Made Into the Maid

What I wouldn't give to have someone else do the chores I hate.

Vaccuuming. Dusting. Cleaning bathrooms. These dirty little jobs that are so completely necessary but take up so much of my time that I would rather be playing with my kids.
A maid for this family however, is highly unlikely. Actually, more of an absolute, positive NO. Quite honestly, I'm too cheap to shell out the money to have a stranger come in to poke around in my mess. And so, I clean.

This day was going to be different though. In talking with Eric yesterday afternoon, I asked if he reminded the sitter that the kids wouldn't be coming on Monday due to us having the day off work for President's Day. He said that she was going to have only one of the other kids and she would be more than happy to take them for the day. I think he didn't even have all of the words out of his mouth beofre I began to drool with excitement over 7 hours of uninterrupted cleaning time. Once I confirmed with Nancy that the kids were going to her house in the morning, I dumped all of my worries of getting laundry done and some other random chores and enjoyed all of Sunday playing with my kids. I even let Elaina get out her Play-Doh and play until she said she was done. Monday was going to be all mine. My work day. And Eric's. The kids would be getting plenty of attention and I was making more time for them later by having an opportunity to get some meaningful work done. A win-win situation if you ask me.

We woke with noise coming from our children rather than alarm clocks on Monday morning and didn't have an ounce of rush in us to get them out the door. Like usual. Eric dropped the kids off and brought back a delicious, warm cup of cappuccino for me to start my day. I changed my clothes and jumped right into work mode. I started upstairs in the kids' bedrooms sorting through closets and dresser drawers. Earlier in the morning, I came to the conclusion that Elaina has outgrown nearly every pair of shoes that she owns. I dug through their inventory of bigger-sized clothes to discover that we need to go shoe shopping.

My cleaning spree had begun. In fact, I spent most of my day just upstairs tackling one project after another. I'm talking about dusting, vaccuuming floors, ceiling fans and window sills. Changing sheets, 78 loads of laundry (approx.) and cleaning bathrooms. Total damage: 3 super sparkling bedrooms, 1 so-so bedroom, 1 sparkling clean bathroom and tub, 1 acceptably clean bathroom and 1 just plain ugly bathroom. All of our floors were dog- hair free for approximately .08 seconds and without kid crumbs for a record setting 3 hours.
Here's some evidence of my work. Mostly inspired as the fruit of my labor. Partly inspired by Tracy's virtual home tour, and the added benefit of my kids being able to see what their rooms looked like when they were little. (I have no idea what my kid-room ever looked like, but I know it was never anything like this.)

Check out Elaina's room. Now, didO I really have to tell you that this was Elaina's room?

And for Lincoln's room:

And finally, our hallway which isn't new, but I just really want to show off my one and only creative use of patterning paint shades.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I left out our new stained doors that I think are beautiful! Eric finished hanging the last one today! Our upstairs remodel is one room shy of being perfectly complete! We'll get there.

Okay, so who wants to come over for some dessert. That's on tomorrow's agenda!