Extreme Spring Cleaning

We're a little early, I know, but we've started our spring cleaning. I guess I just keep hoping that spring is coming. It started with the baby's room that used to be the Rachel/Storage room. I would stumble every evening through a maze of boxes and piles of stuff just to get to her crib. It was a joke. And I have a theory that you sleep more soundly in a clean, organized environment.

So our spring cleaning purge started with the baby's room. Moving all of our storage out of her room meant that we also had to organize our outside storage closet, which was so full that it shouldn't be allowed. Things kind of escalated from there. We ended up with about five boxes for goodwill and two big garbage bags of trash. And we're not even finished yet!


We organized all the "Inside Junk" in Rachel's closet and decided to put her closet doors back on to hide all the stuff from her sight. If we left it out in the open it would be much too attractive of a destination for a baby her age. It does make the room look a lot cleaner...but also a lot smaller. Truthfully though, since all of the junk is behind closed doors the room looks a lot bigger.

The closet doors were definitely an adventure. Andrew gets his "fix-it" skills from Reid, who would much rather read a book than hammer a nail, any day. Things worked out well for Reid because Karen is amazing with power tools (and any other kind of tool) so he ended up not having to do many of the home improvement projects. Things did not bode too well for Andrew since I'm kind of the same way he is.

I'm not completely hopeless when it comes to home improvement. I know the difference between a flat head and a phillips...but that's about all. Andrew picked up a little here and there from his mom and she's mentioned trying to teach him some more.

He actually took her up on a lesson tonight on how to put on a closet door.

Let's go back...

We were all in Rachel's room trying to figure out the doors and sort things when Rachel decided that she needed to be held. I picked her up and held her and we watched Andrew struggle.

He got one door on and then started fighting with the second.

"I'll have to do this from the inside of the closet," he said, "I can't see the grooves from out here."

"I really think you ought to do that from out here," I said, "I think that's just how it works."

"But I can't see it from here," he insisted.

So I helped him get the door, and himself, into the closet and Rachel and I left to go and sort things in the living room. About five minutes later I heard a very muffled Andrew,

"I can't figure this out!" he wailed, "The doors are on, but they won't slide."

I walked back into Rachel's room.

"What do you mean? You're stuck?" I asked the closet door.

"Yes..." it said back to me.

"Okay, well...what do you want me to do?" I asked, trying to be helpful and knowing perfectly well that there was little I'd actually be able to accomplish on my own.


"Get the cell phone, I'm going to call my mom," Andrew said calmly after we tried taking the doors off again.

So he called Karen and after their lengthy conversation ended, he conceded from the closet,

"You put the doors on from the outside..."

About five minutes later he had both successfully freed himself from the closet and put the doors on correctly. Rachel and I just sat and watched.


We completely finished her room, except for sorting her clothes (I have to go through and pull out everything that is too small for her. Tomorrow will be a very sad day for me). It feels a whole lot better in there now that everything is organized. As the crowning event of Rachel officially claiming her room we put a picture of the Savior above her crib. I hope that she'll sleep a lot sounder now!