Category: Cleaning

According to my goals for 2011, my To Do List Whiteboard should have been hung up and I should have published the first of my How It Works blog series.  Yeah… Neither of those has happened.  Lest you think I’ve been lounging around on the couch watching television, I have been hard at work.

First of all, I’ve had a couple of freelance projects that kept me busy.  (One of which was the redesign/rebranding of SimplyCathi’s website to PlanesTrainsAndTaxiCabs.com.  Freelance work brings in extra money and so gets a bump in priority over blog postings.

Secondly, we’ve been continuing our cleaning of the upstairs playroom.  During my last FWIS update, I mentioned some improvements that needed to be done.  Well, here’s some updates on those:

• My big desk – We considered disposing of it and buying a new one, but researching desks led us to conclude that we just can’t spend the money on one right now.  Now with other household repairs that need to be done (gutters repaired, ice melting coils installed on the roof, etc).  So my big desk will need to stay.  I did notice something important, though.  Due to the placement of the radiator, the desk was pulled back from the wall.  This made my big desk take up even more room space than it needed to.  We moved it to another (radiator-free) wall and it is taking up less space now.  It’s still a hog, but we can work with it for the time being.
• Old computer equipment – This has been pushed onto and under the Big Desk for the moment.  The equipment is old, but still workable so I feel bad about just tossing it in the garbage.  Besides, you can’t simply throw this stuff away.  You need to properly recycle old computer equipment.  I’ve been looking into various methods of getting rid of it, like selling it (at a very low price) to local people or giving it away to a charity that might be able to use it.
• Boxes of old papers to shred – We’ve gone through much of this and realized that a lot of the papers didn’t need to be shredded.  They could simply be ripped and tossed away.  So we went through the boxes and separated out shred items and toss items.  This process isn’t completely done, but it has greatly reduced the amount of papers we need to shred.  (This, by the way, was my Project for August.)
• Old toys – We cleaned out the play room’s closet and moved most of the old toys there.  It isn’t a permanent solution, but it gets them out of the way so the boys can play in the room.

While the playroom isn’t completely done, I’d say it is about 90% done.  And considering that this was a big item that I didn’t think we would complete until November, I think we’ve made excellent progress.

With our Disney trip coming up, however, I don’t think my March project (complete Math Board Game With NHL) is going to be done on time either.  That’s ok, though.  The due dates were always meant to be flexible guidelines instead of written in stone commandments.

According to my goals for 2011, I was supposed to have my To Do List Whiteboard hung up by the end of January.  Well, it’s now February, so how did I do?

Sadly, I must report that the whiteboard remains in its temporary location on the floor.  I couldn’t find the hanging materials I wanted to use at home and repeated snow storms meant that trips out were limited.  This will have to wait awhile longer before it is completed.

Still, January wasn’t a total loss.  One day, I decided to take the boys upstairs.  You might remember that we wanted to turn the upstairs into a play room but it was too crowded with junk.  Well, I had enough space for the boys to play while I cleaned.  Then B joined me and we spent quite some time cleaning.  After taking out a few bags of trash and removing a lot of empty cardboard boxes, I figured out that the mess was more manageable than it first appeared.  By moving the boxes we needed to go through towards the walls, I was able to open up the room a lot more.

We’ve had a few more cleaning sessions and the room still isn’t 100%, but it is extremely more usable now than it was before.  The remaining cleaning seems, in large part, to be:

• Old computer equipment – I’ll need to go through these and figure out how to store or get rid of it.
• Boxes of old papers to shred – Too many to do with our own shredder.  We’ll need to wait for a public shredding day and take them there.  Meanwhile, I’m sure we can find some out-of-the-way storage spot.
• My big desk – Originally, I bought this when I was working from home out of our apartment.  Now, it’s just a space hog when a much smaller desk would do.  Might see if someone would like to buy it, but this would likely have to wait until Spring.  Getting it out will be enough of a pain without dealing with snow/ice during the process.
• Old toys – There are quite a few toys here that both NHL and JSL have outgrown that are just taking up space.  We’ll need to see if we can donate them somewhere.

The boys have taken a huge liking to this upstairs room and keep asking to go there to play.  I had originally slated this to be completed by November, but, the way things are going and given how in love the boys are with the room, we’ll likely finish much earlier.