After a few days of back and forth, we had enough and decided to move in last weekend. We rented a truck on Saturday and K and my dad moved the last of our big stuff and most of the remaining small stuff. They also went to IKEA and bought the new kitchen table, M's new bed and the new dresser. The last few days have been somewhat unorganized but today is Monday and I needed a fresh, clean start. New week, new house, I might as well TRY to follow my new organization plan, right? So with my daily and weekly list on my fridge, I got out of bed and got to it. In between my online time, M and I powered through.
8 things to do everyday:
1. Make the beds -DONE
2. Manage clutter- took a few time outs, but M cleaned up her playroom
3. Sort the mail-we took a quick walk to the mailbox before lunch and there was no mail yet
4. Clean as you cook -DONE
5. Wipe up spills while they're fresh -DONE
6. Sweep the kitchen floor -we don't have a broom here yet, so nope
7. Do one entire load of laundry -clean laundry is in the basket and I'll fold it while M is sleeping
8. Run the dishwasher -not done, we haven't used the dishwasher here yet, but there are NO dirty dishes in the sink.
Not bad, especially for me. We also vacuumed the living room, put away a few kitchen and bathroom boxes, broke down all the empty boxes and consolidated them. And I have time to relax this afternoon before work. Pretty good for a not so clean mommy.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Caught in limbo
Right now, my house is caught somewhere in between clean and organized and untidy. I did vacuum the other day and cleaned the bathrooms yesterday. I washed most of the dishes last night and most of our stuff is in it's place. But we get the new house tomorrow and that begins three weeks of moving in/out. We've taken out all the clothes that we'll need for the in between stage but since we're going to move most of our big stuff tomorrow, including our dressers, we can't have EVERYTHING put away. I've decided to be ok with this house like this. It's only for three weeks, if that since we'll be moving everything over to the new house starting tomorrow. I'm going in armed with Green Works multipurpose spray to clean out the kitchen, bathroom, everything I can so that once all our linens, dishes, etc, get moved in, everything else is clean for them! I'm going to figure out which cupboard I want used for which dishes and I'm going to label them all. Honestly, I wish we could skip this step and wake up in the new house and have everything clean and organized and ready to go, but we can't so I have to figure out the best system that will work for us. It will all be worth it when it's done!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Cleaning up some loose ends
Wow, it's been awhile since I've written on here. Ok a week, but it's amazing how when you're not focused on cleaning or tidying up all of the time, things get a little bit out of hand. But this week, we've been busy cleaning up some loose ends. For example, subjects are removed on our house, so it's SOLD! So I called the mortgage company and notary and set up financing for the new house and paperwork appointments to get everything signed. We're all ready to go (almost).
As far as cleanliness at the old house, we've been doing alright. Not fantastic, but not horrible. So today, I took some time to get back on track. Threw in a load of laundry, tidied up some recycling, dishes, the bathroom, made the bed again. Basically a room by room quick sweep of what could be picked up. It's SO much easier to do all this withOUT a toddler in the house. Hopefully once this all becomes automatic to me, I'll be able to do it with a toddler, a newborn, and anyone else who wants to stand in my way.
I also took some advice from Martha. At the beginning of her Homekeeping Handbook, she has a bunch of lists. There's are daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal to do lists. So I took her daily and weekly lists and made my own. We have task lists at work and I can follow those so why can't I have one for at home?
Here's the list. I might laminate it so I can cross things off with a dry erase and then start over the next day or week. This way, my husband, K, can also see the list, can see what's been done and can help out where needed.
I'll keep you guys all posted on how well it works!
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Almost unrecognizable
Me, that is. Today was a great day. I still got to be myself (lazy mom) but got everything done! Who am I?? I knew my work pants needed to be washed so I threw in a small load this morning. A few pairs of pants and some towels. I lazed around on my message boards while my sick two year old daughter, M, watched TV. Then I got dressed, got her dressed and we went to the doctor. No antibiotics needed, just a virus, should get better on its own. After the appointment, we went to the local bakery and got some buns, turkey and a giant happy face cookie. We came home had some lunch (that was a fight since a little girl just wanted to eat her cookie), then someone got to have a few bites of her cookie because she ate her meat and her carrots. While she slept (I got almost a full two hours today!) I hopped back online and turned on some Friends. Man I love old school TV. Instead of fast forwarding through the commercials, though, I moved the wash into the dryer, did the lunch and breakfast dishes, made the bed and tidied up the house. I even phoned hydro and set up the new house on the account for our move in/move out dates. Got myself dressed for work just in time for someone to wake up to a sippie cup of milk and the rest of her cookie. This all happened just as K walked in the door from work. I even had a few minutes to type this out before heading off to work (3-midnight shift today). Laundry? Dishes? Tidying up the house? MADE THE BED? And all in one day? WHO AM I?!??!
