Archive for the ‘clean it’ Category

I just finished taking down our Christmas decorations yesterday.  We planned on taking it all down on Monday, but my Emma said “Oh Mom, it will ruin the end of our vacation!”  “You don’t want to work?”  I asked.  “No that’s not it, I’ll help you tomorrow.  I just want the tree and lights up til we go back to school.”   Far be it for me to ruin vacations… so I waited until yesterday to take it all down.

Isn’t it amazing how dusty and dirty everything is underneath the garlands and ornaments!  It felt so good to put it all away and to dust and wipe down and move furniture and vacuum.

When Ben came home from school yesterday, he said our home looked empty and sad.

Is that why I’m always inspired to want to decorate and paint in January?  I’m always excited to start new projects?  And forget Spring… I love to deep clean in January.

January is the month when I am most focused on my home.

Here are a few projects I’ve got on my to do list:

Just as soon as I pick up the DVD’s.  I am so doing this with my photos.  I love how she has organized them by year.  My biggest challenge will be deleting all the photos I don’t want to keep.

It will give me such peace of mind to know I have an extra set of back up photos.  I do have a backup hard drive that I use to back up my computer, but I keep feeling like it’s not enough… at least for my precious photos.

Also high on my list is cleaning and organizing my pantry.  I am seriously considering tearing out and redoing my shelves, which is a little scary.  My pantry MUST have been designed by a man who never kept a pantry before in his life.  My shelves are super deep.  That means I constantly loose items in the back and even a thorough clean doesn’t last long.  To make my pantry work for me, I need to think outside the box and come up with some solutions that don’t cost much, but keep things organized.

I’ll be sure to snap some before and after photos… that is if I don’t die of embarrassment first at the before photos.

I’m so excited about the giveaway today.  Whenever I drop by The Container Store, I swoon.

I can walk by the shoe department at Nordstoms with barely a glance, but show me well-made food containers or stylish craft room shelves, and I have to give my wallet to my husband for safe keeping.

I am a total sucker for organizers.

But before we get to the giveaway, I want to share a few tips on keeping your treasured Christmas decorations.  I am very sentimental and have collected our Christmas decorations slowly over time.  We have many items that are precious to me and my family.

It seems like most of our favorite things are fragile, with lots of nooks and cranny for dust to settle in.  This past week, as I have been pulling our decorations from their storage boxes, I’ve had to give most of them a good spruce up.

Q-tips are an essential cleaning tool for these kinds of projects.

In the years before we had children, my husband collected some wonderful German nutcrackers and smokers. What would I do without Q-tips to clean all the intricate places that LOVE to collect dust.  I simply wet the end of the Q-tip with water, squeeze it good to remove the excess water, and use it to dust all the spots I can’t reach or are too intricate for a cloth.

I must have put everything away last year without dusting last year, because everything needed a bit of cleaning.  A dusty Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus would never do.

This is one of our most treasured nutcrackers.  It was hand carved from one piece of wood by my father-in-law.  He made 9 of them, one for my mother-in-law and himself and one for each of their children.   It was a true labor of love.  This wonderful Santa Claus makes me happy whenever I take him out of the storage box and place it carefully on my mantle.

And now courtesy of my friends at Q-tips, Make it Do is giving away:

Three (3) $50 gift certificates to The Container Store.com.

Holy Storage Boxes Batman!  I wouldn’t know were to begin… ornament storage boxes would be so nice… but I would also love this, this and this too.  I only wish I could enter this contest myself!

To enter simply leave a comment on this post answering:

What area of your home needs cleaning and organizing the most?

The Rules:

• Contest closes on Thursday, December 1, 2011 10:00 MDT

• Only one comment per person please.

• Random winners will be announced on Friday, December 2, 2011

Be sure to drop by Q-tips Facebook page to enter to win a $100 weekly gift card or the Grand Prize of $1000 and a year’s supply of Q-tips.  To enter you simply need to share all the ways you use Q-tips!

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Disclosure: I’m a Tipster ambassador and this is a sponsored post by Q-tip.  All opinions and ideas are my own.