Picture Time!

I'm finally able to upload some pictures! That's gonna make this blog so much more fun. Do you like pictures as much as I do? Sometimes it's easier to read a long post if it's broken up with fun pics. So, I'd like to show you my house. Brave, I know. Especially since these are the "before" the fun cleaning project pictures.

We'll start with the Laundry room. It's not so bad, plus nobody ever really sees it right? But I did just do laundry the week before this pic was taken, so it gets much much worse than this. 

Next, the kitchen. Please disregard the harvest gold countertops and maple cabinets (is that maple?) with outdated handles. (You can also see a peek into the dining room past the refrigerator.) Before this de-clutter-bug frenzy, at any given time there was a large stack of junk mail/paperwork on the corner closest to us in the pic. You can see there is also a bottle and some cookies. Random items find homes for weeks in these places, until one day we need that bottle or that cookie sheet for something else. There was always a pile of dishes in the sink and a plethera of junk on the kitchen table. I regret that I did not take a picture of the red hutch in the dining room that we had not seen the top of since I got pregnant. Yes, you read that right, over a year!!

 The living room. This room looks totally different as we got a new tv for Christmas and its now placed over the fireplace. And this room was "straight" when I took this pic. What you don't see is the pile of junk/paperwork/mail/trash/baby stuff crammed on the end tables on either side of the couch. Why didn't I take a pic of that, you ask. Because to me it wasn't dirty...it was "organized clutter." If there even is such a thing.

Please ignore all things wrong with this pic. What you can't see is the black grout in the tile. It's white now, thankyouverymuch. 

Our bedroom - the bed is never made (but now, we try to everyday). There was always crap on the dresser. But this room had just been "cleaned" that day. That's right, I called this clean.

I'm so embarrassed to show you my bathroom. Not only do I hate the 70s blue, but the mess is unbearable. People! How did I live like this? Joy, have I told you just how grateful I am that you have introduced this schedule to me? Cause I am! And, side note, God's timing is perfect...I wondered and wished I had known about this sooner, but I think my heart is in the perfect place to have received this information. If I hadn't already been working on cleaning my heart up, I never would have listened to Joy's advice.  But I digress. Yuck. You can see all the nastiness. I'm moving on.

The guest bedroom. I kid you not. 

I hope you have enjoyed these pics of the nastiest house on the block as much as I have loathed sharing them with you. :) Yesterday and today Marc was off, so I didn't get as much done. I have realized that I'll need to adjust the cleaning schedule a bit when he's off, because spending time with him is more important. BUT - with a house that's already basically clean, it's much easier to catch up when he goes back into work on Wednesday. I have fallen in love with my house all over again!

Random question of the day: When looking at a blog with pictures, would you rather see the commentary before the picture or after? Explain your answer.

Intentions

Let me tell you a few things about intentions. Intentions are:

• 2 full unused bottles of Lysol bathroom cleaner under the guest bathroom sink
• 1 spray can of Kaboom, 1 bottle of Clean Shower, 1 bottle of Scrubbing Bubbles, and 1 bottle of Lysol Soap Scum remover with bleach under the master bath sink
• 1 bottle of Comet with bleach under the kitchen sink. 
• 4 bottles of Windex/Clean Glass, 1 under each sink (2 in the kitchen)
• A closet holding 3 empty scrapbooks, 3 reams of scrapbook paper, and every embellishment imaginable
• 3 half-read books beside the bed
• Clean clothes laying over a chair waiting to be hung or laying in the dryer awaiting rescue and folding
• Over 10 recipe books in the kitchen hutch longing to be skimmed 

People...these numbers? They are NOT an exaggeration. I repeat. NOT an exaggeration.  They are all in my house. What's that old saying? "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." The buck stops here. No more good intentions without action. This is my commitment. It all began last week with a clean house.

 I pray the Lord continues to reveal the ways in which my intentions are good but followthrough lacking. I hope that you, invisible blogging friends, will help to hold me accountable in my journey to becoming more than just a "wannabe".

Matthew 7:21-23. Obedience counts, not intentions.

Satisfaction Sunday

Whew. What a week. A glorious holiday week that was loaded with plans, food, friends, projects, responsibilities, and lots of cleaning. (That last thing on the list would usually have been put off until the next week or later because I was "so busy", but since I've adopted Joy's De-clutter-bug cleaning schedule, I was able to come home each day to a clean home.) This day is truthfully a Satisfaction Sunday. I was able to take a guilt-free nap when Carson napped, and not worry about what all I needed to get done before Marc gets home.

