In the past, I have NEVER finish doing a top to bottom “spring cleaning” of my house EVER!  I really wonder who does.  Over the years, every room has gotten “spring cleaned”, but never every year and never every spring.  I think my problem is perfectionism.  I suffer from this problem that if I can’t make it perfect, I don’t finish and it weighs on my mind for eternity.  So I have perpetual spring cleaning guilt.

I might, just might, have stumbled onto a cure.  For one, I started in January.  For two, I made no list.  You see, a list makes me feel like I have to complete everything on the list.  If said list doesn’t get finished to perfection, I get discouraged and quit…with regret.

I have completely spring cleaned my son’s room.  Did it in January!  I am almost finished in our master bedroom and the living room.  How awesome is that!!!  I just walked into my son’s room, started moving around furniture, cleaning as I went, and before I knew it I was done.  I had gone through every draw, found every lost toy that was hiding under shelves, the bed, the dresser.  I had organized his toys.  I had washed the curtains.  I had dusted the walls and ceiling.  It was awesome.

No list, that’s my new plan!  The other part of the plan is to complete my house spring cleaning by Easter Sunday!  I’m on my way!!

Slightly more detailed.

• Sweep floor
• Murphy’s Oil Soap wood floor
• Windex & dust mirrors
• Polish wood furnishings
• Dust/Vacuum radiators
• Straighten books
• Straighten shelving
• Go through cabinet at end of hall, straighten, purge
• Wash curtains
• Windex insides of windows
• Dust baseboards

Pretty easy!

• Vacuum stair treads
• Dust baseboard
• Dust railing and spindles

This area won’t be too bad to spring clean either!  Hey things are looking up!

• Wash front door curtain
• Windex door window
• Sweep floor
• Dust shelves
• Put away any winter wear we aren’t using
• Dust pictures
• Murphy’s Oil Soap the wood floors
• Dust/vacuum radiators

This is probably one of the easier rooms to spring clean. So I think this is where I will begin!

• Wash the inside of the windows
• Wash the curtains
• Vacuum/dust window sills
• Wipe down woodwork around windows
• Wipe down doors (there are 2)
• Straighten & dust bookshelves
• Dust and straighten mantle
• Thoroughly vacuum
• Maybe do a little furniture rearranging
• Vacuum furniture
• Polish wood furniture
• Put more of John’s board books away
• Dust all picture frames
• Dust/Vacuum radiators
• Wash our “cuddle up” blankets

I had planned to be finished “spring cleaning” the entire house by Easter, but the project got expanded.  Dave and I decided to purge our entire house of everything we don’t use/love/need.  Our dining room and front porch has turned into garage sale central and we’re still not done.  A couple of rooms are completed; like the bathroom, our living room and the upstairs hallway.  The living room is actually housing a piece of furniture for the garage sale, our sofa.  We’d like to get some money for the sofa, but we’re also game for just giving the thing away to however will hauled it.

With our new computer we have plans to divest ourselves of a whole pile of media; DVDs and CDs specifically.  Dave bought a giant amount of memory that can hold 200+ DVDs and piles of CDs.  We’ll sell all but out favorites from both collections and free up even more room.  I think this will make the collections more accessible also.  We rarely listen to any music and I think it is because it is a pain to search the collection for what you want to listen too and then load it into a media outlet.

Well, I need to get dinner on the table.  I think we’ll have au gratin potatoes with broccoli and diced ham baked as a casserole.