals will be gone and to come home to a still clean apartment sounds like slipping into a hot bath after a long day - heaven. A lot of cleaning services have what are called "Spring Cleaning" specials and I'm hoping to jump on one of those. Who knows, maybe I'll ask my dad to arrange to have the carpets cleaned to. What better time, right?

On Friday my sister came over with my nephew. They were replacing the bathtub/shower in their new apartment and they needed to be gone for the whole day. I felt terrible though because the place was a mess, an absolute mess. We'd taken down our Christmas decorations, but hadn't stored them as I lacked containers. We'd been neglecting general up keep of the house because of the stressful week (and the week before) and so the trash needed to go out, the catbox needed cleaning, the guest bathroom needed cleaning. Everything was dusty and the carpet really needed to be vacuumed. To top it all off, she really needed to use our computer & printer and the guest bedroom (where said items are) was a mess as well with stuff spilling out everywhere. I was so embarrassed, but she was sweet and didn't make me feel like I should have been embarrassed. Actually she gets a little frustrated when I'm embarrassed by the mess because she says, "Get over it! I'm your sister - I've seen you pee. We've shared a bathroom & a bedroom and I've seen you worse." All very true, she brings me back to earth pretty easily.

When Paul got home I started in about how messy the apartment is and blah, blah, blah. I told him I was sick of it! So, as I mentioned, Paul & I went to Ikea on Friday night to begin the process of cleaning & organizing by purchasing those storage containers. We got home late but I still began to fill the tubs from the stuff in the guest closet. Then Saturday I woke up and began again. By the afternoon I'd made a lot of progress but I realized that what I really wanted to do was rearrange the guest room. We had moved in and hadn't changed the setup since despite the fact that the setup didn't work for us. Paul was difficult to convince though. He doesn't like change. But, I was set and determined and in the end I made him a deal. He helped me move furniture - we'd go see his movie of choice. Sounds like a stupid deal but the only movies he wanted to see I really didn't want to see: Rambo IV and Cloverfield, and I'd been holding out for awhile. So he agreed :)

The pictures below are not to scale. If they were to scale I'm sure everyone would be worried because my closet & room doors grew in the "new room" image! Plus it looks like we have a lot of room - but we really did not. Now we do. These are just to show that we moved everything other than this set of plastic drawers - which we actually did move a bit to the left :)

Old Room

New Room