annakiss' house is spotless and my diaper pail smells like flowers - Page 4

[mamadege5]

WOW, beautiful house. It looks like the one we moved out of, same fireplace, bricks and bookcases.... NY? Lots of houses in our neighborhood had same builders back in 20's.

sigh, mine was clean too, once, for a week, when we sold it, and were out of town, and the dog was at the kennel,

YOU are an inspiration!!

[boingo82]

Well I just showed this thread to DH, and he's sure you must be lying, because nobody could have a house that nice all the time, with 2 little boys AND time to paint all the beautiful art.

[annakiss]

Well he's right. I don't have time to paint the art. It's almost all from 7 or 8 years ago.

And it isn't nice all the time. It's just mostly fairly presentable. In the pics, the kids weren't here, so it was totally picked up and spotless. But just for the pics. Generally, I wouldn't mind if someone stopped by out of the blue.

[boingo82]

If it looks anything close to that on a semi=regular basis, you're amazing.

[lunar forest]

it does look pretty much like that all the time (I can't tell a difference) and yes, she is amazing

[chanibell]

I love the simplicity of it although I would paint the walls. Thats the first mistake we made when we moved into our house. We waited a long time to do so. My grandma is big gift giver,but most of her gifts are from the 1970's. Seriously they are still in the original boxes. Most of the things I can't use,but I accept them and then donate them to a goodwill instead. I don't like clutter and I donate,ebay and go to the dump a few times a year to get rid of things if I can't freecycle them. Great website esp here in Seattle. One of the best things I think that I do is get junk mail BEFORE it enters the house. I tear it up,recycle right there after I get it out of the mailbox and before I get back into my house. I just can't stand it. Whenever my husband asks me what I want for a gift, I say socks b/c you can never have enough. When our friends ask us what we need as far as X-mas and b-day gifts, I say food, you can always use it! I hate dusting things off mostly

[fremontmama]

wow! you have such a great place. it looks so peaceful! i love all the original artwork. we too are big fans of only original artwork on the walls, so it's all stuff my dh made or our friends or family made. it just makes a home so much more personal!
i have total admiration for how organized and clean your house is.
i'm inspired to say the least

[indiegirl]

Anna, you are my freaking hero.

Jesse

[annakiss]

Jesse

[USAmma]

Originally Posted by annakiss

• a place for everything and everything in its place - anything that comes into my house gets a home and gets put back there as often as it needs to be put back
• do now what you could do later - why wait if you have a moment now?
• purge early and often - don't wait for seasonal changes or time to do everything at once, if there's something in the drawer you aren't using when you're getting out the kids jammies, get rid of it
• limit the space you have - a small house is really key; more space i'd just fill up with more stuff
• pick up before you leave the house and before you go to sleep - waking to a nice, clean-ish house or coming home to one makes it easier to pick up later b/c there's less stuff out. plus it just feels good.
• get used to (and get your partner used to) enjoying it - after the kids are in bed, we pick up quickly and sit and watch a movie or just chat and drink some tea or a beer and look at our pretty house.

I am going to print these out and post them in my kitchen! Especially a place for everything.

Your art is beautiful, and everything flows well together. I like how you can have folk art type things next to classical things and it still looks like they belong together. Your plants all look very happy. I like the glass book cabinets next to the fireplace. Do you ever use it? Do you have a dishwasher or do dishes by hand every day?

[annakiss]

Thank you Darshani!

The fireplace doesn't work, so unfortunately we can't use it, though with two little ones it'd probably be best to not use it just yet. We spent an entire week in March keeping Sebastian away from my mom's woodstove and although it wasn't a big deal, doing it all the time all winter long or even at all in my own house where I have more to do and smaller space would just get tiresome.

We do dishes by hand everyday. It's one of the things that I do in the mornings, but slack about at night. I usually have very few dirty dishes sitting out during the day. right now there's a sink-full (though not too many as we ate out for dinner).

