Tuesday, July 7, 2015

34 Weeks of Clean: The Porch and the Yard

It seems like I've gotten the weeks all mixed up with the 34 Weeks of Clean challenges. At least part of the problem is that Michele and I live in vastly different climates. Many of our outdoor chores needed to be done before summer actually hit and temperatures started climbing above 100 degrees on a regular basis.


Week 24 was the porches and decks. Our house didn't need much touching up in this area. I swept the front porch/entryway to get rid of the spider webs and all the tree junk that gets caught in the doormat. Actually, I've probably swept a dozen times in the last month so that it continues to look presentable. (Our house is for rent, and I'm trying to have it ready to show off to new tenants.)


We also wiped down the table and chairs on the back porch one evening so that we could eat outside. Interesting side note: I think our family has the same outdoor table and chairs that Michele's does.


The same day that we cleaned off the back porch, we did quite a bit of yard cleaning up (week 25's assignment). The biggest problem was grass growing past it's assigned boundaries. It all pulled out fairly easily and made a huge improvement in the way the backyard looked. I also deadheaded the rose bushes. Even though they don't look very pretty now, they were uglier when they were covered with dead blooms.


As for the front yard, I trimmed the nasty mesquite trees quite a bit, but then realized that it was a much bigger task than I could handle. We got off easy for the rest of the yard work when our homeowners agreed to just hire a landscape company to come shape up everything for the summer.


The assignment for week 26 was the storage room. I did a little happy dance because we don't have one. I double checked with Michele to make sure that I didn't have to clean out everything we have stored in the garage. It was a bit scary:


Thankfully Michele said that I could use the week to catch up on something I hadn't gotten to earlier or to just rest.

Instead, we went ahead and sorted through everything in the garage. We couldn't procrastinate any longer -- we didn't want the movers to move the junk we hadn't gotten around to purging.

It looks a lot better now:


And finally -- week 27, clothes storage. We have very little clothes stored. There's one wardrobe box in the garage that has Tim's heavy overcoat (or maybe overcoats), our ski bibs, and probably a few other winter jackets that we haven't ever needed in Arizona. There was also a single bin of hand-me-downs that Lauren and I went through while we were working on the garage.

Another easy week in terms of the 34 Weeks of Clean challenge.

I'm using all the extra time I can find this week to hunt for more things to get rid of before the movers come. Just over the past weekend, we've taken two trips to Goodwill and one to the dump. Yay for less junk getting boxed up and put on a moving truck.


I'm not sure what Michele has up her sleeves for the next few weeks. I'll be taking a bit of an organizing break. Our household goods will be gone by Friday evening, and I'll spend the weekend doing the finally cleaning. Then I'll take a two week break from cleaning so that I can be rested up when we move into our new house. I'm really looking forward to a fresh start in terms of organizing and decorating -- a fresh start that will have significantly less clutter to deal with.


If you'd like to join me with the challenges, you can find Michele's posts on her Family, Faith, and Fridays blog, on the Facebook page, or by clicking the button below.

Michele posts a new challenge every Friday and hosts a weekly link-up for any other bloggers who are brave enough to share pictures of their progress.


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