It's that time again...

 Update: All done! Just waiting for her arrive now. Have a great weekend everyone!


My mother in-law is coming for a visit on Friday and staying for a few days until my husband drives her to her sister's place in Ottawa. So you know what that means, right?

I have to clean my freakin house! It really needs it too - it has been neglected a bit.

So here is a list of things I have to accomplish before Friday afternoon, when she arrives.

• Put clean sheets on guest bed - sheets were washed after my sis stayed here in July, just never made it back on the bed.
• thoroughly clean powder room
• thoroughly clean main bath (tub scrubbed yesterday)
• tidy living room (mostly decluttering)
• clean kitchen
• declutter entrance hallway
• guys to clear their hunting crap out of guest room
• vacuum entire house (hubby's job :))

I suppose I should get off the computer now and get started huh?

I'll update the list later - if I have time :)

Getting stuff done

While my mother in-law was visiting, I found myself cleaning as I went as she is very much a clean freak and if I left even one dish in the sink, she would wash it while making that sound that says I'm a crappy house cleaner. So I kept up with the dishes and kept the kitchen tidy.

Once she left, I returned to my old habits. Stupid, because cleaning as I went wasn't hard and it kept things nice.

So Friday I tackled a sink full of dishes, as well as a bunch of pots. I also baked another batch (35ish) of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, as the 1st batch vanished so quickly. I put most of this batch in the freezer packed 2 to a baggie for J's lunches.

Saturday & Sunday pretty much flew by.

Here in Ontario, Monday was Family Day and both DH & J had the day off work and school.
J actually has a pretty elaborate project to do on Leif Ericsson, so we spend part of the day creating a shield and battle axe out of cardboard and tinfoil. I sewed him up a simple tunic out of some black fabric I had laying around.

Today (Tuesday), I am doing laundry, ran a full dishwasher load and attempting a new bread recipe.

I haven't made bread in quite awhile. I usually use the bread machine to do all the work and then bake it in oven for more normal looking loaves. This recipe wasn't written for the bread machine so I did it by hand with the mixer.

It is on its 2nd rise right now and so far so good. If the recipe turns out decent, I will post it here and start using it regularly instead of buying bread.

Store brand bread is up to $2.49 per loaf. We don't actually eat a lot of bread, but it will help. Anyone have any experience with freezing bread dough and rising and baking it later? I would love to make a bunch ahead.

I suppose I really should clean more often...

it looks nice clean.

I am going to be bold and show you before and after pictures!

This is how bad it was just a few days ago!

The after - still kind of cluttered but the
stuff is off the floor & the drawers can close

The oh so messy cutting table

Much betterSome of my fabric stash & sewing area

Much neater

My cluttered deskAnd my neat desk :)

Now to see how long it lasts :)

How's this for working under pressure?

My husband just called from work 40 minutes ago (at 10am) to say he would be leaving work early around noon and going to pick up his Mom for the weekend (she lives with her daughter about an hour and half west of us and doesn't often manage time away), so they will be here around 3pm.

I have to clean a 2700 sq foot house before then. Think I can do it? :)

I have already straightened out the guest room, unloaded then reloaded the dishwasher and washed a bunch of pots and pans. Ya I have been slacking on housework lately - I had that baby quilt to finish!

We are also having my son's Birthday Party tomorrow (his BD was in April but he wanted to have a summer party), only 3 11 yr old boys are coming so I wasn't overly concerned about the tidiness of the house.

But my MIL is one of those people who comes in and does the dust/glove test (without the glove). She also has a tendency to turn all the tins in my pantry so that the labels all face out neatly. She may even alphabetize them I don't know - I just go in a mess them up again so she has something to do :)

So I am off to yank the kid off the computer so he can wash the baseboards (yes she will check those too!) and get started on my other 235 cleaning tasks that need to be finished before 3pm.

With all the cleaning, birthday party and then baby shower on Sunday, I probably won't be around much - so I hope everyone has a lovely quiet (non-house cleaning) weekend! :)

Update: I have so far (2:30pm) done:

Unloaded dishwasher
Reloaded dishwasher
Hand washed pots
Vacuumed guest room
Tidied guest room (I had a bunch of quilting stuff laid out)
Put out towels for MIL
Vacuumed upstairs hall
Picked up everything off office/sewing room floor (again I got carried away with fabric J - was a BIG job.
Vacuumed office/sewing room.
Main bath – washed tub, toilet, sink, mirror, washed and organized counter. Had kid wash baseboards.
Tidied office/sewing room.
Clean off desk.
Declutter kitchen counter.
Tidy kitchen
Tidy living room
Clear off dining table
Clean powder room
Had kid tidy his room enough so you can now see the floor.
Tidy entrance hall – straighten shoes etc…

Updated yet again: DH was told he can't leave early because there are too many people out of the office today and they need him there - he can't go after work to get his Mom because they will get caught in weekend traffic and won't get back home until about 10 pm (seriously).

So it has been canceled and we will do it another time - whew - at least I have a clean house now :)

Adventures in Selling/Buying a House

We decided about 2 months ago to put our house on the market and buy something bigger - something that we could accommodate an in law suite in the basement for my father in law.

Since there really aren't that many house in the area with inlaw suites, we will have to buy something with a basement big enough to have one built in it.

Since we are losing the basement to my father inlaw, we have to ensure we will have enough space on the two upper floors for all our junk.

While getting our house ready to list, I did get rid of tons of junk. Our real estate agent came by and told us what needed to be done to our house to have it showable.

We had the interior painted. Da man and my nephew painted the garage trim and outside front windows and trim.

I decluttered, cleaned the inside thoroughly, and packed as much non-essensials as possible.

It took us approximately 4 weeks to have the house ready to list. Our agent came and took pictures and got us up on the MLS site.

During this same time, we had been looking in the area for house that were for sale that we liked. We went and seen 5 or 6. We were really surprised that many didn't seem to have put inthe effort we had to make their house look clean and presentable. Many had obvious signs of disrepair.

At this point our house has had only two showing, it has only been listed for 5 days though. I think our agent was alittle optomistic with the asking price and I think next week we may have to reduce it a bit.

There is one house we do like, it is the right size and the price has recently dropped and it has been onthe market for a long time so they may even take less. It does need quite a bit of cleaning and minor repairs but nothing major and it is down the road from good friends of ours so that would be a bonus too.

So now our house is freshly painted and all nice and clean - it has to stay that way should we get a call to show the house. It is actually very nice to have it this way - but not so nice keeping it this way. I appreciate the result if not the effort.

So now we wait - our house was listed in the paper today so maybe we will have some calls for tomorrow. We can't very well make any offers on any other house until we actually have one on ours. Most agents recommend against accepting an offer on the condition of selling theirs.