14 Days, 31 things, and 40 Bags

Wow, that is one huge "button" HA!    Guess what time of year it is?  It is time to start thinking about cleaning - January is a great month to get things organized and cleaned for the rest of the year.  Right now there are two cleaning challenges I'm going to be doing plus 1 homeade idea that will carry on all year.

The first one, in case you missed the button above, comes from Ask Anna.  I love that it is only 14 days - because she doesn't do weekends!!   As with any challenge, I'm sure there will be days where I either don't have the item/location she is cleaning or I've already done it (i.e. my Christmas decorations will be down before the first day of the challenge!)  I look forward to finding out what other challenges she brings though!

The second idea came from Pinterest and it originated from Little Lucy Lu.  The simple concept is to make a list of 40 places to clean out and throw out 40 bags of stuff.  ("Throw Out" is a relative term - it good be just giving stuff to Good Will or, God Forbid, save it for a garage sale HA)  This is really just another way to go through all of the little places and clean stuff out.  There is not a "right" size of a bag - basically you just go through each area and clean out anything you don't need, love, or use OR that is broken or outdated.  Here's my list of 40:

1) Laundry room including shelf and freezer
2) Utensil drawers in kitchen. all of them.
3) "Junk" drawer and recipe shelf in kitchen
4) pantry shelves
5) under the kitchen sink
6) launch pad
7) Refrigerator
8) Spices and Coffee Cupboard
9) Kids cupboards (cups, plates etc)
10) Desk drawers
11) DS3 Closet
12) DS2 Closet
13) My Closet
14) My dresser drawers
15) Boy's Dressers
16) Night stands
17) Tv cabinet
18) Scrapbooking Shelf in Bedroom
19) Bathroom Sink Cabinet
20) Coat Closet
21) Top Bathroom Cabinet
22) Bottom Bathroom Cabinet
23) Towel Cart
24) The Truck
25)Dining Room Bookshelf
26) Toy Cabinet in LR
27) Toys in boys rooms
28) Triangle Cabinet drawers
29) Loveseat room in basement
30) Bookshelves
31) Basement - drafting table.
32) basement - Filing Cabinet
33) basement - pantry/shelves
34) basement - other areas
35) garage - kids toys
36) garage - camping shelves
37) garage - lawn shelves
38) Garage - work bench
39) Cabinets in the kitchen
40) Filing Cabinet by desk

The last idea is one I want to carry on with all year and it is the concept of "Do One Thing".  I created this all on my own!  The idea is to do one thing a day and in 31 days (or 28 . .29. . .or 30 HA) the house is always deep cleaned.  This list includes everything from washing windows, to steam cleaning the carpet to cleaning baseboards.  Some of the tasks are 5 minutes items and some are 30 minute items.  I'm not going to post the huge list right now - I may after I've worked it for one month and made changes.  I started this process back in about September but it fell on the wayside during November and December with all of the other stuff going on :-) 


I think, that at least by the end of January, my house will be clean.  Now the rest of the year, well, it is questionable :-) hahaha