The Need to Clean

The aftermath.

This past week I had to recover from our previous party-filled weekend. Seriously. It took me all week. Well, I had to recover plus I came down with a cold, and I had an additional day of babysitting duty as well.

All week I've been staring at boxes piled up full of deflated jungle animals, leftover craft supplies and extra balloons in one corner, while in the other corner sat a stack of birthday gifts that needed to find homes and corresponding thank-you cards written.

While driving me crazy all week, this mess has also instilled in me "a need for clean" in the house. I have this incredible urge to go through every room and rid it of extras, clean out the things we don't use, and organize the things we do use. So today, call it early "nesting" or a God-given energy burst (kick in the pants), I spent the day organizing. On this rare Sunday, Mr. D had to go into work. We went to church together this morning, came home, I fed Mr. D some lunch (the last of the leftover hamburgers!), kissed him good-bye, and got to organizing.

I have convinced Mr. D to give me a cupboard in the garage where I can store my ever-growing collection of party supplies and crafy-type stuff. Once I secured the valuable cupboard space, we measured it and went off on a storage bin shopping spree last Thursday. In the Target aisle, we pulled out different sizes of bins, stacked them, turned them, restacked them, so I could make sure I maximized my space. I ended up purchasing about 8 bins of varying sizes.

And the bins have been sitting next to all of the aforementioned piles from Thursday to today. They've been taunting me of my disorganization. So today, I had to do something about it.

Of course, before you organize, you have to un-organize. I emptied out our hall closet - also known as my catch-all location. This is the place where I quickly hide things when company comes over (or I'm in the middle of planning any sort of event, holiday, etc.). Its a good thing I live in California where people don't wear coats, but most of the time when I have company over, I wouldn't be able to hang their coats in there because they wouldn't fit along with the baby potty chair stacked on top of the ironing basket, next to the table arrangement that didn't look quite right with my tablecloth, and the sad everyday couch pillows that were thrown in there to be swapped with the "company" pillows.

So the closet spilled out.

And I got to organizing.

I feel much better now. The closet is neat and tidy. I was able to empty it out some so I can actually access most of the items. Some items found their way to the goodwill box, and others to my new storage bins that are now filled, labeled, and waiting for their new garage home.

So I have accomplished step one in my need to clean. My next target is the entertainment unit. It has two cabinets underneath the television. I want to designate one for Grace, so I can store her books and puzzles neatly in there for her to access. Right now, one cabinet has movies and other randomness, and the other has my CD collection (which is organized alphabetically in CD holders) but also my empty cases with liners. What do I do with these? Anyone?

So now that I'm organized and can see my floor again, I am struck by how dirty it is! Yikes. Time to do some dusting, mopping, and shining this week.