What is Friday? . . .

. . . The first official day of SPRING!! For some strange reason, I’ve never been so excited just to celebrate the first day of spring. Of course, I know that the real Spring for this beautiful place is weeks away yet (sorry if I just squashed someone’s hopes and dreams . . . spring in Idaho never comes in April . . . heck, remember that last year it was still snowing in June! . . . don’t get too excited) but I’m feeling “SPRING” in my heart!

In honor of spring, I’ve been having an itch. The bug bit me and now I can’t get these thoughts out of my head – of SPRING CLEANING!! I remember when I was living at home I hated it when my mom would say those two little words. Perhaps it’s because we lived in a nice sized home growing up and it would take us forever to clean it (at least in my child mind) . . . perhaps it’s because my arms always ached from cleaning walls . . . or perhaps it is because we had spring cleaning, and summer cleaning, and fall cleaning, and winter cleaning . . . and everyday cleaning. My mom's kind of a "clean up" person. I guess that’s what happens when you have 8 children at home all day everyday. I was always super excited to be finished with cleaning so I could go play. But now that I have my own little “home” to think of, I’ve been thinking of things I can do to officially prep my house for spring. I’ve come up with a list:

*Wash windows
*Clean window sills
*Wash curtains
*Wash walls
*Clean behind the washing machine (if you can believe it, our dryer used to be stacked on top of the washing machine and it’s at this spot in the very center of the apartment so whenever we used the dryer it would vent into the house. This made summer dryings very unpleasant because it would get so hot . . . and it would make the smoke detector go off . . . and we always ended up with TONZ of lint and dust and junk behind the dryer. The managers finally had enough people complain about it that they moved our dryer so it would vent outside {we won’t talk about the whole “having our dryer three rooms away from the washer” problem . . .} so it doesn’t get hot in the summer now {I’m guessing!} and we don’t have lint and dust and junk behind the dryer anymore. But we still have some behind the washer . . . and I’m just now getting around to cleaning it)
*Organize the spare room
*Organize the food storage

This is just what I’ve thought of so far. I’ve already started on my spring cleaning too! Today, I washed walls for TWO HOURS!! Unfortunately, I only washed the bathroom, hall, kitchen, and eight doors we have in the apartment. I still have yet to wash the living room or three bedroom walls. I'll get to it . . . eventually.
But now I will make a plug for one of my favorite of all time cleaning tools. It’s the most amazing invention for women who clean everywhere!

It’s called a magic eraser.

Now, you can buy the Mr. Clean brand, but I usually just get the generic brand. I’ve found that it works just as well for less money and you can’t argue with that. This lovely tool cut my cleaning time this morning at least in half. At least. AND, my arms don't ache after washing walls and cabinets all morning! It is so amazing!

This is what a beautiful magic eraser looks like before you use it to clean with:

And this is what it looks like after cleaning four doors, a bathroom and the hall walls (I had to use two erasers to do all the washing I did this morning):

Not super pretty. But it gets the job done. It cleans off all the stuff I would have to scrub and scrub at forever and ever with just a rag and some cleaning stuff. It’s amazing. I love it!

And now that I’ve cleaned all morning (I mopped and cleaned other things this morning as well), I’m going to go play with my toys.
Perhaps this one:

Or my newest toy (which I am so excited to use!):

I guess I haven’t really grown up that much . . .