Cleaning the House in 40 Minutes a Day? Or: How Running Made Me a Better Housekeeper.

Behold, the sparkling clean trash can of day 2!

My history with housekeeping has been a long and messy one (ha!). I've never been the greatest housekeeper, though the months we were selling our house, I really kicked it up a notch and pulled through, but BOY was that a lot of work.  I've typically been terrible at following schedules, so all the fly lady stuff never really worked for me.  Especially since her #1 focus seems to be waking up each day and shining your sink.  I just don't care if my sink sparkles, as long as it's not disgusting, I guess. 

I recently stumbled on this thirty day cleaning schedule from Apartment Therapy.  Well, to be honest, I ran across the kitchen one, first.  Twenty minutes per day?  That feels doable!  I decided to start the kitchen cleaning schedule on June 1.  I'm thinking I'm going to do both, though, I just need to catch up on the house cleaning schedule by spending a little extra time today.

This brings me to my first problem: I'm terrible at following schedules (at least, when no one else is specifically counting on me for it).  Here's the thing, though.  After following my half-marathon training plan, following a cleaning plan actually feels like it's no big deal.  I think I can commit to 30 days, and I honestly think I'll be pleased enough with the results that I'll want *WANT* to continue. 

Let's hear it for learning discipline!  This gives me hope of managing to get myself on some kind of homeschooling schedule.

Spring Cleaning.

Ok, it's technically not spring yet, but in a fit of inspiration today I went through a closet that I've been meaning to go through for a while. It happened to be the closet that I had been keeping much of my stash in and some old projects that I had planned to finish or frog.

I came across an afghan that I had started working on when we went to the grand canyon back in 2001 or 2002. Back when I was a newbie crocheter. Why I started with a ginormous afghan on a size H hook, I'll never know, but now it's oh-so close to being done. In fact, it's probably long enough to be done now, but the problem is that it's white. What, that doesn't sound like a problem? Well, I was using mill end pound-of-yarn packages of acrylic that I got from AC Moore back when I was a poor college student. The problem is, the second pound of yarn I was working with doesn't match the first pound of yarn I was using. But I didn't have anything better, so I just kept going. The third pound of yarn, matches the first. So, now it's a white stripe blanket.

So I started working on it again and it came back surprisingly easily. It's slower for me than knitting, right now, because my hands aren't used to it. I'll post pictures when I get done.