Kickin' A, No Names Required

I have been TOTALLY kicking a** all day long in this house!!!!! Oh, YEAH, I'm talkin' to YOU, kitchen! And you, mop! You have been officially made my be-och of the day. Hello!

Sometimes I just get on tears, and go house on the house. It's like I do one thing, which leads to another, and another, and pretty soon I'm passed out on the couch from exhaustion. The difference from that and a normal day is that the house is SPARKLING when I'm done. This particular house-housing was brought on by my being required to lay around for several days watching it get messier and messier on top of the already crusted-on base layer of leftover Summer Crud. So, since I was feeling better yesterday, I figured, hey, I'll rearrange the living room furniture so we can all actually sit together rather than the roomier-but-less-comfy arrangement we had before. Well, you know what happened THEN, especially if you have pets. You've got it - the epic battle with the UnderStuff Hair Puppies had begun. Isn't moving large things the grossest?! Couches, chairs, fridges, anything like that, eeeeeyyyooouuuuu. Seriously.

Once I was done, the living room looked WAY better, and everyone loved it when they got home. The problem was, of course, that then the living room looked great, making the rest of the house look like shiite. SO, I began to plot. All evening I stewed on what needed to be done. Then, this morning, I:

- vacuumed the two main levels and stairs
- mopped the floors TWICE on each level, plus the stairs, to make sure that my socks will NOT be brown on bottom again for at least a week
- cleaned the kitchen, removing ALL clutter, washing cabinets, removing stove coils, and scrubbing sink
- rearranged pictures around the house that had been hung wherever they were unpacked so they actually are where they belong now
- cleaned the bathroom upstairs, washed the floor, tub, etc
- moved two window treatments to new locations and reconfigured them so they would hang better (aka, cut little holes so I could make the bunch-up curtain parts hang shorter - they were way too long)
- also walked the dogs
- Febreezed the furniture to get rid of Summer Doggie smell created by a shut-up house with a/c

PHEW!!!!! There's still a lot left to do, but I feel SO much better. Pooped, but better. Sweaty, but better. I'm forcing myself to stop now so I don't end up really, totally exhausted, and also because the kids want chores to do (they only get money if they do chores, and I haven't had a list for a little while, so they've been doing when-I-remember-to-tell-them things, resulting in not much money for them). Today I will make up the chore list. It's harder to think up things that Patrick can do that will be helpful in a way that won't make me want to just redo them myself later to get them right.

I swear I'm not a clean freak normally, but now that I'm in the house all day on my own (!!!!!!), I want to be in a clean house while I do my other things, like making the dress I've been promising Josie for months now, or painting the various rooms that need to be done. It's no fun hanging around in a messy house, and it's really satisfying to clean when it actually STAYS that way for at least a few hours. Once I actually get the place clean, I'm going to try and concentrate on only doing one room/area a day. That will make it so I only spend a short amount of time cleaning each day, and everything will stay at the same base-level of mess/clean. I don't know if that will work or not, so I'll keep you posted.