State of the House: 2011 New Year's Resolution Recap

Here it is friends, a recap of my 2011 New Year's resolution. To maintain a cleaner and neater household. I would give myself a C+ on this project. I did not excel by any means. I did reorganize our closet, guest room, and office area. The guest room has since un organized itself. I make more attempts on my days off to at least do some cleaning and organizing, even if its only pick things up.

I thought I was doing pretty awesome until sometime in November when I was at work and had a text convo with the hubs about how messy the house was and how he was going to put all my stuff in a pile. (I was going to include the convo in this post but it had a few too many choice words. From both parties.) Then I came home from work and all my stuff that he thought was not in its proper place was actually in a pile in the middle of the living room. And I was super pissed. For reals. Here is the thing. I am messy. It's just who I am. I like things to be clean and sanitary, hello, I'm a nurse. Caleb does not see the dirt. He sees the junk everywhere. So if the junk is picked up, he thinks things are clean. Magical. For the record, he said he gives me a B on my housewife efforts. At least I passed!

I did make an honest effort this year to step up my game. Here is a line up of my fave products that I discovered or rediscovered in 2011!

From left to right:

1. Swiffer dust and shine: perfect for cleaning the coffee table that we use for all our meals and put our feet on and everything else. It smells fresh and the wood looks so pretty.
2.Ajax dish soap in grapefruit scent: Makes the water all pink and happy and costs like 97 cents. And cleans dishes like a rock star.
3. Baking soda: It's cheap and scrubs things better than any expensive cleaner. And deodorizes. I keep one in the fridge, pour it down the disposal, in the trash can, ect.
4. Method Daily Shower Cleaner: spray this stuff on right after you shower and it stays clean and delightful. And Method makes great natural cleaning products.
5. Dyson Ball Vacuum: we bought this with wedding money and it just makes vacuuming easy and not totally horrible. (Fun fact: I lost the school spelling bee in the 5th grade with the word "vacuum." I was one of the last two standing. This is probably where my hatred for cleaning started.)
6. Plink disposal cleaner: throw one down once a week and your disposal smells like lemon fresh goodness.
7. Method Lil' Bowl Blue toilet cleaner: makes your toilets white and bright and makes your bathroom smell heavenly. Toilet cleaning is def my favorite chore.
8. Clorax wipes: Because cleaning my counters with the same gross sponge just grosses me out. They clean and sanitize everything.
9. Glamorous rubber gloves: because these just make cleaning so much better. I got them in Charleston at a kitchen store, but you can get them at lots of different places.

My absolute favorite cleaning tip of the year: cleaning my flat top stove.

I have a flat top stove. As a messy person, I make a mess when I cook and I don't wipe it up immediately. So food gets dried on, burnt on, stuck on. And is difficult to get up. I don't even know who to give credit to, but I found this tip on the intraweb, and it is magical.

Sprinkle the stove liberally with baking soda. Put a bunch of rags in hot, soapy water, wring them out slightly and then cover the baking soda. Let sit for 10-15 minutes.

Scrub all that nasty grime off! It comes right up. Unless your stove is super dirty like mine and you have to do it a second time. But then it's really all gone! Shiny happy stove top! (Then you should wipe it off with a Clorax wipe or something to get all the residue off, unlike me.)

2011, you were a great year. I tried to keep you clean and tidy. The most important lesson I learned was that as long as things look neat, they don't really need to be that clean. And that with every new organizational project comes a trip to Target. I will remember this in my future cleaning endeavors. Here's to you, State of the House. May you live on.

Previous State of the House posts that may humor or inspire you:

The Closet Clean Out
Office Space
Guest Bedroom
Kitchen Clean Up