A rare day of productivity!!

Here's my fabulous list for the day:
Neatened both living rooms (which stayed neat for about 15 minutes).
Vacuumed both living rooms while they were neat.
Vacuumed most of the hardwood floors.
Put on the attachment and vacuumed behind the fridge, under the stove (kinda) a lot of baseboards, under the 2 liter bottles, and in all of those kitchen crannies that the broom just doesn't get and the mop makes worse.
I got caught up on all the filing! Yes I said ALL!! (And then the mail cam 3 hours later so now it's not all done again.)
I even mopped with my wonderful spray mop. (And 3 hours later, I gave the baby a handful of chex in his high chair. )
I attacked the scratch in the wax on my wood floor with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and DID make the scratch look less like a scratch. Now it looks like an exceptionally clean lightening bolt through the middle of my kitchen floor. Hmmm... not sure if that's better or worse.

Also today, I enforced three time outs for spitting, two of which were directly at the cat.
Uncle Four volunteered to clean up the vomit off the carpet, much to my grateful surprise. And it was even oddly purple due to strawberry milk.

Hank is just nearly crawling and is occasionally getting really ticked off. Which will eventually lead to crawling.

One living room looks like a bomb went off again. Two kinds of flash cards, two kinds of building blocks, at least two puzzles, one sorting toy, three blankets, and one book, plus lots of other baby toys. All par for the course.....

Clean a living room in 4.5 minutes

This video shows how you can make a room look remarkably better in just a few minutes. This is neatening as opposed to cleaning. Cleaning involves removing dirt. Neatening is what you do to either restore sanity, or start to actually clean. But a quick neatening job can make you feel better so you can maybe tackle the next room in a similar fashion, and then maybe the kitchen, and the satisfaction of seeing one thing done can just snowball until you've got the whole house neat or clean. Or until the kids wake up from their nap...

snow days

Yesterday morning, my work office didn't open until 11am. The roads were still pretty icy in patches (mostly neighborhoods) and Hubby had trouble getting out of the driveway. Hubby took QUint to daycare by 9am (of course!) so I was AT THE HOUSE BY MYSELF FOR THE FIRST TIME IN QUINT'S LIFE!!!! And you know what I did? I put all 4 TVs on the same station - MY CHANNEL! - which happened to be Clean Sweep. Only my favorite TV show. And it always inspires me to clean.

For 2.5 hours, I cleaned every room of the house and had a perfectly clean house when I left for work! The kitchen table had just two short stacks of papers on it. The kitchen counter was completely cleaned off and wiped off. The dishwasher was running. The dining tale only had my pyrex bowls and Hubby's computer on it - with a clean table cloth! The coffee table near the couch had only coasters, remotes and the clock sitting on it. I even dusted it! The pillows were arranged prettily. All the toys and blankets were picked up and put in their baskets. There was now no junk on the wingback chairs or under the wingback chairs, humidor, or baby swing. The entryway was cleared of 3 rather large boxes which had started to live there. One was trash, the other two were big toy sets that have been given to us. The toy sets are now stored in the loft ON A SHELF waiting for Quint to be the right age. All things waiting on the stairs to go upstairs have now gone upstairs. I put the rest of the Christmas stuff in the attic. I re-arranged some things in the loft to make more floor space. I gathered all the dirty burp rags and blankets. In my office, I picked up everything off the floor, cleaned off the futon so it only had remotes on it, and stacked the big toys (boppy, bouncy seat, and floor gym - yes they can stack!) I filed all the filing. I made a pile of tax stuff. I gathered all the dirty dishes from feeding Quint in that room. I cleaned off and dusted my filing cabinets - this seems miraculous. In Quint's room, I made the bed, neatened the stacks of blankets, and arranged the pillows. In my room, I made the bed, gathered all the shoes into one huge shoe soup pile. Cleaned all the floor space near the edges of the room so I can now baseboard gaze. I even folded a load of baby laundry and put it away. Uncle Vester at daycare said of all this that I was a white whirlwind and he was right! It was sooooo much fun! And so much fun to think about it being that way while I was at work.

I got home and it was beautiful! I told Hubby about the wonderful house cleaning and when he got home, I raced downstairs to see his reaction. He was just as excited as I was. He said it made coming home so much nicer, and he was right.

Maybe it will stay that way for a day or two! I even took pictures that I'll have to post later.