Spring cleaning

It was absoloutely gorgeous outside today. Unfortunately, I spent almost all of it inside cleaning. I did have nearly every single window in the house open, though, so it could air out a bit. I like winter, I love snow, but I hate not being able to have open windows. Even with fans and a forced air heating system, it always feels stuffy to me.

I got a ton of stuff done. A couple of days ago, Shayne went though some of the boxes in the basement and got rid of lots of stuff. I managed to consolidate even more, which made it much easier to move around down there. Before you start to think we're psychotic hoarders who save everything and dig tunnels through our junk, I should mention that the storage area in the basement is only about 1/3 of the available space. That's about 200 square feet of space, which isn't much when you factor in all of my backpacking gear and our Christmas decorations. I'd still like to pare it down further, since some of the boxes have been moved to 2 different houses without ever being opened, but it's much better than it was. I also got the dining room cleaned up. It's become sort of a dumping ground, since we don't have a true mudroom yet, and it can get cluttered very easily.

Since I was in a purging mood, I went through my closet and re-organized it and found some clothes for Goodwill. Between the basement and my closet, I have quite a bit to drop off. It's amazing how much crap you can accumulate...

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I'll be doing some stairway sanding. Yes, I know I was supposed to be done with that about 2 months ago, but you know how I am... I'll also be continuing my organizing and purging. I kind of fell off the Apartment Therapy wagon, since I got to a point where my house projects got in the way of any forward progress. I can't reorganize my living room; it has no furnishings. I can't evaluate the color choices in our bedroom, since we have to redo the walls in there. I'll definitely use the pointers from that book when I'm choosing my furniture and decor. And since I realized that the red isn't going to work, I'm eager to find a rug and get started on a color scheme that will work.