A few things I learned from moving...

As you may know, last weekend we managed to move out of our house and in to a friend's house who is graciously letting us borrow it while he is out of town traveling for a few months. It's a beautiful house. We may become squatters. ha ha! So all of our belongings now look like this:

It's actually a bit more packed in now but we still have a small walkway if needed. The boys found it fascinating to see it all packed in. Once we close on our house and finish renovations we can finally move to our house (somewhere around mid-September).

Moving day was actually not a bad experience. Not pleasant but not bad. We had great friends to help us...

That's Chippers who came to help despite his injured thumb. A big thanks to all of you who helped move or watch the kids while we moved! Disregard the chair next to Chip. I actually bought two of them at an estate sale that morning for $35/chair. I couldn't help myself. I saw the sign. I had to stop. A little fabric and they will be super cute.

But I digress...there are a few things I've learned in the moving process...

1) Dogs and babies are dirty - had I not been pressed for time, exhausted and let's face it, embarrassed, I would have taken pictures of the filth that can pile up behind large pieces of furniture as well as the amount of small little spills that were on some of our walls. Apparently every time one of the boys threw their sippy cups in anger (which happens often) a small splattering landed somewhere. It took us 5hrs of hardcore cleaning last weekend to get the house cleaned.


2) I don't do windows. One of the few things the renters asked us to come back and do is wash the outside of the windows. When Daniel cleaned the eaves the week prior he forgot to rinse them as he was going so they had all kinds of spots on them. But then it also made me realize we've never washed our windows to begin with so they were probably pretty grimy. We tried a new product I have been dying to try:

It was surprisingly not hard to use. After attaching it to the hose, turn the switch to rinse and wet the windows. Then simply turn to switch to spray and douse the windows and let sit for a few seconds and then rinse again.

It certainly did the trick. In our next house we probably need to add this to the spring and fall cleaning schedule...as soon as I start a spring and fall cleaning schedule.


3) A clean cook I am not. When we had Cole my mom came to stay and she offered to clean the oven. Apparently it was filthy and self admittedly I had never cleaned it. I mean who thinks about that in the midst of cooking? And I certainly don't think about cleaning it any other time. Out of site - out of mind. So there it's sat uncleaned for the past 21 months. In fact the last time she came she said "Anna, I'm not cleaning your oven again." A hint? Did it work? Nope. Call it child selective hearing. I hear it's related to spousal selective hearing, mostly found in men.

Take a look at what I started with...

Guh-ross. You can see where I already started the cleaning process just to show how absolutely bad it was. I had no idea!

Don't let your oven intimidate you. A little help from this guy is all you need.

I sprayed it heavily and left it for a few hours while we went house shopping (more on that later). It was actually pretty easy to wipe it down once it soaked in. Although don't try to save any trees during this process. I learned quickly that paper towels were better than constantly rinsing a sponge. I used an entire roll! In the end it was sparkly and clean minus a few areas that were so baked on I think they needed to sit overnight.

I also took the time to replace the drip pans on the stove. They were also pretty dirty and it's much easier to replace them (for less than $20) than to clean them.

Again...adding this to the soon-to-be spring/fall cleaning list.

So if you're keeping track we now need to do the following in our new house...First and foremost start a quarterly cleaning list which would include the following:

• pull out all furniture and vacuum underneath
• wipe down all baseboards, door jams and doors to remove grimy hand prints
• clean ceiling fans
• clean oven (my mother will be so proud)
• wash windows inside and out

I'm sure there are others. In fact, I would welcome any suggestions on what you do/clean a few times a year that you think makes a huge difference. While I'm not planning on becoming a cleaning nazi, I certainly don't want to become piggy-pigerton.