Babysteps Day 2 and Crisis Cleaning

Here is one of my before pictures... (you can click on it to enlarge if you're not scared to see how bad it really is.) Actually the living room wasn't even the worst room. That's my 13 yr old in the chair. She caught some nasty bug in Nashville on a class trip to Vandy. Also, my oldest had just tossed the dog's soccerball toy toward her bed by the window and the camera caught it in midair hehe. I'm going to stick some of the before photos all through the post to break up all my boring ramblings on.

As I stated yesterday, I have had it with this house in this state and I am doing something about it! I know Flylady works. I've been on the program off and on since 2002, and for years, my house was ready for even my own mother to visit at a moment's notice! Trouble came when I lost my mother, my husband lost his job, then had a heart attack, and we had to file bankruptcy due to the lost job and then medical bills... it all added up to DEPRESSION.

The last year and a half have been good for us as far as no real bad stuff happening. Unfortunately, the Depression had done it's damage, and I was just not the woman I was before it all happened. I've tried half-heartedly at trying to get back to being a good homemaker and get our finances back in order. It's been a struggle that to be honest, I think I had just gotten too lazy to try to overcome.

This is my dining room half of the living room area.

But recently things had kind of hit rock bottom around here. I hate that it takes that happening sometimes, but it's just how my life is. I am NOT my mother, and I am NOT a "Born Organized" person. I must not strive for "perfection" (which is a dirty word!) and instead remember that sometimes it's good just to "do something, even if it's wrong!" Of course, there's no real "wrong" way to mop a floor - as long as it gets cleaner than it was, it's an improvement! But it was the Perfectionist thinking that has been bogging me down lately.

I have been very interested in the Proverbs 31 woman, and I feel compelled to be more like that. I've found many blogs of women who have strived for this as well and are doing a MUCH better job than I am! It turned from being encouraging and inspirational... to being discouraging and taunting. I found myself just stopping trying altogether. I'd take one step ahead and the kids, or life in general would push me two steps back (or more!).

Looking toward the kitchen from the front door area. That blue cabinet used to be in the big bathroom, but it's going to be moved into the oldest girl's room - after we move her couch out of her room and into our room...... WHEN we get our master bedroom clean... THAT will be the BIG one!

Now this post is not meant to be a downer one, just a background. Yesterday I vented about how bad things are right now, but this is meant to give some reasons as to why life is like this now. I know in my heart now that I can't change my environment and keep it clean and organized until I get my heart and mind back in the right place. I need to find the woman I was before all these things happened... or better yet find the woman inside me that had OVERCOME all these things. It's time to stop letting them control me. Time to stop the excuses. Time to live in the present and look to the future instead of dwelling on the past. I still feel such a weight on my chest sometime when I think about it all, but I can't just wallow in the misery day after day and month after month.

Oh my poor kitchen! This is the area by the window and back door. It's become a catchall for just about everything. The stuff is just piled up everywhere, and it's horrible. The laundryroom/office is around the corner to the left where those hampers are...overflowing.

Thank you to everyone who's actually been reading all my moody rants and ridiculousness over the last year. I noticed I have almost reached 100 posts, and I would like to have the next hundred and beyond not be full of the whining and complaining that these have been. I want them to be joyful and full of praise and maybe even become inspirational and informative.

These two are of my master bathroom. Yeah it makes me ill to look at them too...

So, today is my second day doing the FlyLady 31 Babysteps program. It's just the basics of her overall mentoring and advice, but it's in a neat organized package. I need that lol. Here is her page for DAY 2.

So today I got up and brushed my hair out more than I usually do. It's very thick and frizzy and unruly. I'll get it cut again eventually. Then I put it into a ponytail since I knew I'd be doing a lot of work today. I got dressed and put on socks and my lace up KSwiss tennis shoes. I would have scrubbed my face and done my Arbonne stuff, but all the wash cloths were dirty. (Did I mention the mountain of laundry?) I did put on chapstick heh. I was ready for the day of cleaning. Not exactly presentable to the world, but not as bad as some days have been.

I then drafted Corina, my 17 yr old who had missed the bus today to help me, and I opened my Home Management Binder to my printed copy of Flylady's Crisis Cleaning 101. She and I took turns on rooms. I started in the kitchen and she started in the living room and then we switched. She thought it was cool to do a different room every 15 minutes. We worked 45 minutes, then took a break. I had worked 30 in the kitchen and 15 in the living room, and she was the opposite. Then we got back to work and ended up getting the living room and kitchen really presentable again then hit the bathrooms. She got their bathroom straightened up from the remodel, and I got most of my bathroom clean. We also spent 15 minutes emptying the 3 baskets of stuff that didn't belong in the rooms where we found them.

Here are a few of the "after" pics. These were taken a little while ago after I got off work, so it's dark outside, but at leas the kids are in bed and not cluttering it up again LOL. The living room desperately still needs to be vacuumed, so don't look at the nasty carpet haha. (I believe I'm going to do a separate post on the main bathroom remodel.)







And for those of you who have actually been reading this blog for a while... you might remember the conflict I had with trying to find an island for my kitchen that I liked. Well, here's the one my dear sweet hubby got for me.



And here is my Shiny Sink!!


That makes a complete Day 2 of the babysteps along with one good run-through of the Crisis Cleaning. I feel pretty good about everything, and I'm looking forward to doing Day 3, and also beginning to tackle my master bedroom... 15 minutes at a time!