Spring Cleaning

Spring Cleaning has officially begun in the Born Blonde household. That's good because I can't ever remember having done any spring cleaning. I have gotten the occasional 'hair' and totally cleaned and organized some section of the house. But I've never gone on an all out campaign against disorder, dust, dirt, and grime. We've been in this house for 7 years now.

Yeah.

I know.

Be kind, okay. I'm trying now.

I was inspired by the sweet lady at Chelsea Morning. She and her husband quit smoking after a lifetime of it due to the coming price increase. In an effort to distract herself, she began cleaning out the smoke smell and discovered just how pervasive cigarette smoke is. It was even coating her doors and walls! So she began spring cleaning early and has been chronicling it on her blog.

I'm just following along. She puts pictures up of what she's doing. I won't. I'm too embarrassed by how bad everything was. I never really knew where to start actually and that was part of the problem. Let me say that I'm pretty sure the young couple who owned our house before us didn't really do Spring Cleaning either.

I'm proud of myself though. I started on Monday. I currently have half of the cabinets in our kitchen washed inside and out, top and bottom. And now they are nice and orderly too. Yesterday, I also cleaned the kitchen walls and window. I took down and washed the shutters that are on the inside of the kitchen window. I always thought the paint was off-white. Here they are all laid out to dry.

They look white to me. When Hubby came in, he asked if I had been painting them. Yeah. I think we need to do this.

I hesitated at the window. My mother has insulated windows with a special feature that allows you to tilt down the window so you can wash the outside of it from inside the house. I have wished so many times that mine did that. I can't even tell you how often. The screen seems to catch every bit of dust that comes along. And the cat likes to perch on the sill and peek in to see what I'm doing. So you can imagine, it gets pretty dirty on the outside.

But I decided to do it anyway and just leave the outsides until summer if I had to. At least they'd be clean on the inside, right.

I crawled up on the counter and began cleaning it. As I was bending over, I noticed a little thing on the window that said "Latch to Tilt."

Are you kidding me? That can't be what it is.

It was. I don't know how many others do that but that one definitely does. Looking through that window makes me want to spend more time in our backyard. It looks so pretty.

I'll be working on the kitchen for a few days. I'm okay with getting it done gradually. Tomorrow, I'm going to try getting the cabinets done. Or at least mostly there. And if I come to any windows, I'll be looking for "Latch to Tilt."