I was supposed to start painting the living room on my day off yesterday. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just couldn’t. We’ve been ripping out walls and refinishing cabinets and painting walls and adding trim, and I just needed a day where I did nothing but clean up the mess.
Sure, those projects that I mentioned have been stretched out since August of last year. That doesn’t make it any less messy though. I’ll be the first person to admit that I’m not always a great housekeeper. I can live with dirty floors for way longer than I should (which is supported by the fact that in my day-o-cleaning, I didn’t vacuum). But sometimes there’s a limit to my dirt acceptance and my cleaning laziness.
Some of my “cleaning” items were a bit non-traditional. For example, I finally took down the terrible shade in the bathroom. I decided that privacy in the teeny, tiny window (which only the forest could see into) was worth less to me than ridding the bathroom of this fabric:
And I celebrated the painting that is already done instead of feeling bad about the painting I wasn’t doing.
I didn’t get around to ironing the curtains, but I’ll take care of that after we rip up the current floor and install the new floor. Why do we insist on new floors when our old floors are nice? Well, there are these little troughs/holes/not good spots where the walls used to be. That’s also why I didn’t use dropcloths while painting. And why the floor looks like we have a dozen birds living here (off-white paint splatters all around the room).
And remember this?
We’re still working on the island and a few smaller kitchen items, but progress has definitely been made.
I’ll show you the whole kitchen when it doesn’t look like the dish drying rack is about to explode. But look at that nice corner! No more fly tape. No more peach and pea green. Just off-white and pea green, with a tiny corner of white cabinets.
There was plenty of classic cleaning in addition to admiring of projects past. And throughout cleaning and admiration, there was a good audiobook and a storm brewing outside (which I love). I felt very much like I was getting a chance to smell the roses, even if smell isn’t the strong suit for our wild roses and hydrangeas.
Small, but valuable. 