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Spring Cleaning Challenge – Week 3

May 17, 2015 No Comments

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. I pulled everything out, tossed a few items, wiped down the cabinet and doors, and put everything back.

Simple Living

Spring Cleaning Challenge – Week 2

May 6, 2015 2 Comments

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:

Simple Living

Spring Cleaning Challenge – Week 1

April 26, 2015 2 Comments

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.

DIY

DIY Personalized Spring Tulip Wreath

March 22, 2015 6 Comments

It’s officially Spring! With the warm weather we’ve been having over the past couple of weeks, it feels like Spring came early. Especially because we typically get some freak snow storms in March or April, and sometimes even into May. I hate to say that and jinx my luck, because I’m almost sure we’re not in the clear yet. Even so, we’ve already had some beautiful days that just begged for porch sitting, sun soaking, and beer drinking – so I’m taking advantage whenever I can, even if only for a half hour after work. And look! We have tulips coming up.

This type of weather also seems to inspire things like spring cleaning. I have lots of to-dos that could fall into the spring cleaning category, but with temperatures in the 70s over the weekend, who wants to be inside cleaning?! So I found the discipline to spend about 20 minutes last week dusting the wooden blinds in our living room, and then decided to reward myself this weekend with something fun like a new wreath to brighten up the front door! Baby steps, ok?

DIY, Save Money

DIY Home State Going Away Gift for Under $20

March 7, 2015 6 Comments

One of the things I love the most about living in Cheyenne is the people that we’ve met and the lifelong friendships that we’ve made. It’s kind of an odd place to find a social niche, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the quality of people that we have managed to find, and our friends are definitely one of the big reasons we don’t plan on going anywhere in the foreseeable future. So obviously we were super bummed to find out that a couple of our awesome friends made the decision to pack up their belongings and their adorable 1 year old and move back to Iowa to be closer to their families.

I wanted to do something for them that would be more personal than a gift card. My first thought was to have a cool map of Wyoming printed, have several of our friends write on it/sign it, and frame it as a way to capture the memory and also double as artwork for their new home. However, I have been known to procrastinate occasionally, so I found myself frantically trying to find an image that might work for this project last Friday, the day before the going-away bash. Of course at this point I didn’t have time to order an actual print to be delivered. If you are looking for cool prints of maps and you are more responsible than I am and leave yourself longer than 24 hours, there are some great options on etsy (if you’re not looking to go broke – the first site I found before searching etsy was City Prints. They apparently think pretty highly of themselves, with prices starting at $50 for pre-designed prints, up to $250+ for a custom print. Psssh… fat chance getting me to pay that, City Prints!). Here are some affordable shops that I like: