Whenever I am done with my cleaning for the day, I always say out loud, “This house is clean.” If you have ever seen the movie Poltergeist, then you know the line I’m referring to. Now I’m not ridding my house of any ghosts or evil spirits (except maybe the dust devils that reside under the bed), but it feels good to have accomplished some level of organization and sanitizing where I spend most of my time.
I live in a big house: four stories, lots of rooms and bathrooms, lots of antiques to keep dusted. On top of it all, in addition to being avid antique collectors, my husband and I are both packrats. And on top of that, we both lost our parents in the last few years, and that generation never threw out anything because of their Great Depression mentality–we have had to put a lot of their things in storage because we have to have room for OUR stuff, for heaven’s sake. We are not to the hoarder stage yet, but fast approaching.
We only have one child, so I cannot in good conscience leave all of this debris for him to clean out when we are gone. I keep saying that I have just GOT to declutter, but when I start in on a box or bag, I get bogged down remembering. Soooooo. . . I thought I would see what hints and tips are on the Internet for situations like mine.
Apparently there are millions of people like me because there are so many blogs and websites on cleaning and organization out there that it is close to ridiculous. I looked at many of these helpful websites and settled on two or three to get me going. I copied their lists and schedules, and one even has an app for my iPad (Motivated Moms). Now I know what I am supposed to do each day of the week, including weekends. The only problem is that some days I am not at home, and this throws off the whole schedule of watering indoor plants, cleaning the dining room chandelier, and inventorying my refrigerator so that I can plan meals that I am not going to cook (even though I now have enough wonderful recipes from pinterest.com to last the rest of my life).
I’m going to have to get ruthless, go medieval on this stuff, and then I’ll really be able to say, “This house is clean!”
lifesabutterbean 
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