Six More Weeks Until Spring Cleaning
I haven’t really been cooking anything spectacular. I’m still just cooking with mostly what I have in my kitchen. I suppose it is my food spring cleaning. I’m just trying to reduce what I have on hand.
Jay turned three last Sunday. Really! Three! We went to brunch at Maceli’s. Ada and I went shopping on Saturday after her dance class to pick up some gifts for him: a couple of books, a play tool set–which he used to fix Ada’s stroller from some unknown injury–and a glow in the dark solar system with stars to hang up on the wall in the playroom. Later on, we headed to KC for a Super Bowl party.
I’ve added another boundary for the kids: No toys in the living room. The living room is being enforced as the quiet room. The only allowed items are books, paper & crayons, or one stuffed animal if they are carrying it around. If they want to be loud and drag crap around, they can go in their room or downstairs in the playroom. That is their room to do as they wish.
This has been hard for them. They can be as loud and obnoxious as they want in the room designated for them, and they have two such rooms. They still always want to be where I am at, and they drag their crap with them. I’ve been spending way too much time directing them to pick up. Yesterday, they had to face the consequence of this: almost all their toys were moved downstairs. They have books, their Build-A-Bears and clothes, and Jay has one dinosaur and his toolbox upstairs. The bins where we keep toys and slide under their beds are gone. It is going to be easier for them to keep toys out of the living room if there aren’t many upstairs. And hopefully they will be able to handle picking up 10 items, so I’m not tripping over toys in their room. Plus, with the influx of new items because of Jay’s birthday, I wanted to remove some older ones. We filled three kitchen trash bags. Gone, or at lease soon as I make a big dump to Goodwill. I will give the kids credit. Not that many toys are broken. They are still in pretty good shape. The laundry basket has been moved into the closet, which now has nothing on the floor. Not only has some of the stress of tripping over crap has eased, but moving Jay’s new bed in on Monday will be really easy because there is nothing to get out of the way except his toddler bed. Oh yeah. We bought him a twin bed. That was his big gift.
I also took the opportunity to dig out the spring/summer clothes from last year. What will be too small for them to wear has been bagged for donation. I’ve also thrown in some things that Jay has outgrown during the winter. Now there is more closet room for me to pick up spring/summer clothes as I catch then on sale. Ada will be sporting a 5, and Jay will be wearing a 4T. Yeah, he did some growing. He can probably do some 3Ts, but I bet they won’t last through the entire summer, so I usually go up a size. As long as the shorts will stay on, I don’t care if they are a little oversized. I do that every year which helps make clothes last two seasons.
I’m doing more clearing out. Hopefully I’ll have spring cleaning done by spring so we can spend time enjoying it and not cleaning. Really. Winter is the best time to clean. Who wants to go out in 13-degree wind?