A few other good (clean) news! Our house is sold! Well it's under contract, we'll know for sure next Monday as long as the inspection, which is Thursday, goes well. So we officially have to be moved out by March 19th (and we're going to recruit some of you local readers to help!). I picked out the washer/dryer combo that I want for the new house, since the ones there now are OLD and gross. The new set should work for cloth diapering, which I want to do with the new baby. There's a VIP sale at Future Shop on Thursday and as long as the price is right, we'll pay for them and schedule them to be delivered the day after we get possession. Then, as I mentioned above, I phoned hydro and they'll add the new house to our account on possession day, February 24th, and they'll remove the townhouse on March 19th. I just have to phone Shaw (TV, phone and internet) and Terasen (gas) to have those accounts do the same. We have to set up internet at the new house since K's mom will need it right away. And we won't have any lapse in service, either!
Ok, time for me to head off to work. Seriously, we've been out of bed for like not even 7 hours and I can't believe I got all that done. Now to keep the trend up!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
My first (messy) entry
Hello fellow bloggers. I'm Ashleigh. I'm not a neat person. Neat as in clean, tidy, etc. But I'm trying. We recently bought a house. A big house. Likely the house where we'll raise our family. The whole house has 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 3000 sqft, but it's not all ours. There is a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, self contained suite in the basement where my mother in law will live.
See we bought the house with her. We have a 2 year old daughter and another little one on the way, and there really wasn't enough room for us, and our two cats, in our two bedroom townhouse. So we approached her with the idea of buying a house together and she got really excited about it. In fact, she's the one that found the new house! It really works well for both of us. We get more room, and she gets to have live in house and dog sitters since she's starting out a new business venture where she'll be traveling a lot for work.
So back to the house. We get the upstairs and part of the downstairs. We have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms upstairs, a playroom, eat in kitchen, and formal living and dining rooms. I'm SUPER excited about the separate playroom. Really it's a family room area off the kitchen but I'm excited to have somewhere for the toys to be, separate from where the living room is. Downstairs, we have another bedroom, which will be used as an office and gaming room. My husband, K, is a big xbox 360 player (Nazi Zombies, anyone?) so we're going to set up a gaming and home office room. We'll still have the tv in the playroom, and we have a living room with NO tv and NO computer. I'm really excited to be able to entertain in a formal space! The last part of the new house we're super excited about is the backyard with a hot tub! That's right, this mama is going to have a hot tub! And the backyard is a huge plus, considering the only grass we have at the townhouse is right outside our unit with no fences and right on the busy street. That doesn't work well with toddlers who like to run around.
So here's the reason for this blog. I've never been a neat person. In my bedroom growing up, my closet was stuffed full with crap, any desk or dresser drawers was packed full and I'm pretty sure I didn't even know what was under the bed. I kept EVERYTHING. I moved out and brought my crap with me, then moved in with K, then we bought the townhouse and all that crap just accumulated and came with us. We moved in here in the summer of 2005 and have boxes downstairs that were never unpacked. We always knew we were packrats and knew we had to go through it all and throw it out, but just never got around to it. We have a 500 sqft unfinished basement and had plans of building a playroom or home theatre room down there, but never got to it. Instead, we have 500 sqft of crap. Well, had. We bought the new house, finished some renovations that had to be done, and put the townhouse up for sale. We took one month, and K ended up doing 15 dump runs--yes DUMP runs. We had THAT much garbage. Well, not garbage in the sense of rotting food but just crap that we hung on to for no reason other than we couldn't throw it out. I donated 5 large garbage bags of old clothes to the Salvation Army and we filled a 5X5 storage locker with the things that we DID need to keep. Our townhouse now, doesn't have any crap. There's really no reason to have a mess because we don't have anything to keep it messy. For goodness sake, I had training materials from my first job (grocery store deli clerk) that I started over TEN years ago. And training materials from all my subsequent jobs. School books. Not textbooks, I've kept those, but notebooks. My handwritten notes from like History of Canada before Confederation. I took that class in 2003. Before I even MET K.
