My Life, Lately

I'm not going to apologize for not blogging lately, and I'm mostly just here to tell you I can't imagine I'll be blogging much for the next few weeks.

I already told you that we're moving to Saskatoon, but now all the little details are finalized. I start my job two weeks from today, and I'll be staying in a friend's guest room for four weeks, until we move into our new place on September 5th. My husband will be staying at home for those four weeks, and I'll be living out of a couple plastic totes.

I found out a week ago, and I have spent every single day since then packing, cleaning and sorting. With an hour or so of downtime to play The Sims. (The Sims 4 comes out in September, so I have to play lots of The Sims 3 now, right?)

So here's my life, lately:

Packing. So. Much. Packing. I'm trying to pack up as much of the house as I can now so that my husband doesn't have to do it all after I leave. I'm also doing it all alone, because he'll have to do everything else once I'm gone. It's kind of tricky to pack all the stuff that won't be needed in the next month and a half (or rather two months to play it safe - who knows when we'll finish unpacking). Lola (above) loves how all these cardboard boxes are sitting around.

The other tricky thing is packing my clothes. I've sorted through my wardrobe and put everything in one of four piles:

1. Get rid of. I don't care if it's donate or garbage, but I'm trying to really purge my clothes.
2. Pack into a cardboard box. If I don't think I'll wear it in the next two months, it's going in a labelled cardboard box, to be opened sometime in September.
3. Keep out. I still have two weeks of work left here, so I have to make sure to keep some work clothes, some comfy clothes, and some regular clothes out.
4. Plastic totes. If I'm not going to wear it in two weeks, but will wear it in two months, it goes into a plastic bin to go to Saskatoon with me.

As I'm sure you can imagine, category 3 & 4 got a little tricky later on, so I made it simpler. I decided to wear all of my favourite things during the last nine days of work at my current job. All the weirder stuff (super vintage, a little risque, a little difficult to pull off) needs to be worn before I start a new job and have to figure out a new "dress code". So I went through and pulled out twelve of my favourite/weirdest dresses or skirts. I then put together whole outfits, including tank tops, tights and sweaters, and put one full outfit on a hanger in the closet. When I had twelve of these hangers (nine work days, plus a little wiggle room to allot for mood and weather) I packed all of my other work clothes, including all of my dress pants. This means that for two weeks, I can't wear pants to work! No matter how lazy I feel. Yay!

So what you're looking at a above is a snapshot of my side of the closet, in the terrible lighting that is my house. I know it just looks like a normal closet, but right next to the green dress is a blue dress with a cream-coloured bolero. And the mint dress next to that has a tank top underneath. My closet is so impressive right now, and I feel so organized!

I'm done with all the clothes from my dresser and my closet. I still have some dirty laundry that I need to wash and sort, and I'll have to do laundry the day or so before I leave and pack all these lovely dresses that I have left out.

So... There's my life. I guess I'm finishing that binge of cleaning I started months ago. Although, you know, all of this would be a lot easier if I'd finished purging and cleaning back then. Ugh.

Spring Cleaning - Sewing Room, Part One

Personally, I wanted to finish off the kitchen next. I didn't have time to clean out the fridge and freezer or under the sink when I did the rest of the kitchen. On top of that, two of the later projects are both in my kitchen (pantry and laundry room). So I wanted to get those things finished so that my whole kitchen would just be done, but hubby had other plans. He has been itching to clean out his office for awhile, so I  agreed to help him, on one condition: I wanted my "office" cleaned too. I should have just finished off my kitchen.

However, he got called in to work a couple extra shifts over the weekend (a week ago), so I just started on my office alone.

It's really more of a sewing room, but because of it's prime location right off the dining room, it collects all of the clutter. I have a couple of clear organizing drawers, that I try to sort things in to, but that only works for so long. There's also a giant dresser in there, but it's only about half full. I keep my clothes drying rack there because the laundry is in the kitchen. So this is my catch-all room and I hate it. This is what it looked like when I started, Sunday morning (after making muffins):

Spring Cleaning - Kitchen

After my first ever spring cleaning burst, I have been seriously enjoying how clean my bathroom is. It made me happy every single time I walked in there, and I wanted the rest of the house to feel the same. But I knew that on my own, I would fizzle out and stop cleaning pretty quickly, so I went looking for some help.

I found the amazing blog A Bowl Full of Lemons and they are here to save the day! The whole blog is all about cleaning, organizing, planning and prepping. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. At first, I was a little overwhelmed, but at the top of the page is a lovely little button titled Where to Begin. She says before you start organizing, you need a clean house, and she gives you a one week plan to a cleaner home. Each task is small, simple and quick, but if you do them all every day, your house will stay cleaner.

M was a little concerned that I was going to try to clean the whole house in a week, but these are all surface tasks, like cleaning off the kitchen counters, doing a load of laundry, and wiping down the bathroom sink. If you keep up with them, you don't have to do a major overhaul of cleaning, and you have a clean house. So my goal is to keep up with these for as long as possible.

The next step is 14 weeks to a completely organized house. It's a little intense, I know, but I'm really excited to start. Each week is a different room, and the blog walks you through steps to completely clean and organize each room. At the end of 14 week (3 months!) your entire house will be organized! How rewarding is that?

Week 1 is the kitchen, which is daunting, but necessary. Also, I find that when my kitchen is clean, I feel better and want other rooms to be clean. So I'm glad to start here, in the hub of the home.

Spring Cleaning - Bathroom

I've never really understood the concept of spring cleaning. Growing up, the house always got cleaned over the summer while all the kids were home and bored. As an adult in the last few years, I've never had the drive to suddenly clean my house just because it's spring. Possibly because every spring has come with a huge change. Three years ago, I got engaged and moved between winter and summer. Two years ago, we moved into our house in April, so we did lots of cleaning of our apartment, but not because it was spring. Last year, I was diagnosed in February, and had a huge job change coming in May, so I didn't really ever find the time to clean.

This year, I've spent the last few weeks looking around our house and making a mental list of everything I want cleaned. We got news about a month ago that my husband would be laid off, and I started hoping he would organize, sort, and scrub the house while he was home. He started a new job Monday, and none of my hopeful cleaning happened. (He did do a few projects in the garage and catch up on dishes, though.)

I just kept walking through the house and hating how every inch of it looked. I felt the need to purge. I wanted to take a giant garbage bag to every room, and spend a solid week finding every flat surface again. I was itching to be surrounded by clean, well-lit spaces. And you know what? It might be spring that did this to me! I might be, for the first time ever, filled with spring cleaning! I think I get it!