Week Two of the "4 Weeks" Program Complete!

 "You don't go cryin' to your daddy after I wipe it up with your face."

Image courtesy of moneysavingmom.com

Picking up where I left off last week, let's run down my progress:

Friday—Vacuum the couches. I've been looking forward to this one because my couches have been smelling a little musty due to disuse. Since we had all that yardsale crap in the living room for so, so long, we weren't really using the space and the couches smelled weird.

There wasn't much in the way of "stuff" under my cushions, partially because of the lack of use and also because I just vacuumed them out in January, but they smell normal again!

I kind of hate Picasa  because it's hard to find a collage format where part of the photos aren't cut off. Grr.

Monday—Clean out the car. Even after a vacation, our car really doesn't get very dirty. We rarely eat in it and I'm pretty good about taking any trash with me when I get out. But there was some vacuuming to be done, especially where Bear and her chips and snacks were for the trip. Still, the visual impact is pretty minimal. I had a few little sticky spill spots to wipe up, and the car desperately needs a Rug Doctor-ing (not because of us—old stains started surfacing a few weeks after we got the car!), but it's generally pretty clean, anyway.

Yeah...not much difference. I really do keep my car pretty damned clean.

Tuesday—Wipe down all the baseboards in the house. Um...no. And the reason I say, "Um...no," is because even in my tiny house, that's a CRAPTON of work. So here's what I did instead.

I combined the Tuesday and Wednesday assignments and decided to break them up over a week or so. Instead of spending an entire day wiping down baseboards, I'll do one room per day, baseboards and door handles, until every room has been done.

I started with the bathroom for a couple of reasons. One, it's the smallest room with the least amount of trim, and two, it has the grossest baseboards, which means the highest impact. And even in this tiny room, it still took me half an hour.

If you rolled your eyes at my couch and car pictures because they really weren't that bad, these photos should bring you back to reality. Yeah, my car and couch are usually pretty tidy...but we all have strengths and weaknesses. And my bathroom floor is nothing short of vile. Here's my filthy little secret:

That is NOT mold in the corner. It's just really, really filthy build-up. And there is just no cleaning dirty caulk. *snicker*

More dirty caulk, and that dirty-looking spot is a nail. Basically our bathroom needs to be gutted and redone.

Pretty much all the trim in our home needs to be painted (some of it desperately), so even though the trim in the photos above is now clean, it still doesn't look great. I also found as I was wiping down the bathroom trim that there is a lot of caulk along the edges, and dust is kind of caked into it. Nothing ruins a good "after" photo like dirty caulk.

*snicker*

Wednesday—Clean all the door handles. See Tuesday.

Thursday—Clean all the switchplates in the house. Finally, a quick, simple task. I'm not going to post a picture, because what a boring picture that would be. I just grabbed the Clorox wipes and some Q-Tips and gave them all a quick-but-thorough cleaning. Easy-peasy.

How did you do on Week Two? Are you still going strong? Did you have to do any tweaking to make the routine work for you?