34 Weeks of Clean -- The Laundry Room

I feel like I've gotten all off track with the 34 Weeks of Clean challenge. I cleaned my linen closet the week Michele gave us the Hall Closet assignment because we don't have any hall closets. It turned out okay, though, because it took me a while to finish up the laundry room assignment for week 22.

We are lucky to have a rather large laundry room in this house, and it's conveniently located upstairs near all three of the kids' bedrooms.

Unfortunately, since it's also conveniently located near our school area, I started storing extra homeschool materials in there. Over the past three years, it became a convenient dumping ground and was quite disorganized.

I started by straightening up the shelf above the washer and dryer. It still holds extra school books, but it's more nicely organized now.

I then moved on to clearing off the top of the washer and dryer. The overwhelming ironing stack ended up only taking about half an hour to iron. I put away all the miscellaneous junk that had collected on top of the dryer and left only a few necessities out.

The next step was to clean the washer and dryer. I took three complete cleaning cycles to get the washing machine to stop sudsing. I think the laundry detergent pods that I've been using have a bit too much detergent, and it's been building up. I really liked the glass candy jar I repurposed to hold the detergent pods, but it's going to have to find a new job as soon as I use the last pod.

While cleaning the washer, I even cleaned out the lint filter in it. I used to be very good about draining the washer and cleaning the filter every month, but I had let it go a bit lately. It's amazing the difference that little bit of cleaning will make in terms of preventing sour smells in the washer.

We have two sets of hooks hanging on the wall across from the washer and dryer. It's convenient to hang things there temporarily, but I've often left things there so long that the temporary storage became permanent. With everything put back away where it belongs, the room feels much more spacious than it really is.

I started to ignore the stack of school tubs beside/behind the washer. Everything is going to get moved in about a month, and I figured I could deal with it then. It's a good thing I went ahead and looked at them. There's no way I could move a bin full of books in this condition:

So far all I've really done with these bins is to dump them in the middle of the schoolroom floor and create a giant mess. Straightening them all up is next on my priority list, though.

With the bins gone, I was able to push the ironing board, drying rack, and vacuum cleaner back into that space. The whole room looks less cluttered and more inviting now!

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. It looks like we'll be working outside this week. I guess I better get up early so that it's not too hot while I'm out there.

©2009-2015 Through the Calm and Through the Storm. All rights reserved. Photos and content may not be reproduced.

34 Weeks of Clean -- A Hall Closet

When Michele announced last week's Hall Closet assignment for our 34 week of clean challenge, I did a little happy dance. We don't have a hall closet in this house. I do however have another closet that tends to be a bit of a disaster. I actually cleaned it out a few weeks ago during our "catch-up" week because it was bothering me so much.

Our laundry room has a closet where I store some of our linens. Unfortunately, I tend to store much more than just extra linens in there. It also stores extra medicines, our first aid kit, lightbulbs, Lauren's formula and feeding tube supplies, the gallon-sized refill bottle of hand sanitizer, and a bunch more. It's pretty much a junk drawer on steroids.

I sorted through a lot of medicines, both over-the-counter and prescriptions, so that I could dispose of everything that was either expired or no longer useful. It turned out to be quite a huge pile.

I doubled checked our first aid kit (in the black tool box) and made sure it was still fully stocked. Other supplies and medicines were put back neatly either in a bin or on the shelf. I'm so happy to be able to easily find everything. It's not just a matter of being able to quickly located something I need; it's also a matter of being able to see all of Lauren's extra prescription medicines so that I can tell when we need to order more.

All of the extra syringes we use for Lauren's medicines or feeding tube are now sorted by size and stored in small tote bags. No more digging through jumbled piles to find the correct size.

Finally, I refolded the linens and put them away neatly. The spare towels are closer to the bottom where everyone can reach them, and the sheets and blankets we rarely use found a home at the top of the closet.

As is often the case, my decision to clean out this closet came at the perfect time. This week's assignment is to clean up (or clean out) the laundry room. My laundry room is rather small, but I've packed a lot in there. I definitely have my work cut out for me.

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. She posts a new challenge every Friday and will also be hosting a weekly link-up for any other bloggers who are brave enough to share pictures of their progress. There is also a prize basket giveaway with entries earned by blogging or posting pictures on her blog's FB wall.

©2009-2015 Through the Calm and Through the Storm. All rights reserved. Photos and content may not be reproduced.

34 Weeks of Clean: Our Master Bedroom

In Michele's 34 Weeks of Clean challenges, she listed the master bedroom the week before the master closet. As it happened, I got a bit of a late start cleaning the bedroom, switched to the closet for a few days, and then went back to finish the bedroom. I shared the after pictures of our closet a few weeks ago, but I never shared a finished look at our bedroom.

I have (had?) a nasty habit of spending so much time trying to pick up things in other parts of the house that I didn't have any energy left to worry about all the things that I piled in our master bedroom. I think part of it was a bit of laziness on my part and part of it was an "out of sight, out of mind" phenomenon.

Here's a candid shot of my side of our dresser before I started cleaning:

Rather pitiful, isn't it? Most of the jewelry belongs in the jewelry box that was sitting right there. Thankfully it only took a few minutes to put it all back where it belongs.

If I thought the dresser was bad, my side of the bed was horrid.

I should say that the picture was taken on a worse than usual day. I don't always have Brennan's guitars in our bedroom. Sadly, though, the stack of clean laundry waiting to be put away didn't used to be all that unusual.

Again, it didn't take very long to get everything put away.

As I work through 34 Weeks of Clean, I'm learning that it really doesn't take much time to keep things clean. For some reason, I always think that I don't have time to clean. Instead, I overestimate how long it will take to do a task and then procrastinate. Before I know it, all my procrastinating leads to a little mess here, a little mess there, and a discouraging feeling that the whole house is a wreck.

I timed myself to figure out just how long it takes to put away my laundry -- less than five minutes to put away the entire week's worth of folded clothes. I spend that much time checking Facebook "one more time" before bed. I'm slowly learning that it's a lot more satisfying to make sure I've spent a few minutes here and there cleaning up after myself.


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. She posts a new challenge every Friday and will also be hosting a weekly link-up for any other bloggers who are brave enough to share pictures of their progress. There is also a prize basket giveaway with entries earned by blogging or posting pictures on her blog's FB wall.

©2009-2015 Through the Calm and Through the Storm. All rights reserved. Photos and content may not be reproduced.