My family room felt so good and relaxing to be in yesterday. Did you see the before and after photo?  My husband and I were both saying how good it felt that all the clutter was gone. I decided I would try and keep the room clutter free for 1 week. This will be a good challenge for me. I’ll call it the 1 Week Clutter Free Room Challenge. I need to have a reason to make sure I pick up every last thing that is out of place every evening. Anyone want to pick a spot in their home to try to keep perfectly picked up for one week with me?

My hope is that this will become a habit. We are the type of people to let things slowly go over a couple weeks and then have a big clean up. By the end of the couple weeks that we let things get so cluttered that it would be embarrassing if someone stopped in without notice. Plus, it is a big job to clean up the room after 2 weeks. It would be so  much easier if I picked up every single thing every night.

Here are two pictures of the room today that will be my goal pictures.

I am good at always putting the pillows and blankets back on the couch every evening. It is the little toys that sneak up on me. Especially when I know my daughter will just pull it all out again the very next morning.

I will post how it goes in the upcoming days. Let’s see if I can keep these toys picked up.

Today was a school day for all 3 of my kids so I jumped to reorganize some toys while they were all out of the house. The kids had a great Christmas evidenced by so many toys that we don’t even have room for them all. I had to clear out a bunch in order to fit the new stuff. This had to happen when the kids were not around.

I had a major new blogger fail. I forgot to take pictures of the entire living room before I started. Dang it! There was an even bigger mess than this but maybe it is best if I don’t further embarrass myself by posting the entire mess. Here is the one picture I remembered to take. This is just the fireplace surround.

Yes, the entire front of all our shelves looked like this so I should be proud of all I accomplished. I was able to empty 2 baskets to make room for Britton’s new toys. One for her American Girl stuff and one for other new toys. Don’t tell my kids but I got rid of 8 puzzles, Mr Potato Head and a huge stack of books. We never read down here so I took the books I wanted to keep upstairs to her bookshelf. That made plenty of room for the new toys.

A lot of my boys new toys were taken up to their room or in our craft closet. That closet needs a major clean out as well because I can barely shut the door but we will see if I can get motivation to tackle that. If I do I will make sure to get before pictures.

Here is my after.

Doesn’t your room feel so empty and amazing after the Christmas decorations and tree are out. My kids were rolling all over the floor like we lived in a gigantic castle. Ha! They even felt the space and were so funny about it.

This post will be shared at my favorite linky parties.

In previous years when making resolutions I would vow this year to get laundry under control. Over the years of adding 3 kids to our brood I have finally found how I best keep laundry under control. I thought I would share my method since I love to peek into other mothers world’s to see how others “get it all done”.

Tip #1 – Have a Main Laundry Day

Personally I start on Monday since all my kids are in school that particular day. I start with my and my husbands clothes and sort them into 3 piles –  whites, colors/shirts and colors/pants. This way my shirts that may be more delicate aren’t tumbling around with Matt’s heavy jeans. I start our clothes and try to get as many loads through the day complete as possible.

I hang to dry most of my clothes. I like to put all my clothes into the dryer for 5 mins to get the wrinkles out and then pull them out to hang to dry the rest of the way. This way I avoid ironing. Now, I am a super distracted person running from task to task so I MUST SET THE TIMER ON MY PHONE!!! When my timer goes off I know to run up and pull the clothes out of the dryer.

I loved reading the blog A Slob Comes Clean and if you want to read about her Laundry Day click here.

Tip # 2 – Have the right tools

I was using a small sink in my upstairs guest bathroom to soak one shirt at a time if there were stains. This caused a back up in laundry. Usually several of my boys shirts need to soak overnight in Oxyclean before being washed. I needed to purchase a small tub to be able to soak several shirts at one time. No, I do not have a sink in my laundry room. 🙁 So sad but I use this bucket and it works for me. I like the low sides so I can easily fill it in my sink and keep it on the counter when I have something soaking.

Tip #3 – Don’t sort the kids clothes

Yes, throw all the colors in together in one load! Unless it is a brand new red cotton shirt they will all be just fine. I wash them all on cold. I do one load of my boys clothes and one load of my daughters clothes. Trust me, I am particular about my laundry. I don’t like anyone else to do it since I hang dry most of my clothes and some of my daughters too.

Don’t you love reading how others do daily tasks? I know I do.

This post may contain affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

There is nothing like hosting a party to get you motivated to deep clean the house. I needed to dig deep and thoroughly dust the entire house.  A couple months ago I had bought some store brand dusting cloths. I normally buy Swiffer brand but the other brand was on sale so I thought, “Hey, I’ll give those a try.” For fun I thought I would do a side by side comparison.

I pulled out the two cloths and as you can see there is a pretty big difference between to the two. The Swiffer brand is soft with lots of quilting. The store brand is thin and feels very waxy.

My testing shelf. It is extremely dusty and the black surface made a great photo of the dust.

So now let’s get to using the cloths. I did a big swipe with each cloth. The dust was picked up by both brands. It held onto both of the cloths so didn’t just fall to the floor but I did feel like the store brand had a few fly aways into the air.

My final thoughts on the two brands.

1. The Swiffer cloth is much softer and thicker.
2. They really both did the job sufficiently.
3. If you have an allergy to dust I would definitely use Swiffer brand due to the airborne particles I saw.
4. Both of them do the job sufficiently so it comes down to whether the feel of the cloth is worth the more expensive price. Everyone has a different budget so that is up to you. If you use a bunch of these regularly then it is probably best to go store brand but I will probably buy Swiffer just because the feel of it is important to me. My husband would totally roll his eyes at this but hey…he isn’t using them so I get to pick! 🙂

This post may contain affiliate links. For my complete disclosure policy click here.

So this week I get to sit back, relax and let my husband do the work. He would say that is what happens every week but whatever! 😉

I finally convinced him to pressure wash our front porch, bottom part of our house and windows. Let me just preface that we know it was desperately needed and like always it is embarrassing showing the before pictures. We live in a coastal area so everyone has to pressure wash their homes once a year to keep the green mold away so this is maybe a year and a half since the last time we did it which is way too long.

Here is the front porch.

Yes, I am hanging my head in shame. I can’t believe we let it get this bad. Especially, because we actually own a pressure washer. So I did what every good wife should do in this situation and nagged her husband to take care of this task.

Please ignore the landscaping. That is on our to do list soon.

Britton having some fun running through the spray.

My husband likes his pressure washer and it has paid for itself over the years. Here is an affiliate link if you think it will be a good gift for your husband. Men like tools, right?

After my husbands hard labor, it is all sparkly clean!

And we can sit back and relax after a hard days work…see, I get to take part of the credit too.

Let’s take a look again at the after again…ahh…much better.

Now I am going to say what we should never say, I will never let it get that bad again! Next, for the outside is taking care of our landscaping and weeds. Let me go find my husband, Ha Ha!!