Our angel has a nasty cold with a wicked cough and super runny nose. It's continued to get worse throughout the day. We go to the doctor Tuesday for his 9 month check up, hopefully he can wait til then without getting too sick.

My next post will be about the pros and cons of intentions. And stay tuned for a back log of Carson's first 9 months. And I may even dabble in telling you the love story of my amazing husband and me. :)

Frugal Friday

Today was not Frugal at the Mahan home. It's looking like Sometimes Saturday is going to turn into Slaving Saturday for me. But I am looking forward to it. So, what are your MUST HAVE cleaning supplies? The items you could not live without. For every room, every surface - floors, dishes, walls, clothes, tubs, sinks, toilets...I want to know it all. Go.

Thorough Thursday

This day I have been looking forward to since I read about the schedule. However, because it is Thanksgiving, it has been put on hold. My intentions were to come home after our 2 family dinners and do the work, but my water heater decided to protest my vigorous cleaning, laundry, and dishwashing attempts Wednesday evening...so we had to invite my brother over to fix it. He came through for us yet again, and we are so blessed to not have to shell out major bucks on a new water heater for the holidays. Especially since we've already spent our Christmas club money on the family present this year.

Washing Wednesday

I love wearing clean clothes. I love looking at my closet and seeing a full selection of my clothing options (and Carson's too). So why is it that I have never been big on doing laundry? I kid you not when I say that I did laundry MAYBE once every 3-4 weeks. And in between, if needed I'd do some whites for Marc. When Carson came along, I started out doing his a lot more often. He gets clean clothes all the time. Us? We can wait. So having a day dedicated to washing clothes will be a nice change of pace.

Admittedly, this day has been somewhat of a challenge. On one hand, I really don't mind laundry, but it's just so easy to put off. On the other I just got "caught up" on my laundry last week...so it doesn't feel like a laundry day. Know what I mean? (Of course not, because most normal people do laundry more regularly, like - weekly. Or, dare I say, DAILY?! But alas, there IS laundry in the laundry room, and lots of it, even though I did it last week. And I am committed to "working as unto the Lord" in serving my husband, my child and my home.) *Colossians 3:23-24

Another challenge in today is that I made a cake for a dear friend who's precious little one is having her first birthday tomorrow. AND the DirecTV guy came out to hook up our new service and was here from 9-1. Yes, I said 9-1!! So those things and taking care of Carson have kept me very busy. But thankfully, that is all taken care of. Time to start the laundry! :)

Oh, and have I mentioned how much I love having a clean house?! When SJ came over today, she couldn't get over how much better it looked. She even accused me of hanging a new mirror in the hallway - "but that mirror has been there forever, as long as we have," I countered - and then it hit me...she's never been allowed in the back of the house because it's always so dirty! And I confess that I did not take adequate "before" pictures; NOT because I didn't want anyone to SEE how dirty my house was, but because I didn't see how dirty my house was! So it didn't occur to me to take a picture of that counter or those piles. !!

Tidy Tuesday

Come with me down a [hopefully former] trail of thought in any day of cleaning.

Okay, today I need to clean the kitchen, my bedroom and the bathroom. We'll start with the kitchen - gosh it's a mess in here. I'll unload the dishwasher. Commence unloading. While placing stuff on the counter for cabinets unreachable until the dishwasher is shut, I run out of room. Hm, let's clean off some counter space. Purse goes here. Diaper bag goes here. These pants of the Boy's, throw them in the diaper bag - no wait, I better go ahead and put them in his room. Take pants to room. While there, pick up the toys strown about. Stumble over a pair of shoes. Hm, we need to get him some shoes that actually fit his feet before we go to Gatlinburg. It's gonna be cold there. Let me look through his shoes one more time to see if he has any that he's grown into. Speaking of cold, I need to survey his cold-weather clothes too. Gosh, he doesn't have very much, just this couple of outfits here. What if it's colder than that? I need to make a list of what all to get him. I wonder if some of his cold weather stuff is in his dirty clothes? That's a big pile of clothes, maybe I should go ahead and wash them. Take the load to the washer, dump them in. Make a quick stroll through the kitchen, living room, dining room, all the bedrooms and bathrooms gathering any strays scattered here and there. While strolling:  Be sure and remember to put those toys in the toy box when you come back through. Oh, don't forget to grab that glass next time around. Let's go ahead into the master bedroom and put all the dirty laundry in the laundry room. While in the MB: I have GOT to straighten this bathroom. This goes here, that goes there, put this in that drawer, now for the clothes. I need to go ahead and sort this massive pile before taking it to the laundry room. Sort clothes, take to LR. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, I was gonna make a list of the winter clothes Carson needs for Gatlinburg. Sit on the couch, open computer to write list, fall into a trap of facebook. Lose all train of thought and get nothing else accomplished for the day. Until time for Carson's dinner, when I walk in the kitchen and realize the dishwasher is wide open, half-unloaded, and a sink full of dishes! Gasp!!

