De-Cluttered.

Since my last post up until today, I've been cleaning and decluttering our house. It feels amazing. Adam will attest that I may have gotten a little obsessed with it over the last few days, but I'm also confident that he enjoys the results. It all started with two things: 1). My parents bought us a new dining room lamp and 2). Adam wanted to paint his office. For whatever reason, these two events set me into a mission to clean and declutter. My first mission was the baker's rack that I successfully removed from the dining room with only an $8 Ikea purchase. That led to some kitchen and dining room re-organization, but I was satisfied with that much until Adam told me his plans for the office. He was going to clean it out except for his desk, bookshelf and the clothes rack. I asked why he even needed a clothes rack to begin with and he responded that with the beer and records in his closet he didn't have anymore room.

Beer and records? Did I marry a teenager?

Needless to say, I saw that as a challenge and I wasn't going to be wrong. While Adam was sleeping, I organized all of his clothes and as I suspected, they did in fact fit in the closet and dresser- with some adjustments and donations of course. Now is probably a good time to mention the fact that we home brew, so we tend to have a lot of beer on hand. I actually didn't know where it was until Friday when Adam told me it was in his closet. After another round of kitchen organization, we have a place to store the beer and the empty bottles without it being an eye-sore.

On Wednesday of last week, I really wanted to get a new bookshelf, but after the donation of around 30 books, I don't need it. Instead, I bought storage containers for the basement and some picture frames. The baker's rack had become a default poster storage space, so without it, I needed to find a new place for the posters. Guess where they landed? The wall. Shocking, I know. After years of talking about getting frames, I went out and got some and hung them on the wall. I put 5 small photos in the kitchen and then 9 bigger posters in the office and bedroom. It feels so nice to display some more artwork around the house!! It's also nice to know that I can do it myself. With just a hammer, a level and some nails, I can hang up pictures, it's great to remind myself of what I'm capable of. Adam probably would have helped, but he was in the midst of computer surgery...

The end result of my few crazy days of cleaning, I finally feel like our house is a home. It's only been 6.5 years, but it feels like us. A couple of Adam's guitars are hung on the wall along with posters of our favorite bands and  few pictures I've taken. It's organized and everything has a place. (Well, almost... we still need to finish organizing the office...). I hated cleaning our house because it always took so long to pick everything up just to clean, where now, I should be able to just clean and not have to pick up nearly as much. We also donated 12 bags and 5 boxes to Arc's Value Village (on 66th and Penn if you want to purchase any of our donations), so our small house doesn't feel so cramped. Our dining room is actually started to feel big. With just two of us, I knew we should have enough room in our house, even though it is small, but it finally feels like we have enough room. It's such a great feeling to finally feel organized and calm at home. I love it.

Now that I'm back at work, let's see just see if we can maintain it. I hope we can.

Cleaning.

Cleaning the house is like working out. You never really want to do it, you just know that you should. And you are always happier you did it after its done. But I can't seem to get myself off the couch to do it. I got the workout part in this morning. I went to a yoga class at the Bloomington Lifetime. A few of the people in the class were discussing someone's recent cataracts surgery, the girl next to me had never done yoga before (despite the fact the class description recommended a basic knowledge of yoga), the teacher had a really thick Minnesotan accent that was grinding on my nerves and she ended the class with a Christmas song. Not exactly my ideal yoga setting, but at least I went and it served as a good warm up for my run. I don't mind running on a treadmill when there's good TV on and the Price is Right was perfect. You don't really need to hear the show to know what's going on, but it's visually entertaining and when it's on a commercial break, the View and the 4th hour of the Today show are equally distracting. I've seen the SNL skits of Hoda and Kathie Lee, but what I didn't know was how accurate it they are. It's frightening. 

The fact that I have one more day off before Adam has a week off makes it that much easier to put off the fact that my house is still a mess. It's even easier to avoid it when I know he doesn't actually care. 

Sigh. 

Maybe I'll just do the laundry

I love my husband dearly, but he makes me nervous when he does the laundry. We typically have 3 loads each week: whites, colors, and towels/sheets/misc. I don't really separate beyond that as we don't really have much more. 3 loads of laundry can all be done in an afternoon. The dryer takes awhile sometimes, so that's really the only hold up in the process. I wasn't feeling well after dinner and just went to bed early last night. Adam said he would put the dishes away and finish the laundry. I thought it was a good deal for me. I woke up this morning and the dishes were in the dishwasher, but not any of the pots or pans used to cook with. Our dishwasher safe grill (used to cook Adam's steak) was sitting on the counter. I'm not a fan of most meat items, let alone the next day smell of a grill used to cook them... ewww. When I got home from work (a few minutes ago) everything was still out and the laundry still wasn't done. I asked Adam about the towels and he said they were still in the washer. So he successfully transferred one load of wash into the dryer in 4+ hours.

The speed of the male species doing household chores amazes me.