A Half-Cleaned House and A Productive Morning

To explain this unheard of phenomenon, I guess I should back up to last week. A friend emailed me about setting up a play date for our children. I suggested that I host knowing that this would be a much needed kick in the behind to get the public parts of our home all cleaned up. I had been trying to do fifteen minutes here and there a la flylady but that has not helped to make significant progress and I became discouraged and gave up for a few weeks.

Fast forward to this week. Wednesday ended up being crazy and I was up very late but I managed to get the house clean and make some goodies for the play date. I spent the day trying to work and entertain DS the best I could. While he was awake I did tasks like sorting through mail/papers and putting things away in the living room/ dining room. He was not a cooperative nap taker so things like the bathroom and kitchen had to wait till after he went to bed for the night. My wonderful DH pitched in and we got it all done. The play date went over well and after they left I did do some basic straightening up and swept the crumbs off the floor. (It is amazing how many crumbs our sweet little one year old visitor was able to create. I'm in trouble 6 months down the road!)

Last night before bed I managed to get all the toys we had been playing with put away and the kitchen decently straightened up. This morning I wasn't feeling great (probably due to too many goodies from yesterday) so I decided we would not be able to attend the large group play date as we had planned. After nursing DS we came down stairs and I had breakfast,(some of my yummy baked oatmeal and homemade yogurt which are good foods for the unhappy but hungry tummy) and played with DS for a bit. I then decided that I should give the floors a basic sweep and vacuum the living room rug which gets dirty so fast! DS played in the exosaucer while I did this. It took next to no time and I think he was excited by the vacuum! Then we went to the kitchen, washed up the breakfast dishes, and made dinner with chicken in the crock pot and rice in my trusty rice cooker, ran the dishwasher, put in a load of laundry and cleaned up all of the mess there. This of course was all done while playing games of peakaboo with a kitchen towel and singing. I am amazed but DS did not get cranky till I was almost done with all of that. I put him down for a nap (Yes! He actually went down for a nap!) and now I hardly know what to do with myself!

So I know all of this probably seems pretty basic, but in our house since DS was born 6 months ago, productive days like this have been unheard of. It feels strange but exciting! Now if I can just keep it up! I think this is where I may turn back to flylady. Once things have been done well I can see the 15 minutes here and there actually working to keep things done.

Next big project will be the bedrooms! Maybe I can tackle one of them next week! The wonderful thing about having things done down here is that now I feel free to think about other projects (like bread baking) that I would like to pursue again!