Spring Cleaning, in Winter

Perhaps because it is so cold and dreary and gray outside. Or, perhaps because I read entirely too many blogs and many of them have been focusing on spring cleaning, I have recently been very motivated (and my husband can tell you that this is very odd for me) to do some reorganizing in the house, as well as some deep down cleaning. I guess I'm feeling like it's just so yucky outside, that I at least want the inside of my house to feel clean and fresh. Maybe if I do some spring cleaning around here, I can will spring to get here a little faster. Yeah, I know that aint gonna happen.

Our spice cabinet has been a long-standing source of amusement for my husband. He feels that we have entirely too many spices, and really, more to the point, there are a few in there that we have duplicates of. WHY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH ARE THERE DUPLICATE SPICES IN OUR SPICE CABINET????? It is something he apparently finds maddening, and the minute he sees that I've bought a new spice from the grocery store he immediately goes to the spice cabinet to try to prove that we already have said spice in our inventory. Yes, these are the kinds of things that my husband worries about. It keeps him up at night, I think. I just chuckle.

But...to try to alleviate this potential "duplicate spice" problem, I decided to pull out all the spices from our cabinet and make a list of everything we have. While all the spices were out, I did a thorough cleaning of the inside of the cabinet - lots of salt particles in there - probably could have filled up another shaker with all that salt (but then we'd have two, and we're back to our original problem :). Anyway, I typed up the list and have now posted that on the inside of the cabinet door. This way, if I have a recipe that calls for a spice I don't use often, I can easily go to the list and check to see if I already have it, or if I need to make a trip to the grocery store. Needless to say, this made Abe very happy.

Next, I moved on to the master bathroom. I was reading a blog the other day (can't remember which one) that talked about spring cleaning, and organizing your bathroom under-sink cabinets. She basically said, get a bin (or two), and put everything you need in that bin. If it doesn't fit, it gets tossed. If there's something you want to put in the bin, but the bin is full, you have to toss something that's already in there before adding the new item. I thought this was a good rule of thumb, and went out and bought two bins at Target. I took everything out of my bathroom cabinet and cleaned the inside. I tossed a bunch of stuff that I never use, or that were just old and gross, and I moved a bunch of seasonal stuff (mainly suntan lotion), bulk items, and medicine to the linen closet. I forgot to take a before picture, but here's what it looks like now. I'm loving how organized and clean it is:

Then I moved on to the linen closet. Here's a before shot (it really wasn't too messy before):

And here's the after:

I've put all the medicines and other potentially harmful items to children up on a shelf that Avery can't reach, and put all of our bulk supplies (ie. extra toothpaste, razors etc), and the 500 suntan lotion bottles that we seem to have collected, up on the top shelf.

The biggest thing that I've been doing over the last few days (and will continue doing) is washing our baseboards. I've managed to get the kitchen, laundry room and back hallway, powder room and master bathroom done. Getting all the dust, smudges and general grime off of the woodwork really does make a big difference in how clean the house feels, even though most people probably wouldn't notice that it had been done. Makes me feel better though!

So, I'm going to continue on my cleaning/organizing frenzy (for as long as my motivation keeps up), and hopefully when I'm finally done, Spring will be here and I can go outside and play with Avery instead of being stuck inside doing my spring cleaning!