You see what just happened there? Yeah, that's an everyday occurance for me, folks. No wonder my house is a constant pig-sty.  Hopefully this new cleaning schedule (thanks to Joy's Little Joys) will nip that in the bud. It certainly did yesterday! I managed to sweep, mop, and vaccuum my entire house. That has never happened in one day!!

Today is Tidy Tuesday. Have I told you yet how much I LOVE this new schedule? Today's chore was to take a clothes basket (or 2) and go through the house picking up any item that does not belong in the room it is currently in and place it where it goes. I just finished doing this. This one was so satisfying. We had piles of clutter in every room because I kept saying I'd get to it and go through it and put it all away eventually. The piles were organized, mind you, but now they are non-existent!! I'll take invisible piles over organized ones any day! I'm seriously in a new house. All it took was about an hour. I even cleaned up the pile of paperwork under my bed that I kept piling on - I finally went through it and filed it away. 

Gosh I can't tell you how liberated I feel. No more rushing things into an organized pile of mess or throwing things in rooms and shutting doors when people come over. I TRULY hope to stick to this schedule. I feel like a new person!

Carried Away

Okay, so maybe I'm having a little too much fun with this blog. Three posts in one day?? You have got to be kidding me! I know there is no one reading this (seeing as how I haven't told anyone about it, lol), but just being able to gab about anything and everything is kinda satisfying.

Things going on:

• The Boy is trying to cruise. It's adorable...I mean, he's too scared to actually make the transition from the couch to the ottoman, but the determination on his face is simply priceless. I'll post pictures soon. 
• Marc and I discussed our forming Christmas traditions for our family and what we want the Boy to know. Of course we want him to know the REAL reason for the season, everybody does, right? But we want to take that a step farther. He needs to know, believe, practice, understand, accept the true reason. Make sense? Agree? What are your traditions and what will your children believe - and how will you lead them to this belief?
• I'm "dieting" - I put that in quotations because really I'm just counting calories, not exactly eating healthily. And today, I blew it. I even thought that I was on track, but I guess the calories were just stacked against me. I'm using My Fitness Pal if you wanna join me. It's rather interesting.

Have I mentioned how much I love having clean floors? I have walked around all day long without shoes on...something I haven't done since the installation of the wood floors in the living room. Swept floors just aren't the same as MOPPED floors! :)

Peace out.

Mopping Monday

Today is the first day of a challenge issued by Joy Finch in her Little Joys. I have struggled in the area of cleaning for the entirety of my marriage...wait, no, the entirety of my life. I've never been super motivated, and I can ALWAYS find something better to do. However I married a man who likes a clean house, and it's my joy to make that man happy. So I try. But I usually fail.

Well Joy gave me a cleaning schedule that makes it all seem less overwhelming. Before today, when I walked into a room I felt overwhelmed by all that needed to be done to clean that room and found a reason to procrastinate. But today, for the first time, I only thought about "Mopping Monday". This includes sweeping, mopping and vaccuuming all rooms in the house. I did it. And all during Carson's nap. I feel accomplished. I feel like this day is not wasted. And the feeling of "I just can't get it all done" has not hovered over me today! And can I just say, my floors were filthy! Under the refrigerator were hiding shards of glass (eek!); I took a picture of the dirt I swept in the hallway (because NO ONE should have that much dirt in the hallway); and I can't tell you the last time the guest bedroom was vaccuumed.

Sure, I'll still spot-clean as needed, but I know that at least once a week, my floors will be thoroughly cleaned. Clean enough for my toddler to roll around on and keep a smile on the hub's face. And that makes me glad. I'll keep you posted throughout this 4 week journey of cleaning.

My first Blog

Well, I have wanted to start a blog since Carson was born, maybe even before. He is now 9 months and I'm finally getting around to it! I'm not sure I expect anyone will read this, so it will mostly just be filled with ramblings of things going on in my life at any given moment. Should you happen to stumble along my blog, I hope you enjoy the time you spend here.