The Army Wife Is Having A Give Away!

So one of my good friends The Army Wife is having a give away of Simple Green products over on her blog its easy to enter and free just tell her your favorite product and you are entered and if you post about it on your blog you get an extra entry cool deal huh?

I love simple green I remember begging my mom to let me use it when I cleaned my room real well when I was younger! The smell reminds me of pine sap. But the great thing is you aren't gagging while you clean with this stuff! Who could ask for anything better than that! I mean we all have to clean our houses ladies and if you don't well then EWW! LOL I'm a clean freak so anything that helps me clean my house better and in a more healthier way I'm all for it!

I have had every intention of switching to green cleaning products and getting CFL (compact fluorescent light bulbs) for all of our million light fixtures in our house when we return to KY in 4 weeks (here we go again with the 4 weeks baby 4 weeks! if you remember from my wedding countdown days) But if I win this will be an awesome start to my collection!

So hop on over to The Army Wife and enter it ends April 20th!

Day 5 & 6 of the Fall Cleaning Challenge

Ok for yesterday we had to clean up our main living area which was hard for me because the boys have a 4 day weekend and all they wanted to do was watch movies and drink their beer and relax & I kept getting in their way and making noise. But it is done. Once again no pictures because it's not pretty and it's already messed up again.

Here is the list from day 5:
Living Areas:
-Wash inside of windows
-Change HVAC filter (don't have one)
-Flip sofa and chair cushions (I just vaccummed them well as they only have one "side)
-Clean and scrub down baseboards and moulding.
-Wax floors if needed (not necessary)
-Shampoo wall to wall carpeting and air-out area rugs(I don't have a shampooer so I just vaccumed really well)

Here is day 6:
Outside

-Wash outside of windows with water and vinegar solution
-Clean screens
-Power wash porch areas
-Clean out grill
-Clean and store outdoor furniture and accessories

It's a good thing I don't have most of this stuff since I got a rush job to do on a map book (it has to be ready to go by Tuesday) and I'll tell you guys more about this later but it is $200 to pad my pockets!

Spotless Bathroom

Here is our latest challenge from Katie over at Hyper Homemaker for her Fall Cleaning Challenge

Finishing up the bathroom

-Throw that shower curtain in the laundry (plastic curtains come out perfectly clean when laundered, just don't put it in the dryer!! Hang it dry)
-Shine and degunk the sink (you know how to do this from the kitchen)
-Scrub all the tile grout (YES you can do this! Magic Eraser, I hear, is a big help)
**If your tile hasn't been sealed in a while, it's worth doing to help you clean it easier.**
-Mop the floor
-Wipe switch plates, doorknobs, and doorjambs
-Empty and disinfect wastebasket

All done, but no picture because even clean once again it's too hideous for pictures!

Medicine Cabinet Revival

Our challenge for yesterday from Katie for the Fall Cleaning Challenge was to clean out the medicine cabinet & organize it.

Well I don't exactly have a medicine cabinet but we use the area under the sink to keep all of our toiletries and personal hygine products and medicines so I cleaned it out and boy did it need it!

Here is the before:

Yikes!

This is during & after organizing it into "his side" "her side" and "our side"


After all of this I still wasnt happy with the results so I ran to the dollar tree and picked up 3 white buckets to put stuff in and keep it from being so all over the place.
So this is the final product:


Not as pretty as some people's but it does it's job!

Nice Clean Kitchen

OK well as you know I have been following Katie's Fall Cleaning Challenge over at her blog Hyper Homemaker and we finished giving our kitchens a good scrub down yesterday so I finally decided I guess it is OK that I can post a few pictures of the finished product.

Now I promise you it isn't pretty but this place is a rental and for what we are paying (and putting in the bank) each month is worth it since we were only going to be here for a little over a year anyways.

OK so are you ready? Sure ya are!


See that little brown cabinet over there, that my friends is my pantry! (Katie & Bryn I win for having the smallest pantry EVER!) Oh and PS: all of this furniture is included in the rental so it's not ours and we had no choice what got put in here but I do have to admit that some of it is nicer than what we have at home!


This is the sink area, like my little checked and watermelon curtain? My mother-in-law made that for us so I just had to hang it.


