Unintentional Spring Cleaning

Well, it's been a rather miserable week. We're all sick (except the baby! Knock wood!) and it's taken a lot out of us. Poor Lila got it first (Monday), then it waterfalled day after day to Gage (Tuesday), me (Wednesday) and Mike (Thursday). Lila is better today (Friday), so I'm hoping we all waterfall back to health now.

Yesterday I took a sick day from work. In the afternoon when Lila and Josie were napping Gage settled on the couch to watch a movie (with some moaning and groaning just in case we forgot how sick he was) and Mike and I started cleaning the heck out of the house.

I'm something of a...saver. I don't like to get rid of things. Practically everything has sentimental value to me, and it's a problem. But...I don't like when the house looks cluttered, and the only solution to that is to get rid of extraneous stuff. A couple of times a year I turn heartless and throw away everything that's been collecting, all the stuff we don't need. I wish I could get into the habit of throwing it away daily, but it's hard. I'm working on it.

Like...I buy these HUGE packs of construction paper at Sam's Club. It's 700+ sheets of paper, all different colors. I buy this once every three months.

Because my kids go through 700+ sheets of construction paper.

Every three months.

Suffice it to say we have a lot of artwork in the house. The problem is, all of it is beautiful. All of it.

Anyway, back to yesterday afternon. We lifted furniture to sweep out the collected dust (and marbles, and socks, and books, and raisins) from the hardwood floors. We sneezed. We packed up winter clothes to put in the attic. We blew our noses. I filled two garbage bags to the brim with toys from Gage & Lila's room - toys to be rotated every couple of months. (A good solution to wanting less stuff in their room, but not wanting to throw / give away all of their toys. Yet.) We sneezed some more, and took cough medicine.

We vacuumed everything repeatedly (by the way, have I told you lately how much I love Dyson's long, long cord?) and then had to stop so Mike could fish a plastic quarter out of the vacuum hose. Of course.

I don't know what was driving my mad cleaning spree, but I was glad it was getting done. The more we worked the more energy we had to finish - I swear it was like a frenzy.

In the middle of my frantic, frazzled orders to Mike as we cleaned ("Throw it! Throw everything! Have no heart!") Mike looked at me and said, "Are we...Spring Cleaning?"

Huh.

Yes, I guess that's what this is called.



In the evening, after everyone had baths and all the little ones were tucked into bed Mike and I put on a movie and got comfortable on the couch. Time to relax! Finally!

I was sleeping like a baby less than five minutes later.

Like this baby: