wiped out

Spring cleaning hit us way too early this year.. well at least that is how it feels. Coming here I thought I had escaped mold.. but no not possible. Being near the beach with a coastal breeze allows for more moisture to seep into the house than expected. Not all the rooms experience this.. for some reason I am just the lucky one. It grows wild on my walls, on my luggage, on my shoes... my clothes.. anything left sitting untouched for to long eventually gets some kind of mold growing. Most of the time I do not see it until it is too late, why is this... well it is because this mold is white and nasty. The stuff on the walls though crept up over a short time and is visible and explains that wierd not so coastal smell I have not been able to get rid of.
Add this to the constant dust in the air and the layer of nasty dust on the windows and you got an itch to clean that just cannot be gotten out until a full bottle of bleach has been dispersed. This feeling was not mine alone. Woke up this morning and mom in law decided to wash the windows in the living room... I figured cool I will hide and rest. No No NO not possible, my room was creeping under my skin. My tv recently broke so I finally convinced hubby to move it out. Yuck dust and mold hidden all over. So wipe that down and what do you find,... more dust more mold yuck yuck yuck.
I also had a couch in my room that was under the window, and not knowing how long before I came that it sat there.. I did the unthinkable and pulled it out. BAD mistake. GROSSness all over. Yes I am sharing this out loud as a reminder to all that yuckiness can grow in the most unlikely of places.. all those forgotten boxes of clothes in the closet, piles of "will get to that on my day off," sections of the house that are just put to the side until the moment comes that there is nothing to do but clean. Every corner of the house needs to be flipped and wiped and restored at least 2 times a year. Not just the areas that can be seen.
This being the case we had our own corners to tend to today...
So the living room was being soaked and wiped and washed and flipped and flopped... and in that process I suggested the simple comment of can I move the couch out of my room... this leads to a whirl wind of dust bunny chasing, mop water sloshing, sweeping, more flipping and flopping and one well worn out momma.
One of the cool features of Moroccan furniture is that the covers on the couches are flippable with different colors or patterns on the underneath, so every few months we flip all the covers and pillows and have a new look for no cost. On my couch I found another color that we forgot about, so not only do we have a black set, and orange set, a red set now found a cream color. So we went in hunt of all the matching pillows in the house and flipped all the couches and gave the living room a new fresh look.
The result of the day was a fresh living room, clean windows, happy mother in law. My room: got the TV out, couch out, swept and mopped all the floor (new found space way bigger), all electronics out (office for that, if they can stay there)... washed all the walls to get rid of the mold and dried them all as well to be safe and sound... and moved the bed to a new section of the room. Then brought in a desk.. I found a corner.. an unused new corner of the house...woohooo I HAVE MY SPACE.. mommy found a quiet corner. Put the desk in the corner, the laptop on the desk and the crochet bag underneath!!! Brought a new TV into the room that is on wheels, (Yes I was fine with no tv.. but somehow it is the only thing to keep us semi sane and everyone goes to their own space.. so it is an unavoidable must) and a storage box for the electronics that walked back in on their own.

My room is so fresh and clean now... I can sit and breath and watch the sunset over the ocean in peace, just a great feeling to find that one spot (all I need is a recliner and a bookshelf and I would be set wink wink) and as everyone who has walked in has declared.. wow the room is huge. Simplicity is a great feeling.

And Spring Cleaning no matter how exhausting and muscle wrenching and soul draining it may be.. the end result is worth every drop of sweat, grunts of dislike (from unhappy forced helpers), and tired body parts..
Having a well scrubbed house that is organized is like a kindergartner with new tennis shoes... You have just a wonderful extra bounce in your step.