Tidy House Tuesday

The Flylady schedule this week has moved on to the master bedroom, but I've had a major clear-out there a while ago so this is one room that isn't bad at all. I may do some of the tasks (dusting is something that always seems to be required in a bedroom...), but I think I might instead divide my attention between the lounge and the utility room/lean-to. The lounge is always in need of attention, because as the room in which the family spends most of their waking hours it's also the most battered of all rooms and can always do with a little tlc.

The lean-to / utility area is probably my least loved room in the entire house. The lean-to is a disaster. It was here when we first moved and it's one of those unredeemingly ugly late additions to a period property that you just wish you could pull down entirely. It's not in keeping with the style of the house, it looks bad, it's too narrow to provide any useful space, it's absolutely freezing in winter, and, to top it all, it now leaks like a sive. 

D has been putting plastic sheeting over the cracked glass panes of the roof for a few years now, because since it is so ugly we have not wanted to throw any money at it, but the rafters are rotten and it's always damp and awful in there. We've not wanted to get rid of it entirely, though, because it does house the washing machine and an extra freezer which otherwise would have no space, and there is also a downstairs toilet to the side of it which, although nearly unusable in winter (can I say FREEZING!) is really useful in the summer months as an outside toilet that the boys in particular use a lot when they are in the garden. 

Over the years we have tried a variety of ways to make this awkward space more usable. We have tried to clear the way to the washing machine at the end, but because it's a utility area / mud room, things end up piling up anyway, we've put shelves / cup boards along the side house all the stuff that accumulates there (which have had the effect of making the gangway to the washing machine even more narrow), we've put hooks up for coats and bike helmets, etc. 

What I'd like to do is pull the whole thing down, knock through the wall between the lean-to and the kitchen and the tiny 5-room corridor that connects the kitchen to the dining room, hall, and the lean-to (the other two doors are the kitchen door and the pantry door), and re-build the lean-to by replacing it with a more generously sized extension with large bi-fold doors to the garden. This way we could let light into the dingy kitchen (since it's one window looks not into the garden but into the lean-to!), and make it into a large L-shaped kitchen-diner/family room. 

There are no such plans, though, so for now we carry on. D has just replaced the plastic sheeting, after a recent downpour revealed that new leaks had appeared...

I'm going to try to bring some order into this space this week, if only so I can push my way to the washing machine without bumping into all sorts of things on the way!

I wonder what progress I can make in this space?!*

What are you organising and tidying this week? I'd love the hear from you so leave a note or share a link to a blog entry if you like - tidying isn't my favourite thing in the world, but it's better with some company. ;)



* I can't believee I'm even showing this disgrace of a utility area to anyone!!

Tidy Home Tuesday

... on a Wednesday, but never mind that. I was at work yesterday and didn't get round to taking pictures!

The Flylady commands me to work on my bathroom and one other room this week.

The bathroom always needs work, but it rarely gets neglected, because, well, a neglected bathroom is pretty gross, and with three little boys whose... aim... is often less than perfect it would get pretty awful pretty fast if I didn't stay on top of cleaning in that room at the very least. That said, I will make sure to give it some extra tlc this week. ;) 

For my one additional room I've chosen boy #1's  bedroom. This room does see some neglect. It's partly because boy #1 isn't the worst offender when it comes to toy chaos. He doesn't have much in his room and, for play, usually ends up 'visiting' his brothers in their rooms. This means that apart from his engineering/building projects, books, and loombands there isn't that much to go wrong in his own room. The biggest menace in there is definitely the loombands, which spill everywhere. I tend to hoover up hundreds of them every time! I'm not really sure how it happens, to be honest, because he doesn't really play with them much anymore (Mummy! Loombands are SO last year!), but they are All. Over. The. Floor.

His room is also tucked away right at the top of the house, next to my office, and that means that often, by the time I've done the rest of the house, I don't have enough energy (or motivation) left to attend to his room as well. 

All in all it's not a room that is very regularly tidied so it could do with some attention.

The task yesterday was to spend 5 minutes in there, just throwing away all the stuff that should have been thrown out or recycled ages ago. 

5 minutes? I can do that...

But that said, there are limits to what can be achieved in a kids room I think. After all, I am not aiming for magazine-cover-perfect, merely for tidy and clean. And it's his room after all, with his things and his art work, and I kind of like it that way. :)

What are you tidying and organising this week?