Time has really flown by since I was able to sit down to complete my tale of cleaning woes. I felt that I owed it to my followers to complete this story, but since I think I know them all, they will have already heard this before!
One of the reasons I wanted to make sure the house was cleaned and organized was because I needed to be able to focus on work for school all summer and I figured that being organized would allow me to stay on top of the whirling dervishes I have for children. I can honestly say that it did not happen.
I managed to clean my bedroom, both bathrooms, the kitchen, dining room, both children's bedrooms, the playroom, and, wait for it...., my office! However, the two week plan had to be expanded to two months!
I do need to gloat just a tiny bit and explain why it took me so long. Around the three week mark I had completed the majority of cleaning tasks on my list. I had even shampooed the carpets in all the bedrooms and the living room. I was on my way to having all the laundry completed too until the evening before leaving for a trip to Florida I went downstairs to the laundry room. As I stepped down onto the last step, my foot found the little toy that my son had thrown down the steps, I rolled my ankle, heard a pop, and managed to fracture my left ankle. To make matters worse, my husband was just about to leave for work and my two nieces had already been dropped off in preparation for our trip. (Do not fly with a recently fractured/ sprained ankle, it was very uncomfortable plus keeping track of four children is difficult too.) In my husband's normal gruff matter, he looked at my ankle, decided it was not broken and left for work. I had to call my oldest "daughter" and her husband to watch the children while I went to urgent care. Kate and Marco had friends visiting them, so they all came. Marco and Joey took me to urgent care while Kate and Nataly watched the children. In the end, I spent six weeks in an air caste and today must be careful going up and down stairs.
Once I returned from Florida, I did very little in the land of heavy cleaning for about two weeks; however, I could not stand the thought of not getting things totally organized before school started, so I began cleaning my office. I am going to fully discuss the process in another post, but let's just say it took me a full seven days to get it organized. I had things in my office from the move three years ago; making my job a job of discovery. There were many "is that where that got to" and "Oh, shoot, now I have three of those!" during the process, but I am happy to say that it is done. Ok, as done as I am going to have it for now. I removed 18, yes 18, kitchen bags trash from the office and five emptied boxes.
I still have three more projects I need to tackle. I want to get at least two of them done before school starts in two weeks, but I am not sure I will succeed. Look for future posts of my success. Shoot, who am I kidding? Look for my future posts on how I tried but that darn butterfly flew by again!
(will try to post a picture of the office in the future, server is not allowing it right now)
