Let the 2008 Spring Cleaning Challenge Begin!

It’s that time of year again! For many, spring is not only a time to get outside and enjoy the warmer weather, but also for spring-cleaning! For me, spring has always been a time to get outside and enjoy the warmer weather, reflect on all the spring home projects I WANT to do, and then spend a lot of time feeling guilty that I don’t do any of them. Our home improvement efforts came to a screeching halt four years ago when I committed to spend the bulk of my time either pregnant, nursing, or potty training.

This year, I was inspired by the organizational blog of a fellow mom blogger. She posts photo documentation and an item count of her efforts to purge her house of unwanted stuff. Inspired not only by her ability to stick to this program with three kids, but also by the fact that her house (bless her heart!) makes mine look like The Container Store made me realize that if she could do it, surely I could.

As I mentioned the blog to two friends today, they expressed a strong interest in doing it as well and even offered to provide email encouragement/accountability. We all agreed that we wouldn’t be able to stick to photographing or counting items, as it would take us so long to do it that we could probably organize another cupboard in the same timeframe. However, a little “organizational challenge” between friends couldn’t hurt motivation, right?

I decided to kick off the challenge tonight because:

• I went to my friend’s house for playgroup at 11 am and didn’t leave until 4:30 which means I had a great day with friends but accomplished NOT ONE THING.
• My friend Julie just painted her house and the freshly painted walls made me jealous.
• My dining room, entryway, and stairway walls are so covered with handprints and skid marks that I can barely tell their original color and this makes me crazy on a daily basis.
• My kids went to bed early so I wasn’t so exhausted that I wanted to drop by time I bade them goodnight.

So I selected touch-up paint for these areas as my first project.

Once I busted out all the painting gear, I found that the project went surprisingly quickly. I gave myself 100 points for covering each of the three areas because painting is a bigger pain in the neck than just decluttering. And then I gave myself 10 bonus points for using up the last bit of two different paint colors and then throwing the cans away. Another 5 bonus points for studiously logging the paint colors, brand, numbers, and finish in my new home improvement organizer before tossing them. Lest you think that I am perfect or a braggart, please know that I docked myself 2 points for painting over items that looked suspiciously like boogers. In my current squeamish pregnancy stomach state, I couldn’t bring myself to either A) conduct a further inspection to determine actual content or B) scrape/pick said objects off the wall before painting. So I just camouflaged them a little.

So I'm off to a roaring start. The real question is if I will be able to stick with it. Stay tuned for periodic updates. If you don't hear from me, it means the challenge was short-lived. I'm counting on my friends to help keep it alive...