Sunday, February 26, 2017

Week 4 and 5: Formal Living and Dining Rooms

So I'm working on the 14 Week Home Organizational Challenge. since I am taking extra time for some of the tasks, weeks four and five for me were supposed to be working on the Dining Room and Formal Living room. 

Well, that kind of happened... 
Week four I did nothing. I needed a break, and we were still recovering from the Super Bowl party, which was awesome by the way.

We had 16 adults, 3 kids, and 3 dogs. It was a fun, packed house! 




Then week five came around and I started clearing the formal living room. Except it is mostly empty already. This was the room that we spend forever in trying to remove the wallpaper paste. The only thing in there was the piano and a couple shelves I had just bought. 

Once you have gotten off the wagon, you feel like you will never catch up again. Part of me was dragging my feet because I didn't think I could finish. I just wanted to let it trail off into oblivion. We have all been there. I should have been able to get the space done in a couple days, but instead it took the whole week. 

I dusted, I spot cleaned the walls, I washed then stained then waxed all the wood trim and windows. I vacuumed, OH! Our new vacuum!









You may remember out last one bit the dust (lol no pun intended) when we were trying to finish the nook. Thanks to my mom, I hate sub-par vacuums. She still has her 30+ year old vacuum, and they just don't make them like they used to. The one we got cost an arm and a leg, but hopefully it will last half as long Mom's. 


After the carpets were finally vacuumed well, I tried out the carpet cleaning machine we bought forever ago. It did seem to work really well and got a lot of dirt and sand out, but it didn't do as well on the older stains as I was hoping. 

Of course all the "stuff" moved over into the just-cleaned living room so I could start the dining room. Sigh.

 I literally did 90% of the dining room in one day. 

Eventually we will get a table for the dining room so you can actually dine in there (imagine that!), but the big accomplishment this time was finally getting the wedding dishes out of the basement and into the buffet. 




Yes, we have been married five years and the dishes were still packed in the basement. I can't be the only one, right?










There are still a couple things to pick up (cleverly hidden by camera angles), but these two rooms are now most of the way there!





Mom is also participating in the challenge, and she is making great progress too! Check out her dining room:

2 comments:

  1. Looks great! It feels so good to have things organized and cleaned up. I'm working on that now but it takes me forever...

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  2. Lol, clearly it is taking me forever too! I am starting to lose steam in this challenge and need to figure out how to re-energize myself.

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