TTMA spring cleaning

[tjanca22]

It's slow around here so tell me about your spring cleaning list and any projects that your taking on to spruce up the house/yard. Bonus points for pictures!

I'll start!

Outside: Yesterday I spent the day raking the yard to make the grass look better. Hopefully DH will cut the grass this week. I really need to get in the flowerbeds and clean those up a little.

Inside: My fridge needs a deep cleaning. How do I accumulate so many salad dressings? I never quite understood that. I really want to clean all of the windows in the house, inside and out. I need to go through DH and my closets and dressers, organize and pull things that we just don't wear anymore and box those up for Goodwill.

Project: There's a long narrow space between our deck and the garage that currently is just dirt. We don't really use this space, just the garbage and recycling bins are stored there. It's an eyesore and when it rains it makes the garbage bins muddy. We want to put some type of pavers there but aren't really sure what to do, expect we want to keep costs low. I'm thinking a trip to Home Depot or Lowes in our future. If I remember, I'll try to post a pic of the space.

That's my list. It's small but reasonable because quite honestly with a 10mo old, getting any big projects done is a feat!

[LizInFL]

tjanca22 DH just put some pavers in recently to create a path from the backyard to side yard (where the hose is located on the side of the house). It turned out well! Sounds like that might be a good solution, or you could look at gravel...but that might be tougher in terms of hauling the trash/recycle cans back and forth.

[pandabrrr]

We are moving next weekend to an apartment with no garage. I am trying to downsize and sort through as much as possible but the garage sale we were going to have this weekend didn't happen. Sigh.

I still have closets to go through and my kitchen to sort. I want to get rid of A LOT! I haven't even started packing.

[peanutmuse]

We just moved two weeks ago, so the list is too huge to write down now.

The current project is painting and setting up my son's big boy room.

[LizInFL]

peanutmuse we bought our house in fall '14 and we still have quite the list (and have done a TON, both $ and time-wise). I'm sure we'll get this house just about perfect and then DH will get orders to transfer, haha. Good luck with the new home!

[LizInFL]

OK, here's our list:

Exterior:
Yard is in good shape, it's been warm here awhile so we did a clean-up back in March and planted some annuals in pots, etc. There is one bed outside our master bedroom I'd like to re-do (new bushes, mulch, etc)

We just recently had our driveway/front walk pressure washed and want to have them come back out and do exterior/eaves/soffits/etc. The joys of a stucco house...

Interior:
We are in the process of converting the playroom to DS's 'big boy room', so I just have lots of shopping to do. Furniture and bedding is ordered, just need a mattress and all the accessories.

Reconfigure shelving in guest room closets and playroom/DS's future room closets.

Longterm: The interior trimwork has been an ongoing project. In hindsight I would have farmed it out to a pro just to get it done at once, but I keep telling myself "sweat equity!" and all that, haha. My goal is to get it finished before 2.0 arrives...

[calindi]

Outside: I dug up the flowerbeds in the backyard, still need to cleanup the ones in the front yard and lay mulch. We hired a neighborhood kid to mow for the summer and he's currently trimming our front bushes - normally I do it but this was just easier.

Inside: We hired cleaning ladies for a deep clean but we do have to do the regular sweep, mop, vacuum, clean bathrooms, etc.

Projects: We want to replace the wood for our outdoor benches and refinish our outdoor table, as well as replace the seats for the chairs since the wood rotted out (wasn't properly treated for exclusive outdoor use).

[nuggetrn]

We just moved into a new construction house in the country so we have zero landscaping right now. We are hoping to lay a little bit of sod for some immediate grass here soon because we have dogs and while they have been peeing and pooping outside just fine the mud and the dust they are bringing in to the house is making us crazy. Then in the fall we will do some grass seed in a larger portion of the yard.

DH already put mulch in the "flower bed" between the sidewalk and the house and the created another bed on the other side of the house. Eventually we will put some bushes in and I'd like to add some flowers as well. That may or may not happen this year.

On the inside of the house we still have quite a few boxes to unpack and organize. I have been purging and getting things together for a garage sale so I will continue doing that.

On the bottom of my list of priorities right now is refinishing my grandmother's dining room table. Not sure when I will tackle that.

[tallblonde]

We rent an apartment, so no exterior stuff.

Interior I need to switch out closets so my spring/summer stuff is accessible. And we need to hang the new curtains I got for j's room, but I'm a little terrified since I've never used a drill. General organizing and deep cleaning as needed, but that's just on going stuff.