Getting rid of all that junk was eye opening. My new years resolution this year was to simplify. If I don't need it, THROW IT OUT! We've been living in our townhouse like this for almost two weeks now and I LOVE it. I actually put my dishes in the sink when I'm done with them. I don't leave stuff on the bathroom counter anymore. The biggest task of all is going to be keeping up with this once we get into the new house. A bigger house, with more cupboards to fill, more storage areas downstairs, and with another baby. Can I keep living like this when I'm sleep deprived and a mother to two kids. Can I do it? I'm going to try my hardest and I'm going to write about it. I'm going to read and review books on it. I already took out Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook from the library and boy is that a hefty read. I'll blog about what works and what doesn't. I'll share secrets from readers. I might review products (and maybe I'll be able to get a few freebies to give away).
It's not easy being clean, but all mommies try. I'm on a quest to change my ways, and maybe I'll be able to help out a few other mommies do the same.
See we bought the house with her. We have a 2 year old daughter and another little one on the way, and there really wasn't enough room for us, and our two cats, in our two bedroom townhouse. So we approached her with the idea of buying a house together and she got really excited about it. In fact, she's the one that found the new house! It really works well for both of us. We get more room, and she gets to have live in house and dog sitters since she's starting out a new business venture where she'll be traveling a lot for work.
So back to the house. We get the upstairs and part of the downstairs. We have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms upstairs, a playroom, eat in kitchen, and formal living and dining rooms. I'm SUPER excited about the separate playroom. Really it's a family room area off the kitchen but I'm excited to have somewhere for the toys to be, separate from where the living room is. Downstairs, we have another bedroom, which will be used as an office and gaming room. My husband, K, is a big xbox 360 player (Nazi Zombies, anyone?) so we're going to set up a gaming and home office room. We'll still have the tv in the playroom, and we have a living room with NO tv and NO computer. I'm really excited to be able to entertain in a formal space! The last part of the new house we're super excited about is the backyard with a hot tub! That's right, this mama is going to have a hot tub! And the backyard is a huge plus, considering the only grass we have at the townhouse is right outside our unit with no fences and right on the busy street. That doesn't work well with toddlers who like to run around.
So here's the reason for this blog. I've never been a neat person. In my bedroom growing up, my closet was stuffed full with crap, any desk or dresser drawers was packed full and I'm pretty sure I didn't even know what was under the bed. I kept EVERYTHING. I moved out and brought my crap with me, then moved in with K, then we bought the townhouse and all that crap just accumulated and came with us. We moved in here in the summer of 2005 and have boxes downstairs that were never unpacked. We always knew we were packrats and knew we had to go through it all and throw it out, but just never got around to it. We have a 500 sqft unfinished basement and had plans of building a playroom or home theatre room down there, but never got to it. Instead, we have 500 sqft of crap. Well, had. We bought the new house, finished some renovations that had to be done, and put the townhouse up for sale. We took one month, and K ended up doing 15 dump runs--yes DUMP runs. We had THAT much garbage. Well, not garbage in the sense of rotting food but just crap that we hung on to for no reason other than we couldn't throw it out. I donated 5 large garbage bags of old clothes to the Salvation Army and we filled a 5X5 storage locker with the things that we DID need to keep. Our townhouse now, doesn't have any crap. There's really no reason to have a mess because we don't have anything to keep it messy. For goodness sake, I had training materials from my first job (grocery store deli clerk) that I started over TEN years ago. And training materials from all my subsequent jobs. School books. Not textbooks, I've kept those, but notebooks. My handwritten notes from like History of Canada before Confederation. I took that class in 2003. Before I even MET K.
Getting rid of all that junk was eye opening. My new years resolution this year was to simplify. If I don't need it, THROW IT OUT! We've been living in our townhouse like this for almost two weeks now and I LOVE it. I actually put my dishes in the sink when I'm done with them. I don't leave stuff on the bathroom counter anymore. The biggest task of all is going to be keeping up with this once we get into the new house. A bigger house, with more cupboards to fill, more storage areas downstairs, and with another baby. Can I keep living like this when I'm sleep deprived and a mother to two kids. Can I do it? I'm going to try my hardest and I'm going to write about it. I'm going to read and review books on it. I already took out Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook from the library and boy is that a hefty read. I'll blog about what works and what doesn't. I'll share secrets from readers. I might review products (and maybe I'll be able to get a few freebies to give away).
It's not easy being clean, but all mommies try. I'm on a quest to change my ways, and maybe I'll be able to help out a few other mommies do the same.
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