There is the refrigerator. I worked my butt off cleaning that thing on Saturday (more pictures of that further down!)


And here is the microwave and all my cookbooks (I love them all!)

Finally here is the inside of the refrigerator.


See the boys have a habit of putting a beer in there to get nice and frosty and sometimes (well not all the time) forget about them and they freeze and explode leaving our freezer full of frozen beer and glass shards. Nice huh? So Friday night it happened (again) and I had just had enough! On Saturday morning after they had woken up (both of them) I said no more beers in the freezer and if I catch one in there again and it explodes they will clean it out! So hopefully they will enjoy having a nice clean freezer and refrigerator for their food. Hopefully being the keyword there.





I swear this thing probably hadn't been thoroughly cleaned since way before we moved in. It was disgusting! So as you can see I live in boy town where the fridge is constantly full of beer and pizza. Oh and BTW that amount of beer has since shrank by about 2 six packs!

So I hope you enjoyed this tour of my "loner" kitchen!

Now it's on to the medicine cabinet today!

Let the cleaning begin!

Ok I mentioned yesterday that I was going to start a cleaning challenge with Katie over at Hyper Homemaker. So I got on today to pick up the list and see what I had to do today.

Here it is:
Pantry
- Take everything out of the pantry.
- Wipe down shelves.
- Toss old items and donate unused good items.
- Repackage all messy items into nice containers.
- Place all items back into the pantry in an organized fashion.

Fridge
- Take everything out of the fridge and freezer (placing items in a cooler with all the remaining ice.
- Scrub down the inside and outside of the fridge, shelves, doors, ice maker and freezer.
- Replace water filter if you have one.
- Clean fridge condenser coil.
- Toss old or useless food.
- Place everything back into fridge in an organized fashion.

Cabinets
- Take ALLL your items out of all your cabinets and drawers. Yes... ALL!
- Wipe down the inside of all cabinets and drawers.
- Wipe down the inside of all containers such as utensil holders.
- Store items not used in over 6 months, or summer seasonal items.
- Thinking logically (ie - potholders next to stove, towels next to sink), try to put everything back in a more useful and purposeful place, and in an organized fashion.
- Scrub down the cupboard exteriors, from to of the kitchen to bottom.

Now I'll admit that seemed like a lot to me at first but I did get it all done and I felt a sense of accomplishment. J & our roomate thought I was crazy and kept asking me "what are you doing that for?" obviously men do not understand the importantce of a clean house!

They'll thank me later!

Sad to say but I didn't take any pictures I still haven't worked up enough guts to be proud of this place (it's a trailer for crying out loud its not pretty in the least little bit) *sigh* I'll try and take some tomorrow after I stock the fridge because I got yelled at for taking all the beer out (it's quite full of beer and pizza boxes right now but it's all clean underneath!) It looks quite bare with out all of that in there but it's not pretty! LOL

So how did you do today?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you have a great night of trick-or-treating or partying or what ever you do with your halloween!

Me, well I suppose I'm going to get all gussied up and go out with J. (who doesnt have a costume grrr!) so it's gonna look funny! But maybe we'll go out with a couple of friends or hang out somewhere who knows! It's all up in the air right now!

I'm gonna be a pirate yarg! How about you?

PS: I might be starting a cleaning challenge with Katie over at Hyper Homemaker doing her Fall Cleaning List tomorrow. She encourages us to post pictures of our houses all clean but I'm not so sure I could do that This place is ugly even clean! It would be quite an embarassment to show. Maybe I'll just post about what I complete each day...



Anyone wanna join us?

Beautiful & Clean Rooms

So today while I was taking a break (procrastinating) finishing school work I made two things. I've been thinking a lot about what to do with our extra bedroom at our home after my roommate moves out in May of next year. I've been talking with J. about it and he said we should just turn it into a guest room/office so I made up an ever so popular mood board for the room today.

I wanted to go for a cozy and comfortable space using neutral colors and greens and browns. So here is what I came up with...



Then I also made a cleaning schedule to help me keep the house always looking presentable because I have someone over nearly every day and I dont want to have to work so hard to get the house clean after I invite someone so here it is....click to enlarge.



I hope everyone has a good weekend! I'm off to have some German food! Yumm!