Monday, February 27, 2012

March Un-Madness

Basketball has something called March Madness. As I don't follow basketball, we're not talking about that today. lol What I was thinking about, though, was Spring Cleaning. As March approaches, it seems like Spring Cleaning would be the next step.

I have never had any experience with Spring Cleaning. My mother never did it so I've never learned. But I wonder, is Spring Cleaning wrapped up in some March Madness? Do people go "mad" trying to get their Spring Cleaning done?

I don't think we should ever feel rattled because of our need to clean stuff, even with Spring Cleaning. So I'm taking a March Un-Madness approach and hoping that this works out. My thought was, that with a little planning, I could begin some Spring Cleaning in March and see where it goes. As you know, I'm still new at this domestic stuff and trying to get it all figured out. Whatever I have been doing has been working okay but there is room for improvement.

So here's my March Un-Madness Plan (along with some explanation of my ideas):

March begins the middle of this week then there are 4 full weeks. Don't forget, there's a week with two kids home as my daughter will be off school for March Break. That will affect getting stuff done too.

March 1-3: de-cluttering and de-decorating (I still have some Christmas-y decorations I would like to put away and some other piles that have formed)
March 4-10: concentrate on upstairs (I would like to do some cleaning upstairs that will require moving stuff as well as some decluttering of things that have collected upstairs, mostly clothes that the kids have outgrown)
March 11-17: kids' stuff (I've got boxes of kids stuff in the basement that need to be gone through as well as the stuff in their room and living room)
March 18-24: concentrate on downstairs (I want to work on extra cleaning on the main floor along with a little sorting that needs to be done)
March 25-31: bonus week (this will have to be planned later on, I want to see how far I get with the other weeks, besides there's always the basement) 

So that's the scoop. Hope it works. :) I've got it written down on my calendar for March. Will try to report each Saturday and let you know how it went. If this works as good as I'm hoping, I will plan something like this for every March.

What are you doing for March Un-Madness? Care to join me?

Monday, February 20, 2012

February's a bust!

I had great plans for February. Alas they have all gone down the drain.

Hubby's old car was supposed to be worked on by a guy. The car got moved to his garage and he did a couple of things. But the guy has been shut down for not paying his rent. So it's ended up that hubby decided he would try to get the work done on the car himself. His boss owns the building and it can stay in there till the end of the month.

So I came up with my own genius idea. Since hubby wouldn't be working on the basement for February, I thought I would try to do some more sorting of our stuff down there. You know, get rid of more clutter and rotate some of the kids' toys. Unfortunately we've had a family crisis and I just haven't been able to get down into the basement. I lost all my motivation. I've been trying to work on other stuff so that I'm not behind on my commitments should I be needed by the family. I've been spending extra time with hubby's family.

Instead of beating myself up about the lack of things accomplished this month, I'm letting it go. It's the way life happens sometimes. I have been doing well at keeping up with the regular things around the house through all that's going on. I have to be happy with that. March will soon be here and there is always a new start with a new month. :)