Spring cleaning...in the winter...Nesting?

About a year and three months ago, we moved from our first little apartment into the apartment that we're in now.  Our first apartment was about 450 square feet, so when we moved into a 900 square foot apartment, we were THRILLED with how much room we had!  When we moved in, it felt like we were never going to have enough stuff to fill up the apartment.

Boy was I wrong.

A couple weeks ago I looked around and realized, "Holy crap...we have to fit another person in here in four months.  He may be little, but he's sure going to come with a lot of STUFF!  I have no idea what we're going to do!"

To chalk it up to that realization, or to blame "nesting," I'm not really sure, but what I do know is that this week I have been on a cleaning adventure.  And it hasn't been just the normal "vacuum the living room" or "dust the speakers."  No.  I'm talking like "completely cleaning off the half wall between our kitchen that's become so cluttered with random papers and stuff that doesn't belong to us" kind of cleaning.  The deep, decluttering kind of cleaning.  I finally looked at all of the papers we've been holding onto (for what reason, I'm not quite sure) and either put them in the "trash" pile or the "shred" pile.  I've got piles going of random stuff of other people's that we've collected throughout the last year that I'm finally going to give back.

I have to say though, getting through all the clutter makes me kind of happy.  It makes me kind of happy to look over at the table that our birds sit on, and realize that I not only organized it, but finally cleaned everything off, got rid of whatever had collected there that we don't need, and vacuumed up all the bird feathers and seed that had fallen all over the place. (You would not believe the amount of feathers that two little parakeets lose, and the amount of seed that they manage to get in the smallest of cracks).

Hopefully over the next four months we can keep it up so that when little man comes, he gets to come home to a nice, organized, clean home :)

What are some of your favorite cleaning and organizing tips?

Cleanliness is next to Godliness

This old Hebrew proverb, and Doctrine and Covenants 88:119 have been on my mind quite a bit lately.  I have realized recently that I have kind of let the cleanliness of our home go to the wayside.  I went from being OCD about how clean our house was, spending all of my free time cleaning, to just ignoring the clutter and mess that were building up around me.  I was frustrated because I could feel it becoming more and more difficult to feel the Spirit strongly in our home, and I couldn't figure out why.  We were still striving as hard as we ever had to keep the commandments and to draw closer to God.

Then it hit me: there was so much clutter in our house that I was having a hard time focusing on matters of the Spirit instead of the mess around me.

It wasn't healthy to allow my house to go into complete disarray, but I also know that my compulsive cleaning prior was not healthy either.  So, I started a new goal.  Each week, Neal and I were to come up with a specific part of cleaning to work on.  My first one was putting the dish I was using in the dishwasher right after I used them rather than letting them pile up in the sink.  If the dishwasher had clean dishes in it, then I would empty it so I could put my dirty dish in the dishwasher.  Neal worked on putting away his clothes after he wore them (whether that meant in the laundry basket or in a drawer) instead of piling them on the end of the bed.

These things to work on have made us think more about how to clean as we go, and so even though they haven't been on our "list of things to work on," things like folding laundry right away, and hanging coats up, and wiping up kitchen messes have started happening, too.  Our room is more clean than I've seen it in a couple months.  Hahaha.

When I woke up this morning, I had a different feeling than I usually do when I woke up.  I didn't feel like I needed to jump up and spend the time before I went to work cleaning our house.

This was new for me.  I usually wake up, look at the clutter around me, and feel overwhelmed by it all.  Then I sit on the couch and watch TV until I have to go to work.  This morning I looked at our room and felt GOOD.  I came out to the kitchen and didn't see a pile of dishes in the sink that needed to be washed.  All I really NEEDED to get done was fold the last load of laundry that we did yesterday.

The best part is slowly, and surely, the presence of the Spirit is coming back more strongly in our home.  Our house isn't perfectly clean, and I don't expect it to be (unlike when I compulsively cleaned).  I know that we are doing our best, and progressing each day.

It feels fabulous!