Cleaning Up and Cleaning Out
Is your tree still up? Both of mine are. Our main tree is in our family room and I am not ready to take it down. I love the extra light that it gives the room and I still am enjoying my ornaments. We have a lot of ornaments. Both of us had a collection when we got married, we’ve given each other ornaments each year since our first Christmas in 1993, and we buy them when we travel. That tree is going to stay up for now.
The other tree is on our screened porch and it is dripping with white lights. Our house is on a corner in our neighborhood and the tree looks so pretty coming from either direction. Every year our neighbors tell us how much they enjoy that tree. That one is coming down today.
The wreaths on the outside of the house and the garland around the front door are coming down today, too.
Inside, everything is put away in labeled tubs except for the tree. What a job! I need to buy one more tub to hold a little overflow. I already bought one tub earlier this week, but it got filled with topiary supplies from my mantle.
I worked one day on our basement. Our basement has four sections. One section is mine. It has cabinets that hubby made for my craft supplies, an old entertainment center that I use to hold decorative items that I’m not currently using, a few tables that hold more decorative items, shelves that hold tp, paper towels, cleaning supplies, and flower vases. Another set of shelves holds all of my home canning. (Not that much, just tomatoes, pickle, and jelly.) My section of the basement also has the laundry area, chest freezer, and closet under the steps where we keep coolers, camping supplies (yuck), hunting crap, life jackets, and some etc. I cleaned out everything in this section. I threw some things away, reorganized, took everything off of every shelf and washed them down. It looks so much better now!
The second section of the basement has a wall where we hang our bikes, tennis equipment, and skis. Hubby did this last January. He also built shelves for my tubs for Christmas, Easter, Fall, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. I used to have to crawl in cubby holes under the eaves of the house to pull these boxes out. It is so much nicer now to have the boxes out where I can see them. He also built a closet for our Christmas tree. We take the top off of it and shove it in the closet along with all of the outdoor wreaths.
While I’ve been cleaning out and up, hubby has been hard at work re tiling our bathroom. When he originally tiled the floor, he used the wrong kind of grout. What he used is porous and won’t stay white. He pulled up the old tile and discovered that there was some rotting beside the tub. He then pulled up the next layer of flooring and replaced it with concrete backer board. Yesterday he did the tiling and only has some intricate corner cuts to complete. I don’t know how much he’ll do today since he’s playing tennis all morning and video games all afternoon with his old boss.
I’m glad to hear how you organize because I’m making some changes as I take things down this year. I just bought 15 big storage containers from Kmart and I’m ready to get started! SO wish I had a closet for my tree to just slide into…