I hate to be the bearer of bad news. BUT. My “30 day” (ha… ha) Spring Cleaning challenge has kind of fallen by the wayside. I have not been able to make it my top priority on a daily basis, because as you know from weeks 1-3, most of the tasks from the original list take waaaaayyyyyyy longer than the 20ish minutes that I was hoping would be doable. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve made some good progress and am glad I’ve done some deep cleaning that I’ve never done in the 2.5 years that we’ve had our house. Then again, as it turns out, cleaning is not that fun or interesting! So. This will be the last time I torture you with the details of what I’ve been doing to freshen up the house. I’ll make it quick.
Spring Cleaning Challenge – Week 3
Ah, week three… The most exciting week yet!? Or not. All I did was clean the bathroom, which is the opposite of exciting. But I did learn at least one new trick along the way. SO. There’s that.
If you’re just jumping in, I am working my way through a “30 Day (more like 45 day for me) Spring Cleaning Challenge”. I found my inspiration here. This week, I’m sharing some before and afters. GET EXCITED.
Day 15 – Monday: Organize/clean storage cabinets
Total time: 35 minutes
I’ll be honest, I went into this expecting it to be cake. One benefit to having a small single bathroom in your house is that it’s quick to clean. I bought an under cabinet organizer several months ago, similar to the one I have for the kitchen sink, like this
Spring Cleaning Challenge – Week 2
I know you’ve just been dying to know how week two of my Spring Cleaning project went. And yes… It went. This daily cleaning thing is tougher than it sounds, and to be honest it has been more like an every other day thing for me so far. I’m already excited to complete the Spring Clean list and get to the point where I am just doing more basic tasks for maintenance. 15 to 20 minutes a day… Now that sounds doable. If you read week 1, you learned some of the things I didn’t know before starting this super fun adventure, including that a lot of the tasks on the list take more like an hour on average. But I will stop complaining and get to the update!
Week 2 – and my MVPs (most valuable products) for cleaning:
Spring Cleaning Challenge – Week 1
Well I did something very mature. I decided to do some actual Spring Cleaning. And not just the typical pick up, vacuum, dust routine, which I try to stay on top of every couple weeks. No no, I thought it was about time that I do some real deep-cleaning, after living in our home for about 2.5 years. I do think we do a decent job of keeping a fairly tidy house, but I typically only set out to “clean house” over the weekend. Because we both work full time+ jobs, we really love our weekends, time spent outside, trips, social time with friends, and also our lazy movie/tv time on the couch. So there are a lot of weekends that I am not able to dedicate a full morning or day to cleaning. There are also some days that I do have time, but guess what I’m going to pick when it comes down to choosing between fun/relaxation and chores. Hint: it doesn’t rhyme with bores. Thinking about trying to tackle spring cleaning the whole house on a beautiful day off made me want to cry a little bit. So I decided to take a new approach. Maybe I can stay motivated by having a written plan, and breaking tasks down into bite-size daily chores.
Thai Curry Chicken Stuffed Peppers
First, let me start by saying that I don’t consider myself to be an awesome cook. I mean, I have a few go-to meals that I think are delicious and require a little bit of throwing together. But if you asked me who’s the better cook between Jesse and I, I would vote for him 8 days a week. He has the patience of a saint, which I do not. He’s also watched a lot (all) of Good Eats and America’s Test Kitchen, so he knows a lot about food technique. I’m more of a Top Chef kinda gal. I watch for the entertainment and to drool over the dishes, not to actually learn how to cook.
That being said, I am SO thankful to have a husband who is creative and awesome at cooking, and I have been able to (reluctantly) step out of my comfort zone to try to come up with new ideas, and improve on dishes that we’ve done in the past. That isn’t to say that we are always successful when we try to spice something up, we’ve had our flops. Which is why sometimes, I tell Jesse “if it’s already good, don’t f*#% with it!”. So I was a taaad bit skeptical when we found a recipe for buffalo ranch stuffed peppers and decided to make it something completely different than what it was supposed to be, because we were missing about 80% of the ingredients that it called for. Whoops. I do have to give credit to Kelly at Primally Inspired for the original recipe inspiration though because…
OH. MY. GOD. Did this turn out awesome!!