Sunday 26 February 2012

A room a day - Seagull and Wombat's bedroom

I really hate cleaning. I do the absolute bare minimum as far as cleaning goes. Most of my efforts involve making sure that everyone's clothes are washed regularly so that we all have clean stuff to wear and rinsing cooking equipment/plates off so that they are easier for Thunder Maker to wash.

I've largely left the unpacking of boxes to Thunder Maker. My rationale is that most of the stuff in the boxes is his crap that he has to sort through and throw most of it out anyway, so why bother getting involved. This has meant that the boy's bedroom has been crammed with boxes and no one has been able to get in there. They have been snuggling with us overnight, which is no different to before we moved, but Thunder Maker has been complaining about the lack of room in our bed lately.

The straw that really broke the camel's back though was going to visit some of our friends last week. They were posted at the same base as me until the end of last year and they got posted to the same base this year that I am now at. Their daughter and Seagull are really good friends, so we were excited that they were coming up here too. For reasons that I'm not going to go into here, they had a lot of trouble finding a house, so they moved up here about a month after us.

When we went to visit them last week, there was not a box anywhere in their house to be seen. It made me really ashamed that we are nowhere near fully unpacked and that our house is not in a fit state to invite guests into. It made me want to get our house fully sorted so that we are able to invite people over. It also made me realise that I've only got a few weeks to go until an old mate of mine from school comes to visit us and the guest room is so full of boxes that no one is even able to walk past the door way of the room.

I resolved that I was going to concentrate on one room a day until the house is presentable. Some rooms are going to take me more than one day to sort but I will stick to that one room until it is sorted.

I was woken up by Wombat wanting a breastfeed this morning. It was 7:20am by the time Wombat rolled off and went back to sleep. I was wide awake, so I decided to get up and do some study for the coming uni term. Then I changed my mind and decided to clean up the boy's room instead.

The room actually wasn't too cluttered, it's just a really small room. We have moved from a four bedroom house with a study to a three bedroom house, so we decided to put the boys together in the smallest room and use the third bedroom as a guest room.

Anyway, the first thing I had to do was move a box marked 'lounge', two suitcases and the bassinette out of the room. The bassinette got shoved into the third room and the rest was left in the hallway. Then I had to unpack two boxes of clothes (most of which are too small for the boys and are now in bags to go to the Salvo's) and a box of toys.

Seagull woke up when I had one box left to go, so the floor was clear and he was able to get in. When I told him that Mummy was cleaning up his room, Seagull's face lit up. He stayed around for a while to watch before going to find his Dad so he could seagull some breakfast.

Once I had the boxes and their contents cleared off Seagull's bed, I was able to make it up. I knew where the sheets were, but realised that the doona is still in a box somewhere. Not that it really matters, because it isn't dropping below 18 degrees at night at the moment. You might be able to tell from the below picture that Wombat's bed hasn't yet been made up. That's because the sheets are on the clothes line.


Uploaded from the Photobucket iPhone App
The boys' little bedroom. With added toybox and change table.


What I am really excited about is that the bookcase we bought for Seagull while I was pregnant with him has been reclaimed from Thunder Maker (he decided that having somewhere to house his magazine collection was more important than Seagull having somewhere to keep his books and toys) and is now housing the boys' books and some of their toys.


Uploaded from the Photobucket iPhone App
Bookcase being used for its intended purpose.
At last.



Anyway, both boys seem to be really happy at having their own little area. They both keep wandering in to check it all out. They even had their afternoon nap snuggled up together on Seagull's bed. I really wish I had taken a photo of them so I could add it to this post.

The next room I'm going to tackle is the master bedroom. I think I may have to take a leaf out of Parental Parody's book and just attempt to bag and donate any clothing of Thunder Maker's that I don't like to the Salvo's. Honestly, there is so much of his crap crammed into our massive bedroom closet that there is no room for me to hang anything of mine up. I should really save it for the next post, so I will stop there for now.

Yeah. Giddiup!

5 comments:

Parental Parody said...

Clearly you are without wine or The Real Housewives of New Jersey (or any other city in the universe) - because you have done WAY TOO MUCH WORK!

Sit down, immediately. Chocolate, ice cream, cake, wine, vodka, whatever your chosen poison.

Turn on the TV.

Bask in the glory of your efforts and wait at least a year before ever attempting such a mammoth task again.

Also, I find it easiest to covertly dispose of 1 single item of crap man fashion at a time. Makes it harder for them to notice it missing.

If questioned, simply feign surprise and claim to have no idea what happened to said item? If you can muster up the enthusiasm, perhaps even pretend to be worried, and have a half assed scout around the house. Helps with the facade. Just don't let him go to the local Good Sammy shop and find it there on the racks for $4.99 - chances are, he'll only buy it back again (TRUE. STORY.)

Samone said...

Oh dear... what is it with you ppl not using toll to your full advantage! I make them unpack everything for me... and I shove it away in cupboards as they go... then they take all the rubbish with them!

Samone said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mel said...

The problem is that if I only throw one item away at a time, I'll never have anywhere to store my clothes. Just wait until you see the before photos I'm putting up in my next post. My problem isn't so much op shops as the $10 sale rack at Target/Big W/Kmart. I can't count the number of times Thunder Maker has come home with a bag of shirts from the latest sale offering.

Mel said...

Samone, we moved in two days before Christmas and had way too much crap to unpack it all in this house. The reason why so much has stayed in boxes is because two thirds of it is junk that needs to be thrown out. Thunder Maker is slowly going through it all and weeding it out. In the meantime, I'm going to be doing as much covert magazine/newspaper recycling as possible. Because that is what most of the crap is.