Spring Cleaning Bug

I’m pretty sure the Spring Cleaning Bug did not hit me last year.  It probably had something to do with a wee baby.  This year, though, I’m getting hit hard.  It usually starts as a chain reaction, and this year is no different.

You see, it all started with the Birkie race out in Wisconsin.  Knut and I were stuck in the van together for several hours each way, and we got to talk over many things that we never get to talk over.  One of the things we discussed was our house plans for the year.  As I’m typing this, Knut is working on the built in bookshelves in the den that is kinda his winter project this year since the fireplace was finally finished.  Well, he’s not actually hammering and nailing as we speak.  He’s pouring over books and plans and rulers and paper right now.

This detour does have a point.

Anyway, the last few years we’ve been working on getting the living room finished.  We got the fireplace done, and we got it furnished with both things we saved up for, and things off of Craigslist or garage sales, and some things were just offered to us.  At least they were all things that we wanted and not the previous hand-me-down furniture or furniture we literally pulled out of dumpsters in college.  It’s like the first room in the house that feels like it’s “ours.” 

We were planning on moving onto the dining room this year.  After some discussion, we both agreed that we should slow that down a bit because it may not be wise to furnish the whole room this year.  For one, our van has 197,000 miles on in and is in the shop nearly on a monthly basis these days.  Secondly, this summer Knut and I will be celebrating 10 years of marriage and were hoping to getaway together at some point. 

So we decided to just take a chunk out of the dining room project this year and get the buffet that I’ve been eye-ing in an antique store in town for over 6 months, and possibly get a rug.  A table, chairs that don’t need to be glued weekly, and hutch will have to wait for another year.  (We have a hand-me-down table that a friend gave to us with chairs that work well in there, but are a bit run down.  Actually, run down works really well right now as a table for the kids to do school.)

So before Knut could change his mind, this last week I marched right into that antique store and put money down on the buffet I’ve been wanting, and thankfully was still there.   I had 3 months to pick it up.  I casually mentioned it to Knut, knowing he was not in the hurry I was.  To my surprise, he picked it up the very next morning.

(I need to clean the mirror…I know.  Darn you high resolution camera picking that up…)  We need to move the picture there too.  In time.

I was so excited for finally getting this piece of furniture, I was jumping up and down.  That made moving in my nice dishes there a bit tricky.  😉  It was good to free up some space in the kitchen.  (Note: the trick to using china often is to not have a dishwasher.  When you don’t have a dishwasher, you realize that washing a fancy plate is no harder that washing a plain one.)  Then I moved tablecloths and napkins in there, which freed up space in the den cupboard.  Well then I moved some homeschool supplies over to the den cupboards so it would be more consolidated.  Then I had some empty cupboards to deal with in the kitchen, so I organized some counter space and made the kitchen cupboards work out better.  I was also able to move up some small appliances from the basement to the kitchen so that they can actually be used.  With the extra space in there, I saw how dirty the cupboards are, and started vacuuming and scrubbing them down.

Which makes me now want to organize the front hall closet that is overflowing because I bet I could move many things off the floor in there and make that closet usable for guests once again.  After I get that done today, I’m thinking about gutting the bathroom closet upstairs and reorganizing that since I didn’t get to that closet last year and I have no idea what is even in the back of that place.

Trips to the dump and Goodwill have been more frequent this Spring.  It’s wonderful because I feel like I can breathe so freely in this house now.  A few weeks ago I got rid of tons of toys and the basement can now actually be picked up daily once again without tantrums from the kids feeling overwhelmed. 

Then there’s the pile on top of the dresser in the back hallway that’s at least a foot tall of just “stuff” that gets dropped there.  It’d be nice to see some sort of surface back there this Spring.

I love Spring cleaning.