Weekly Cleaning Update

A while back, I posted about my weekly cleaning schedule.  This was in our old house, which was much smaller.  I wasn't sure this was going to continue to work in the new house, but we gave it a try.

The old schedule:
Monday- Dusting/Pickup
Tuesday- Bathroom
Wednesday- Floors
Thursday- Kitchen
Laundry- 2 or 3 loads/week (throw them in before you do the other task)

Avery waiting for Josh to come home.  She is so excited to see him and have him vacuum up her hair! 

We had to do a bit of updating to make this work for the new house.  Here is our updated cleaning schedule:
Monday- Bedrooms
Tuesday- Bathrooms
Wednesday- Floors
Thursday-Common Space
Laundry- 3 or 4 loads/week

On Mondays, we put clean clothes away, change sheets, and generally tidy the bedrooms.  On Tuesday, we clean the bathrooms.  This usually means cleaning the toilet, sink, and mirror.  We use daily shower cleaner, so we do a deep clean of the shower/tub once a month.  On Wednesdays, we vacuum all floors and steam mop the wood floors.  On Thursdays, we tidy up the common areas (kitchen, living room, family room, and dining room).  I have gotten in the habit of doing all my loads of laundry on one day.  We have a fancy new washing machine which completes a load in 35 minutes, so this is pretty easy for me.  When we had longer load time, I was trying to do one load per day.  Either way works well for whatever works better in your life schedule.

I am the first to admit that there are MANY days and sometimes whole weeks that this doesn't get done.  Fortunately, you can jump right back in and it is easy to catch up since it is essentially only tackling one task at a time.  So kick back and enjoy the nice, summer weather while we still have it!

House Update: Dining Room

Next up we have our dining room.  If you have been to our house, I'm sure we have told you that we do not have a dining room.  Instead, we have converted the bedroom just off the kitchen and living room into one.  Since we have 4 bedrooms, this works pretty well (for now). If we are still in this house WAAAAAY down the road, it may be another story. 

Overall view of the room.  The projects we have done so far include hanging curtains and replacing the light fixture.  We have a few things that will be changing soon.  We are going to fix up the table and paint it to match the hutch, recover the chairs, get a hook so we can hang the light fixture properly, hopefully find a rug that is actually big enough, and paint the "bar" to match the table and hutch.  Lots of "little" projects.

This is the hutch that we found at the occasional store near our old place.  It was a great find and we are so happy to have it.  It is wonderful to be able to display our nicer dishes and other glassware.

See, it is a bedroom.  Our dining room has a closet!  Right now it stores jackets, shoes, and some extra "china" type things.

Our "bar."  We are trying to collect crystal decanters so we can eventually switch over to having everything in them.  Fancy.

This is one room you will be getting an update on soon (I hope!).

House Update: Guest Bedroom

The second post in the series of our house, which is becoming our home.  In our last home, out guest bedroom consisted of Josh's old "oak" bed frame, night stand, and dresser. Before we moved, we sold the bed frame and night stand, but kept the dresser.  We had plans for it.  We found the mirror (and little mirror tray on the dresser) at the cute occasional store on the corner which inspired the look for this whole room.  This store is also where we found our hutch, but that is for another time :)

I found this bed frame at Ikea and spent months wanting it before finally taking the plunge.

Close up of the occasional mirrors

 See this dresser? This is our old oak dresser!  I am totally kicking myself for not taking a"before"picture of this.  We painted it with white chalk paint and added the knobs.   It looked a little bit like this before (but a little lighter and without the texture):

Super cool in the 80's and 90's, but the new look is much improved for today!

This room is on the main level of our house.  All of the floors on the main level are the original hardwoods that have been refinished with a beautiful dark stain.  I love, love, love them.  It was one of the main things that sold me on the house.  One thing I have noticed is that they seem to scratch pretty easily.  I'm not sure if this is because of the color or if there is some sort of protective finish we need to put on them.

Future plans for this room involve a quilt made by me.  I have the fabric (sticking with the blue theme) and the sewing machine, but I need some help setting up my sewing machine for the first time.  Anyone who would like to help with this is welcome to come on over and take advantage of this extremely comfortable bed!  Hoping that cooler weather will bring a little more motivation for this.

August Goals

1. Fix dining room table.  We need to add in a bit of wood to finish it off and do a little reinforcing.

2. Paint dining room table.  We discovered that the paint we used on the new TV console matches the hutch, so we are going to use that on the table (and maybe the "bar" as well).

3. Recover dining room chairs. Ideally using the same fabric we used on our last set of chairs.  Here's to hoping it works!

4. Get budget back on track.  Cash has been taken out which is a step ahead of the last few months.  Our trip to Montana might throw this off a bit, but hoping we can get this under control again.

5. Start additional retirement savings.  We are hoping to start an IRA with a few hundred dollars every month.  Hopefully getting our budget under control again will help with this!

July Goal Update

Sorry this is late.  I was fully intending to post last Friday from the road, but T-Mobile would not allow that (no service).  We are back in town and I am hoping to make up for lost time in the next few days.

1. Celebrate Josh's birthday in style- Patio mojitos and dinner, lazy weekend, check!
2. Repaint the dresser in the guest bedroom-Check
3. Finally get toilet paper holders in the bathroom- Check
4. Make and hang towel holders for the bathrooms- Check
5. Hang our chalk board- Check
6. Organize the garage- We meant to do this, and then a friend came into town, we went to our city's annual celebration, and first row to a Twins game... so, another time?
7. Recover our dining room chairs- Decided to wait until we fix and paint the table and chairs first