Week 1 - Organise & Clean Your Home

Being an organised and tidy person by nature, it’s taken me such a long time to want to get my home back in order since my children were born, since my marriage breakdown in January this year and the death of my mother back in March. I had just started writing a list of jobs to complete, room by room and started a 4 week challenge to organise and clean my home.

Day 1 – Kitchen

• window and screen cleaned
• curtain washed
• blind removed
• cupboards cleaned
• light shade cleaned & teapots etc cleaned and moved from on top of cupboards
• fridge wiped down and magnets etc decluttered
• bench tops decluttered
• walls washed
• sink polished

I’d also only recently cleaned and decluttered under my sink so decided to give my spices a good clean out and decanted into a cheap $12 spice carousel I recently purchased. I also had to pick up a few groceries on this day and the white ceramic hand soap pump bottle was marked down to $3 at the dollar store. It was meant to be mine.

Day 2 – Main Bedroom

• decluttered
• furniture dusted and polished
• walls washed
• sheets washed and changed, bed made
• mattress vacuumed and flipped
• laundry folded and packed away
• vacuumed

I forgot to take a before picture of the top drawer in my bedside table but it was full of books like “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” so that gives you an indication of when it was last cleaned out. There were heaps of pens, puzzle books and old cough lozenges so this makes a big improvement.

And, on this day, we were supposed to wipe over our kitchen chairs (which I’d also done just recently) so I decided to declutter the ‘junk’ drawer. I just used old boxes and plastic containers without lids as drawer organisers.

Day 3 – Laundry

My laundry is another job that I’d made a start on a couple weeks ago. It just need a bit of a wipe down, sweep and provision of a bin for rubbish and making sure I cover the machine with the cover I made some time ago.

Day 4 – Lounge Room

• wash rugs
• vacuum couches
• remove rug and will get steam cleaned
• declutter furniture surfaces and polish
• dust all electrical equipment
• (didn’t touch home office area or knick knacks in wall unit *)
• The windows were another job I had recently done too

I didn’t have a magazine collection to go through either. I only have 3 magazines waiting to be read. I don’t normally buy them but I had the urge a couple weeks ago. Also, I’ve been living with unpolished, bare timber floors in the living room, dining room and kitchen areas for the last 12 months and it’s driving me crazy. I did have a rug in the living room but it was cream and a very unpractical colour for a home with 2 small children and 2 small dogs.

Day 5 – Clean Floors and Organise Pantry

For someone who loves to cook as much as I do, I’ve got the worst pantry in the world. Not enough room to store everything in one cupboard and the main cupboard has high, deep shelves. I make do with baskets and change things around occasionally. Maybe one day I’ll come up with a system that really works or move to a house with a great pantry.

I’ve really been dilligent this week in keeping on top of the dishes in the kitchen, putting things back where they belong and making the bed every day. The kids have been in on the act as well, washing up every evening and keeping their belongings in the appropriate areas.

(*) There are many areas of my home that will remain untouched, ie like the knick knacks, DVD’s, books etc as I’m in the process of deciding whether I want to remain in this house or buy another one. I’d like to make a fresh start and I think my current home needs a bit of work plus it has a lot of bad memories. I’m in the process of sourcing some packing cartons and I’m going to pack up a lot of these personal belongings as I go through each room. I’ve still got quite a lot of my Nanna’s and Mother’s belongings to bring into my home so they’ll all need a place.