31 Days to Clean - Day 1 Challenge

I highly doubt I'll share every day on here but I will share when I feel the...feeling to. The first day was an interesting Mary Challenge and I figured I would share it here on my blog. Sarah Mae asks you why YOU clean. You are to figure out why you clean and then come up with a mission statement and of course just because we're crafty moms and such to display your mission statement somehow where you can see it daily. Here are my five reasons why I clean (in no particular order): 1. To make my home a haven. HAVEN: any place of shelter and safety; refuge 2. To set an example for my kids. 3. To keep my mind clear and focused. If your surroundings are cluttered, so are your thoughts and if your surroundings are clean and organized then your mind can be too :) 4. To keep my home healthy and sanitary! 5. Because God called me to tend to my home. My Cleaning Mission Statement: To keep my home healthy and happy so I may create an environment of rest and refuge, as an example to my children and husband, as God has called me to do.

31 Days to Clean!

If you're like me and spring is passing you by and you keep telling yourself you REALLY need to do some spring cleaning before summer arrives then you'll be just as excited as I was when I saw this on a fellow blog I read: 31 Days to Clean, Having a Martha House the Mary Way!

Sarah Mae, writer of "Like a Warm Cup of Coffee" has written this e-book (which means you can buy the download or it's also available on Kindle - woo woo since I have one now) and it helps you keep your house clean while also doing some spiritual picking up and dusting as well! This is right up my alley and I will most definitely be downloading it ASAP and thought I should share it with my readers as well, in case heaven forbid you have a dusty windowsill as well, *gasp*. Obviously it does this by giving you daily challenges and just a wild guess but I'm guessing there are 31 of these daily challenges but that's just a wild guess.

I also thought you'd be interested to know that she is having a giveaway in honor of finishing the e-book! Among the prizes (yes as in plural) is a $50 gift certificate to DownEast Basics! (See below)

And to get an entry is a cinch! Check out all the details at her blog (just click the above link)! And here's a super easy way to get an extra entry: just put this button on your sidebar and let her know in a comment - do you notice my sidebar :)

Excuse me now while I go download something on my Kindle...

Spring Cleaning

It is Spring. Which by social commonality means you should be doing all those cleaning jobs that you only are required to do once a year. Such as clean out your closet, or organize your cupboards, or move your stove and suck up all the dust bunnies underneath! EEK!
However there was a pressing matter this year that desperately needed my attention and it became one of my many Spring Cleaning projects.

Okay do you see this filing organizer?

It wouldn't close. Not because I wasn't strong enough to force it together but literally it COULDN'T close. Why you may ask? Because this is holding three years of my paperwork! I know. That's bad. So I set out to make this right again.

Fresh file organizer - ONLY holding 2010 papers! YAY!! Which by the way - writing your own names for the tabs really helps cut down confusion between husband and wife of where something goes or is located. I highly recommend it!

And here is my big finale! After about an hour and a half I finally had them sorted out year by year. and yet what are those extra papers on the floor? Believe it or not they are from 2007-2005. How they got out of their proper filing and ended up in my current one is beyond me. But then again, these things happen when you commence Spring Cleaning.

AH. Feels good. So how bout you? What are you tackling this season??