Cleaning

Friday, I cleaned the house.

Well, at least the upstairs of the house.

This may not seem monumental to most of you.  You're thinking "And...?"

But I don't clean.  I hate cleaning.  Throughout my adult life, I would struggle with wanting a clean house but having no drive to actually do it.  Usually, by the time I was done picking up all the stuff that was never put away, I was too tired to actually clean.

Several years ago, a friend told me to cut myself some slack and just have someone come clean for me.  And yet, I procrastinated.  I was sure that I could stay on top of it.  When we moved to Texas, I talked to some of my fellow teachers about it and, low and behold, they had people who cleaned their houses.

Now, let's be honest.  Part of me wanted to believe I could do it all, part of me didn't want to spend the money, and part of me was dealing with the husband who didn't want to spend the money.  I finally took the plunge and had a company come out.  I walked through the door that evening and like magic, everything was sparkling and smelled good.  Even Luis agreed to have them keep coming out.

But during the summer I'm not working and it seems wrong to pay someone to clean my house when I am home.

Thus, I cleaned part of my house on Friday.

And I was so exhausted that I needed Saturday to recoup.  So I took a day off from doing anything house related (aside from picking up some paint that you'll hear more about later) and had a day for me.

I went and got a pedicure.  You know you are way overdue when the lady picks up your foot, looks at your heels, and just shakes her head.  Now my toes are beach-ready for Florida (and lake-ready for Illinois).

Afterward, I went and got a haircut.  My hair was WAY too long and my go-to style had become a pony-tail.  About 6-7 inches shorter and some highlights, and Ta-Da!  These are before and after pictures from my Summer Reading Challenge Tweets.  In the before, you see my standard pony-tail and after, my shorter, lighter do.  Yea!

The Great Decluttering

If you read my last post, you know that my office is one of my goals for the summer.  It is b-a-d-l-y in need of some organization and restyling.  Yesterday I decided to get started on it.  Just as a flash back, here is what it looked like.

A couple other pictures so you can understand what I was dealing with here.

Needless to say, it was a mess!  I started by pulling the baskets out that I had previously used for sorting.  

If you interested in the sorting signs, you can get your own over at A Bowl Full of Lemons.  Just click here and it will take you to the post with the link.  Or there are some bright ones available at I Heart Organizing.  Click here for the post featuring the download.

By sorting into baskets, it allows me to focus on the room I'm in without leaving to put something away in another room.  When it comes to cleaning and organizing I'm a lot like Doug the dog from Up!, all it takes is one distraction and I'm off on something else.

At the end of day one, after sorting, shredding, tossing and moving out of the room, this is what it looked like.

Is it perfect?  No!  Can I actually see the top of my desk?  Yes!  Progress has been made.  Among other things, I still need to file the kids' school papers (See that pile of stuff on the left side? Yep, that!), move the blue patterned chair out (it belongs in the living room), finish shredding, file papers, organize the cabinets, get that old Dell computer out, paint, install ceiling fan, and lots more.

I'm also thinking about moving the desk.  After much research and deep thinking (aka. spending hours on Pinterest), I found lots of examples of a desk being placed in front of the bookshelves or against the wall looking out the window.  We are thinking about rearranging the desk in front of the shelves to see if that layout works.  I will post pictures once we try it out.

The Never-Finished Office

We got back from Austin yesterday, so today was devoted to unpacking and getting to work on some of my summer goals.

Each summer I come up with a grand list of things I want to get accomplished before heading back to school in the fall (and somehow never finish).  My office has been a goal of mine practically since we moved in almost two years ago.

Awhile ago, we purchased some furniture for the office, but we never finished the room.

Then later, we went through the papers and redid the filing, but we never finished.

I purged books and styled the bookcases, but I never finished.

I started to go through everything in the office and sort into piles, but I never finished.

Are you starting to get the idea?  Despite all this "work", this is what my office looks like today.  View at your own risk!

And that is not even showing the mess hidden behind the desk and the stuff shoved in the cabinets. Needless to say, it needs to be addressed.  So, expect to see some updates as I work my way through this room with a goal to actually finish it this time!

Sometimes you just have to jump in...

I guess sometimes you have plans and those plans get put on hold because everything is not perfect. And then they stay on hold. And on and on until finally you just have to jump in.

This is one of those times.  I had decided to blog quite some time ago, created a name, wrote the About Me section, and then...nothing. Nada! Life got in the way I guess, what with teaching, mothering, wife-ing, and student-ing.

But today is going to change that. Right now we are in Austin, on the 7th floor of a hotel downtown looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the buildings surrounding us. My two littles are singing along to Frozen songs playing on the iPads. The Mr. is watching sports documentaries.  We've already been to the Texas Memorial Museum at the University of Texas at Austin, looked at the dinosaur fossils, bought souvenirs at the gift shop.

We also got to walk around Zilker Park for awhile before it started sprinkling.

Yesterday, we explored the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum (which the kids were much less interested in) and watched Inside Out at the Imax theatre.  What a great movie!  We all really enjoyed it. It's already been added to our To-Buy List.

Tomorrow we say goodbye to Austin and head home.