Cleaning Up

My spring cleaning came a little late this year. I've actually never adhered to an actual by the calendar schedule for spring cleaning, it's more of a feeling that comes over me after the snow is gone and the weather is nice. Time to clean, declutter and organize! I had some landscaping done (which was something I'd been thinking about for a while. I will post pics soon!) and I think it had something to do with my mental shift toward cleaning and organizing. I basically took the better part of this past weekend and did the following inside and outside the house:

Shredded documents that I no longer needed. I'd be embarassed to tell you how many. There were SO many.

Gathered all my recycling, including a giant stack of magazines that I finally cut recipes out of. RECYCLE, Ahoy!

Cutting recipes out of the old magazines led to reorganizing my recipe notebook. I have a three ring binder with clear plastic sleeve pages where I keep favorite recipes from family, friends and other various sources. I love it, it's my own personal cook book!

Straightened up my closet, which included buying a couple stackable wire shelves for further organization and a few more plastic shoe boxes for my growing shoe collection.

Made piles for the dry cleaner, laundry and Goodwill. Found out that my dry cleaner has a special on pants on Wednesdays, which I did not know. Too bad it was Monday when I dropped them off! I'll know for next time, right?!

Cleaned all my silver jewelry. I don't mean that to sound like I'm sitting on a pile of jewlery pirate-treasure-style, it's just the stuff I normally wear. Silver gets a little tarnished even though you wear it all the time, so I like to freshen it up now and then. Now it's shining a bit brighter for summer!

Vacuuming. Keeping up with two felines is a full time job.

Dusting. See note above about felines.

Transferred an old perfume that's been trapped in a leaky bottle to a purse-sized spritzer. I've been wanting to do this for a while and finally had the time to do it.

Basically weeded and or hacked away at anything left in the yard that was over grown. Mowed the lawn and then cleaned up all the debris. Then sat back and enjoyed the pretty view.

And of course, there's always more to do, but I was grateful to be able to start the week feeling super productive and loving how clean and uncluttered the house feels! I am thinking about putting tiny dusting mits (maybe "kitten mittons - an elegant, comfortable mitten for cats" would do the trick!) on the felines so they can help me keep the place tidy! Wouldn't that be great?!