I look forward to the end of Daylight Savings Time each fall because dark happens earlier.
Not that I don’t love daylight.
But when darkness falls before 6 p.m. on Sunday nights, I don’t have to worry about the state of my playroom when our church’s home group meets here.
Our playroom is really an enclosed back patio. A sunroom. A sunny sunroom that gets crazy-hot in the Texas summers and therefore doesn’t get played in from May to August. It’s not ideal, but it’s what we have.
I successfully ignore it.
But it also has a glass door from the living room. This means when people come to our house, they see it. TOTALLY see it.
Blergh.
And yet . . . I still ignore it and wait impatiently for Daylight Savings Time to end so the room will disappear into darkness.
Cleaning it just feels like SUCH a big deal.
I’d been meaning to set aside a weekend to work out there. A weekend with perfect weather and lots of free time.
That would have been nice, but I decided to go ahead and work out there this past Saturday for the hour or so I had to spare. Basically, I threw away a single grocery bag full of trash and then swept.
And it went from the before picture up there, to:
Aaaaahhh, much less embarrassing.
I even tackled the spot I’d been avoiding forever, assuming it was going to require heavy duty tools and cleaners.
There used to be a rug in that spot. A rug that got wet when the roof leaked and then basically rotted.
Ick. So gross. I threw the rug away over the summer, but the “residue” remained.
On Saturday, I looked at the spot again with eyes that had seen how Dawn dish soap is used to clean a whole lot of stuff (that I’d never have thought to clean with Dawn) at the Marine Mammal Center. I decided I’d give it a try.
Fifteen minutes (or less) later, the nasty, overwhelming spot was gone. Dishsoap in hot water and a stiff-bristled brush did the trick immediately.
Hmmmph.
What big-and-daunting projects have surprised you lately?
This isn’t a sponsored post, but Dawn did send me two bottles of soap. I labeled that one “bathroom” so I wouldn’t accidentally use it in the kitchen!!
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That does look a lot better! Only 20 minutes? Awesome! It really is amazing what sweeping and picking up the junk can do!
We are blessed (did I say blessed or cursed?) with 1 small and 1 large attic that we can walk in from our upstairs hall. We had to partially empty it for inspectors to come in to determine what needs to be done to hurricane proof it and lower our insurance. We emptied it into our master bedroom and we’ve been climbing around the mess ever since much to my chagrin. My dear husband agreed to give me an hour this morning and we shifted stuff in the attic and cleared out the bedroom so I can actually clean my upstairs again. The best part is he saw things I had been trying to get rid of for close to 20 years that he wouldn’t let go of and said “I think that would be good in the yard sale” as things were noticed he found a place to stack it all marked for the yard sale. I’ve been dreading shifting stuff back to where it had been stored so it just didn’t get done. If I had know it was going to be that easy I would have done it 3 weeks ago after all the estimators and inspectors were done. The best part is he has agreed to help clear it and yard sale the stuff before the workers come back.
This is exactly how I feel about our basement right now. I am convinced it will take an entire day of cleaning. The kids have been down there and moved the futons around and made their little tracks with paper and tape and add the animal hair to it and it’s just a giant mess. I need to go down there today, even if it’s to just straighten the futons and furniture! 🙂 At least it will be better!!
Go Nony! I love when projects take WAY less time than expected. That just means you have time leftover for another project 🙂
That’s pretty awesome! It looks like way more than 20 minutes of work. You’re right about overestimating the time some chores take. I did a 5 minute pickup with my preschoolers today, and it made a huge difference.
that looks so great!
I don’t have a patio…but my mudroom /screen porch has my bedroom on one end and our bathroom on the other…OUR ONLY BATHROOM! so YIKES! people see it when they come to the house. I’ve had some awful, gut wrenching moments. I have finally gotten to the point of having it decent…almost…always.
I do like walking through there now. 🙂
Truly, there’s very little that can’t be cleaned with soap and hot water. Good job!
Curtains or blinds may help the scorching heat in the summer. Probably won’t hurt with the visibility. I need to empty and scrub mine as well. That’s our dog’s “house” and I want it to be the playroom in the winter.
My sewing machine that was attached to my sewing table broke and couldn’t be fixed. I had inherited it already attached, so I had no idea how to detach it. I kept putting it off b/c “I don’t have the time” to figure it out and get it done. I even MOVED the broken sewing machine to a different state! When we were about to move again, I thought, “I cannot possibly move this thing AGAIN.” So I set aside some time and determined to get it done no matter how long it took. Including grabing the tools I turned out not to need and putting them away again, it took TWO MINUTES. 😛 I had kept it for almost five years for a 2-minute job!
Sadly, I’m much more likely to set aside 20 minutes for something that ends up taking all weekend!
I do need to get in the mindset that I should take advantage of small blocks of time to do SOMETHING rather than putting off EVERYTHING for when I think I will have time to do the WHOLE THING… Because that time never comes, and I remain stuck.
Besides nearly successfully keeping up with tracking my spending receipts, and doing better about washing out my work mops before the next day I need the handle…
A big project I did that wasn’t too bad, had 2 components.
Step 1- pick up about 1000 “Sweet Gum balls” from under a tree in my front yard.
Being 7 months pregnant, in summer, I enlisted the children to help. We successfully gathered MANY of these pokey hard round things, and tossed them.
Then I hauled a few gallong buckets filled with (free!) rocks to a few dirt patches that needed just to be used for walkway. And a place to fill in next to protruding unlevel driveway concrete.
Each step didn’t take long, but it sure is worth it to have a better functioning front yard & walkways!!