The 16-Week Project {Week One}

The goal: every room in the house clean and organized.

The last time I actually accomplished this: umm...never?  ;-)

The plan: in the 17 and a half weeks I have from now until my due date, use 16 of those weeks to specifically focus on my house, room by room.

The confession: I don't actually have 16 rooms in my house (there are 13 by my counting), but I figure there are going to be a few weeks in there that I don't ever get around to getting even a single room cleaned and organized.  ;-)

The additional challenge: keep the rooms that I've already focused on relatively neat and organized.  What's the point of getting each room in great shape if I let the ones I've already done slip back into chaos?  (And I speak from experience because I've done that more times than I'd like to admit!)  ;-)

The help: my boys.  As I evaluate each room, I want to come up with a workable plan for keeping it neat and clean; and already I've seen some tasks with new eyes.  My kids are more capable than I previously thought, whaddya know?  ;-)

The opportunity: right now.  Last Saturday, we officially/unofficially finished our main schoolwork (although we're continuing with some additional educational stuff that I'm really excited about, but hopefully I'll get to write more about that later).  Our extracurricular activities are virtually finished.  The garden hasn't yet started producing anything that needs canned or frozen (although we are enjoying plenty of fresh lettuce and a few other goodies).  This is my WOO.

The reality: like always when I set a goal, I'll fall short.  Baby's due date will come, and there will still be messes in my house, cupboards that didn't get cleaned out, new job responsibilities that are still not a habit for my sons, clutter that didn't get shooed out the door, possibly entire rooms that didn't get dealt with at all, etc.  I know that.  But you know what?  It's OK.  It's OK to set a high goal, knowing that I'll fall short of that mark but hoping that I'll end up further down the path to a clean and organized home than I am now!  :)

The first room: the cellar, a room that is loved by Jeff because of the sense of security he gets from looking at the food we have ;-) and appreciated by me, especially when I remember the challenge of finding room for food storage in the small apartments we lived in before moving to Virginia.  It is SO NICE to have a room like this!  :)

When my parents were designing this house, they did a very smart thing by including this cellar off the laundry room.  It's underground enough to stay fairly cool in the summer and fairly warm in the winter; I don't have to worry about things freezing in this room.

And best of all, there is space--glorious SPACE!--for jars that are full of food and those that are empty, awaiting the summer's harvest.

Organizing this room was a project that I had been longing to do for quite a while; and now that school is out (sort of), I felt perfectly fine about devoting some time to this.

It's a great project to tackle for Week One of my challenge because it's a small room and doesn't take forever and a day to organize--and even more importantly, it's relatively easy for me to keep it neat since I'm basically the only one who does much in this room.  

Well, Jeff contributes to this room, too, I'll admit...by doing things like canning hot peppers that I have to find room for.  There is a whole LONG shelf full of jars of peppers, and I didn't can any of them (and won't eat them either!).  ;-)

But generally speaking, I'm the boss in this room and don't have to worry too much about people coming along behind me and messing up the order I've created.  ;-)

We use this room from the floor to the ceiling--potatoes, for example, in a wire basket on the floor (we ran out of our own potatoes this year for the first time in a number of years and actually had to buy some to eat; but Jeff was able to plant the old, small, shriveled ones our garden produced last year, so we didn't have to buy seed potatoes) all the way to baskets hanging from the ceiling.

I said I'm the only one who does much in this room, but I should have mentioned that Moriah also enjoys this room.  :)  When I'm doing laundry, she will sometimes sit in this extra booster seat and will play with a truck in the gravel; sometimes Shav still likes to drive cars and trucks around in this gravel floor, too.  :)

A few days before I finished organizing the cellar, I had done the even quicker job of organizing the two freezers we have in our garage--a perfect task for a warm spring day when I wanted to keep an eye on Moriah while she played outside but also craved the sense of accomplishment that comes from finishing something!

Having our long-term food storage organized--both in the cellar and in these freezers--is such a good feeling.  As a bonus, it inspires me in my cooking because I discover food items that I didn't even remember we had.  ;-)

Now the big question: which room should I tackle next??  :)

* a note about the photos: neither the laundry room nor the cellar gets natural light, so pictures taken there are always a little (or a lot!) off to my eye...for example, in the first photo in this post, the walls of the laundry room look extremely bright...I can assure you that in real life, the yellow is not quite that blinding...and now that you know that, I can sleep better tonight  ;-)