busy busy

Twas' another busy day in our household. What we normally do on a Sunday is basically nothing. We watch TV, eat, play games, do a few loads of laundry (oh wait that's daily). Except today was different. Upon waking and seeing the house was beyond messy after being gone all day yesterday to the fair, we started by cleaning. And for some reason, I cleaned like no other today.

I pulled out the art tote and organized all the junk into drawers for markers, crayons, pencils, glue, scissors, and colored pencils. Then I tackled our pantry and organized those drawers and shelves, which made room for more canned foods. The bad thing about my pantry is the garbage is on the other side of it, so I'm leery to use it for anything other than canned foods.

Then, I got the girls to help me organize Devin's closet, her dresser drawers, toy drawers, and the hallway closet. I even unpacked a box that had been closed since before we moved. LOL! I think Mike gained some motivation by this point as he tackled the boys' junk in their rooms. I think we collected 3 full bags of garbage and several boxes.

This evening, Mike started filling holes in the walls with spackling, while I put primer on all (yes, all) the marker, pen, crayon, pencil marks on the walls. Then it was out to the garage to start mixing the paint to paint over. I put 5 coats of pink paint on Devin's wall, but am still having a hard time getting it to cover up the primer/permanent marker. Tomorrow we'll try again.

I had to paint the entire staircase because the girls used Magic Erasers to try to clean off the markings and it faded/smeared/wrecked the paint. So that had to be fixed. By the time I was done covering up the smudges and primer, I had used 4 different colors. Whew!

Then Mike and I (I take very little credit) moved the coat hooks down closer to the door in the laundry room so we could hang the new double hooks down low for the kids to each have their own hook for their coat and backpack. It looks great. Now hopefully that will be more enticing for them to hang up their stuff instead of just dump it in the doorway. That's a daily battle trying to get shoes and coats where they belong. For some reason it's just easier to drop everything when you walk in the door. Once 6 kids have come in, there is NO room to drop anymore. Ha!

With all that being done, along with our typical cleaning, I have not had much time to do anything else. But, I'm certainly enjoying the long weekend (which is going way too fast).