Cleanliness is Next to Godliness
Yesterday in the Clean Heart Clean House challenge, we were supposed to be working on the front yard. Well, it was cold and rainy, so I put it off til today. I’ll be heading out there to weed the flower bed, change the garden flag and see what else needs doing. Boo and Pumpkin Girl discovered that our mystery bulbs were indeed tulips, like I thought. I once read a poem about the life of a military wife and it said, "we plant flowers that we will never see bloom." I fondly remember thedaffodils I planted in Kentucky and the one grape hyacinth that someone planted in Korea. I am thankful that one Fall, some other military wife planted pink tulips in her flower bed and now my family can enjoy them. Next fall, I will add daffodils, irises and hyacinths.
The Flylady Zone this week is the kitchen, but mine is so tiny that it is not cluttered at all. It has to have clean counters out of sheer necessity. So I’m doing my 15 minutes a day in the dining room instead. But it’s almost done, too, so I’ll move on to the living room for the rest of the week, which is where we are in CHCH challenge anyway.
I’m not sure when I got so domestic.
Speaking of which, I have discovered the wonders of microfiber cleaning cloths! I order the 12 pack from Don Aslett at CleanReport.com. Boo has the polishing cloth for glass and chrome in his cleaning bucket along with a duster and his spray bottle full of club soda. That boy can shine him some sinks! He also likes dusting his trophies. Pumpkin has a microfiber cleaning cloth and a spray bottle of Sal Suds and water to wash the marker, crayon and pencil marks off the school table. She does a great job, too. I’ve been keeping a cleaning cloth in the kitchen and it does wonders for our dining room table. Our table is very glossy and in the 7 years we’ve had it, I have never been able to wipe it down with a sponge without leaving spots. I’m too lazy to go back and actually dry the table, so alas, the spots stayed. But no more! A damp microfiber cloth not only gets off those spots of dried on food you missed from like last week, but leaves my shiny table spot free! As my friend Maggie would say, "it’s a beautiful thing!" I also have a polishing cloth in the kitchen to shine up my sink. Our master bathroom has a sink that collects water behind the faucet and along the flat part of the bowl, so I keep another cleaning cloth up there. I wipe up the water twice a day and shine that faucet and wipe up the mirror. The magic of the microfiber is that is actually aids in removing gunk that you would normally need to attack with a lot of chemicals. And with young children in the house, that’s not cool.
I really don’t know when I got so domestic.
The nice thing is, with a shiny, uncluttered kitchen and bathrooms, my whole house feels a lot cleaner than it really is. But the whole thing is getting there. And most importantly, I think, is that my children are learning to take care of a home.
Good for you – decluttering! And a really cool thing about the flowers. I had never really considered it that way, planting flowers only to never see them bloom. It really hits home for me, the sacrifices that military families make. Thank You.