I am helping my mom this weekend with some weeding and potting some annuals. We went with red geraniums this year.

[peanutmuse]

Apr 17, 2016 9:27:18 GMT -5 LizInFL said:

peanutmuse we bought our house in fall '14 and we still have quite the list (and have done a TON, both $ and time-wise). I'm sure we'll get this house just about perfect and then DH will get orders to transfer, haha. Good luck with the new home!

Ha, I hear ya! We still had a to do list for the house we bought in 2010, that we just moved out of 2 weeks ago. It is never ending, that to do list.

[sophiegrace]

Outside: we just got the entire house pressure washed, pool open, and landscapers started on the maintenance grass cutting. I fluffed up the mulch and weeded about a million weeds in the front and side of the house, now just need to do the back when it's a bit nicer out. In a few weeks I'll get some flowers for the window boxes. We had a huge sparrow problem on our front porch last year and while I don't mind the birds their poop was a disaster. I noticed a nest going up and some droppings on the siding this morning. If there are eggs in the nest I'll leave it go, if not that suckers getting knocked down.

Inside: I've just been doing normal maintenance cleaning, but really want to get a company in here to do a deep clean. I just can't do it myself with my schedule right now. If I do nothing else, my pantry NEEDS to be gone through and organized.

Project: we have a never ending list, but most of our money has gone to replacing or fixing the issues we unknowingly got with the house. We did just put a ton into the HVAC system, but thankfully that's already rewarding us with a lower electric bill. Long term we want to build a barn.

[LizInFL]

sophiegrace Ugh, I hate those necessary big-ticket expense. So un-fun. Our AC unit is original to the house (1997) so we know it's only a matter of time before it has to be replaced. It conked out in March and fortunately was fixable; repairman estimated we have another year or two (FX). Our electric bill will definitely drop (yay, summer in FL?) so like you said, that's the upside.

[sophiegrace]

Apr 17, 2016 14:41:50 GMT -5 LizInFL said:

sophiegrace Ugh, I hate those necessary big-ticket expense. So un-fun. Our AC unit is original to the house (1997) so we know it's only a matter of time before it has to be replaced. It conked out in March and fortunately was fixable; repairman estimated we have another year or two (FX). Our electric bill will definitely drop (yay, summer in FL?) so like you said, that's the upside.

Ouch. I'm actually relieved because I was doing everything to drop to the electric bill. It was so so bad. It was only on an off chance that one of our employee's husband (HVAC/general mr fix-it) was walking by that side of the house while doing a different repair for us. I'm honestly not sure what else could go wrong at our house. True money pit. Without a doubt worth it. But she's been an expensive investment.

[goldenlove3]

We just got nice weather this week so we had a busy weekend! Last year we built a deck, raised garden box and planted some privacy trees in the backyard but we never finished the landscaping and mulching so everything is overgrown with weeds now. Yesterday H's friend came over to put in a paver path from the deck stairs to the driveway and out of no where, they decided to build a retaining wall for the one side with the trees. So that's what they did yesterday. Beyond that, we have a lot of weeding to do, sticks to pick up off the lawn and mulching. Our yard is always an ongoing project.

Inside, need to go through our closets and get warm weather clothes out. We are also about to re-do our bathroom in a few weeks so we need to clean it out and go shopping for tile and cabinets. I also want to repaint our bedroom. Ugh so much to do. Eventually we'll have to start the nursery too!

[jubilantsquirrel]

Exterior, I want to expand the patio and also tear up the garden beds that go along the fence in the backyard. Our patio is tiny, room for a BBQ and that's about it. There is a cement slab off to the side where the old hot tub used to be, but I want to tear all that up and make it bigger. The garden beds are huge and make an L shape along two sides of the fence. I would love to plant things back there but my dog tears them up as soon as I do. Right now there's just a ton of weeds in them (of course my dog doesn't care about those) and I would rather have the extra space for DS to play.

In the inside I need to basically just deep clean and purge everything. Same with the garage. We need to re-organize and also buy more shelving. The inside is hard though, I can only do things during nap time on the weekends and it's not enough time to really get much done. Plus, it means my normal nap time chores don't get done. I think I'm going to have to send DS off to my ILs or my parents' house for a day and just try really hard to get all done at once. That's probably our only real option at this point.