Friday, May 6, 2011

31 Days to Clean Challenge: Day 4 and Day 5

I have to admit the accountability of the challenge is keeping me pretty motivated.  I'm  hoping that this newly found motivation will stay with me once the challenge is finished.  In my my mind, I know it is easier to keep up with the house if I do  a little bit at a time and stay on top of it.  In reality, I let too many excuses keep me from doing it.  Sure, I have little kids and that makes it difficult.  But if I'm honest with myself, I waste a lot of time.  Time that I could be using to be productive.  And if I had a cleaner, more organized house I would have more time to also spend on fun things for myself. Like playing with my kids, sewing, reading, etc.

Day 4 was about having a place you can put your feet up - a place that can be lived in.  Believe me - this house can be lived in. And if you could see it right now - it looks more than lived in.   I'll never be accused of having a show home.  :)  But I definitely could do better about making it more comfortable and less cluttered for my family.  One challenge was to invite someone over.  That was already taken care of as we are having some friends over next weekend for a Mexican food potluck Yum...My mouth is already watering just thinking about it.
The other challenge for Day 4 was to clean your microwave and your oven.  The microwave was easy.  I still haven't done the oven.  I have a self cleaning oven and the fumes/smell are awful.  We're talking headache causing, nausea inducing...Okay, maybe I'm being a little melodramatic, but it's still really bad.  And I'm concerned about my kids being here while I do it.  However, I also don't feel comfortable leaving the oven unattended for a long period of time.  So I'm still trying to figure that one out.  

Day 5 is about priorities.  I've been thinking about them, but still need to put them down on paper.  That will probably have to wait until the little blessings go to bed.  Sister Blessing thinks seeing me with a pen and paper means it's drawing time.  Brother Blessing just wants to try to eat the pen or the paper or both.  :)

The Martha challenge for Day 5 is to clean the blinds, window treatments and the inside of the windows in your kitchen.  I just finished the blinds.  Sister Blessing helped me.  I really want to encourage her desire to help.  I really don't want to pass down my bad housekeeping habits to her.  I have enough other bad habits she will probably inherit (or already has :) ) that I feel like I need to nurture her desired to be a helper even if it means it takes longer for me.  Once Brother Blessing has decided he is ready to play again instead of being snuggled with we will clean the windows.  I need to do some laundry anyway so I'll just toss the window treatments in with the rest of the load.

I'm glad we have a weekend off from the challenge.  However, I'll be cleaning up a storm anyway.  My house is a disaster with a capital "D".  And we only have one week until "company" comes over.  I put company in quotes because the people coming over are more like family than company.  And I refuse any housework except for what is absolutely necessary on Mother's Day! 

1 comment:

  1. You can clean your oven with a baking soda solution and just completely skip the self-clean feature on your oven. Same with using Easy Off, but it smells pretty bad too. This link has recipes for homemade cleaners.

    http://www.bystephanielynn.com/2011/02/homemade-cleaning-products-non-toxic.html

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