The lion of March

The snow we're dealing with today is beyond the nuisance stage, so I decided to stop titling blog posts that way. March has come in like a lion and we can only hope that it will go out like a lamb (but I am not going to get my hopes up). It's probably a good thing that Easter is quite late this year, though the kids are now too old for the neighborhood "hunt." Nothing like hunting for plastic eggs under snowdrifts.

This photo shows the backyard, before the bulk of the snow fell. We had 5 inches as of early morning, but then it started up again around noon-ish, and we've had a couple more since then. Not a HUGE snow, but bigger than the nuisance snows of February. Big enough that shoveling actually required some muscle. I was the one who provided the muscle. I like to shovel snow on the weekend when I'm not busy doing a million other things.

I did not have much of anything on the agenda for the weekend -- that is, I wanted to sit in the living room reading and watching the snow fall, but nobody else wanted to do that, so it didn't happen. What did happen, most unusually, was a bit of cleaning. Despite the fact that none of my plans for keeping the house clean ever last long, hope springs eternal and I have recently come up with a new plan which I am attempting to put into place. This is the basic plan:

• Do the dishes every day; do not allow them to pile up for days. If Rocket Boy doesn't do them, instead of nagging, do them myself.
• Clean Pie's litter box in the garage every Friday before trash pick-up; clean Chester's litter box in the office whenever he poops in it.
• Do the laundry all the time constantly, just like always
• Every Saturday clean either the kitchen (other than dishes), the bathroom, or the living room & hall.
• Every Sunday clean either the office, the kids' room, or Mom & Dad's room.

I started my new plan last weekend. On Saturday I studied the living room and hallway but did not do anything about them. It seemed too daunting. But on Sunday, while Rocket Boy took the kids on an outing, I cleaned a section of the office. The pictures above left and to the right show before and after. I know it still looks bad, but this was several hours of hard work. Seriously, it was. The goal is to get those piles small enough that I can open the file cabinet drawer and then put the piles IN the file cabinet. It will take a few more sessions before we are there, but this was a good start.


The cleaning this weekend was supposed to be bathroom on Saturday, kids' room on Sunday. But on Saturday -- which was a very cold, very snowy, very boring day -- Kid A decided he wanted to clean off the desk in his room so that he would have a place to build Legos. So he actually did -- I had to help sort his junk pile into recycling/compost/trash and find places for a few things, but he did a pretty good job himself, including sorting out what he did/didn't want to keep, putting Legos away, etc. In the background you can see their dresser, the top of which I was planning to clean today. But it's OK. A surface got cleaned, even if it was the wrong one on the wrong day. I am happy.

So that meant that today I cleaned the bathroom. Cleaning the bathroom is a very hard job because the room itself is so tiny and I am so large. I had to scrunch my bulk down onto the floor and reach hopelessly behind the toilet to try to get that area of the floor clean. It was not fun, though it probably looked funny (no one was home to see, or worse, photograph me). Nor was any other aspect of the job any fun. But the bathroom looks a lot better now. I use a book I've had for years called Speed Cleaning and follow all the instructions exactly, because I have no idea how to clean things and cannot remember how from one time to the next.

Best of all, I have done my required cleaning for the week and do not need to do anything else (except dishes, litter boxes, laundry) until next Saturday, when I am scheduled to clean the kitchen. That is also the boos' birthday, so I don't know exactly what will get done, but I will try to do something.

Now it's almost 6 pm and I would really like to sit in the living room and read a book while the snow continues to fall, but I think there isn't time. Kid B and Rocket Boy will be home from Denver soon, and then we'll have to put dinner together (leftovers, mostly). Anyway, Kid A has already commandeered the living room for the purpose of watching television. Sigh. He spent 5+ hours at a friend's house today, playing, and I'm sure they didn't play with screens, so it's OK. I just wish I could have the living room to myself once in a while. But if I had done that while everyone was gone, I wouldn't have a clean bathroom now.