Friday, March 29, 2013

Spring Cleaning

Wow! I have been MIA from blogland for a while now! I am still around, but done little sewing lately. DDIL and Miss E flew home on Tuesday, so I have been trying to get things back to normal after their extended visit. They will be back in May, but this time because they are moving here! DS the Elder is transferring back to Tucson, so their family of three will be living nearby, which is great!

We did a bunch of furniture moving Tuesday night, and got the bed out of my sewing room. Hurray!!! On Wednesday I managed to get my sewing furniture moved back into functional positions, but since I was babysitting the twins Wednesday and Thursday, today was my first chance to actually sew.

All the toys were sticky and nasty, so I started my spring cleaning by washing all the toys up. Then it was time to tackle the linen closets. We have three bathrooms in our house, but only one of those has a linen closet, and there is one linen closet in the upstairs hallway.I decided only having that amount of space made the linen closets prime real estate around here, and it was time to clean them out and get rid of a bunch of stuff.



 ^ Here is the upstairs hallway linen closet before I cleaned it. Four shelves of board games that rarely get played anymore, and two shelves of messy linens.




^ Here is the new improved closet. From top to bottom it is one shelf of games, queen sized sheets, room for full sized sheets (I realized the full sized sheets I had were shot so a trip to the store is on my to do list), twin sized sheets, crib sized sheets and blankets, and extra pillows. A lot of these linens were actually in other places in the house, so I am cleaning out some other areas as well. See the curtain rod leaning against the bookshelf? That is because I was supposed to make a curtain to cover this closet a couple years ago when the closet door broke. I haven't made the curtain, so maybe I will check to see if I can buy a new door if it's a standard size. If it's not, maybe I should get around to making the curtain ;-)


^ This is the linen closet in the bathroom. It has really deep shelves, so I always have two layers of stuff in there, with the things I rarely use in the back.


^ This is how it looks now. I made myself get rid of frayed, stained or holey towels. I am really unconcerned about how my towels look, as long as they dry me after my shower, I think they are good. DH does not agree with me. Oh it was hard getting rid of towels I would have happily used for years longer. A couple of the towels I threw out were wedding gifts, and we've been married 29 years as of tomorrow. I hate to admit it, but it was probably time for those towels to go. My stash of baby gift quilts are in the front of the top shelf, and you can see my Orca Bay on the third shelf. Other than that it's mostly towels, blankets and a few curtains. A couple quilts I keep for sentimental reasons are now relegated to the back of the top shelf. They are in rough shape, but I'm not ready to toss them. My washer and dryer have been busy, busy, as I've washed almost all of these linens in the last couple of days. It was easier to sort through them in a big pile so I could check condition, and decide what was to be tossed, donated or kept.


Today I actually found some time to sew, and I got the next border on the rally quilt. It is really looking doubtful I will get this done in time for this year's rally. The almost two months I couldn't be in my sewing room has really thrown me off. The rally is the end of April, and there are two weekends between now and then I will not be able to sew at all due to other activities. Since weekends are my only sewing time, that only gives me two weekends to finish this quilt, and I haven't started doing the applique border that goes on next. If I get it finished in time, I will surprise myself!

Tomorrow is our anniversary as I already said, but unfortunately, we have a bunch of errands to run. I have a huge pile of stuff for donation that needs to be dropped off. I really need to go to the grocery store, and a trip to Costco would be preferable, but on the day before Easter it may be a mad house so I may wait until next week for that. I need to go to Target and get a few things as well. I am sending DH to the post office first thing in the morning, to mail packages to DD#1 and family.

Easter will be low key around here. I am not up to making a big dinner for extended family, so there will just be a few of us, DH will grill some meat, and I'll make sides and a dessert. We actually debated going out for Chinese or something, but I decided I'd rather stay home.

I doubt I'll have a chance to post again before Easter, so to all of you who celebrate it, have a Blessed Easter!

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