Another thing I don't do is make the beds every day. It's just not worth it to me if I don't have to look at it that often (and if company drops by, they don't spend time in there either, so they don't see it). Vacuuming also falls by the wayside as my vacuum is heavy and it's something I don't notice as much as all the large objects on the floor. Of course, now that it's warm again the ants have returned, so I'll be vacuuming them up all the time so the baby doesn't eat them.

[phathui5]

Nice.

You are am inspiration to millions.

[momtoS]

I LOVE your house....you have given me a goal to work towards.....now back to my craziness....

[USAmma]

Thanks to you, I had a team meeting with dh this weekend. He is so impressed with your house and declared that we have too much clutter. So this weekend we went and bought a wardrobe for Abi's room (she is in the former office-- no closet) and we totally cleaned her room out and I listed a bunch of stuff on freecycle. Whatever goes back in her room has an assigned home. I noticed some old stale stuff in the cupboards and pulled that out and threw it away rather than waiting for a day when I will clean and organize the whole kitchen. Which I know will never happen, not for a few years anyway. As I was putting laundry away I culled some outgrown clothes. I hope if I keep up your system the house will be looking great! The house already looks and feels better after just a few days!

[annakiss]

That's awesome Darshani!!! I'm so glad to have inspired action. I love the feeling of a cleaner-than-it-used-to-be house. It's so nice. I'm glad I instilled that love in my DH too, because he is a great help now due to it (even if he did just bring me tea iced instead of hot ). Good luck with your fresh start!

[Alana]

That is incredible! Now I miss our old home that was like yours. We are in a hideous tri level from the early 80s right now...and renting, so we cant do much with it. Our entire lower level...is lovely faux wood paneling ...with brown carpet. We are only here for another year...but I would like to make it more "us". We have WAY too much clutter...I swear the toys reproduce...I cant get a system that sticks. Your home really is amazing. My sisters are very neat and organized, and like to decorate. I try, but fumble through it.

[annakiss]

I just wanted to say that I rent, btw, which is why my walls are white (I could never convince DH to help me paint walls we don't own). This is the first floor of a duplex in a lovely city neighborhood that reminds me a lot of Sesame Street.

[3happygirls]

Inspirational cleaning

I've never been so inspired to clean than when I read your post and looked at your house. Simple. I LOVE SIMPLE, but I'm cluttered. I was so inspired...yesterday I started with my bathroom cabinets....how embarrassing the amount of TRASH we'd collected and continuing to buy things we thought we were out of!! My bathroom is gleaming and I'm on to my living room and hallway closets!! EEEK! I'm so encouraged and inspired! THANKS!

I have a couple artist friends, and I'm wondering how to approach the subject of wanting them to "commission" (is that what it's called) for me. I've asked one friend who seemed flattered, but another person seemed put off by the suggestion. She seems to not want to do things for money, but gives things away for gifts as she's inspired. She has so many wonderful pieces, how do I approach wanting to BUY them from her, or have her paint some things for my home? Also, is that cheating, since I can't do the artwork myself??? I'd love to be as talented, but I still like pretty things, regardless!! KWIM?

Thanks again!

[root*children]

Your house looks alot like ours, how cool! We did paint our rental walls, though, b/c unlike your nuetral walls, ours were painted gray! Not just a light gray, but dark gray like storm clouds Our bedroom and the office are still gray, b/c not many people go back there except for us.

My question for you is about your nice rugs! it is certainly essential in our hardwood house to have those, but my kids and their friends and the kids I do childcare for DESTROY them! I just can't justify spending alot on pretty rugs, so we have really ugly rugs from yardsales. And they definitely are a darker color since I bought them. Do you steam clean them, or spot clean them, or just they don't get so intensely dirty as ours?

[annakiss]

The only rug in my house that is "nice" per se, is the living room rug that I got from Target, which has been peed on, pooped on and lord knows what else. The others I got from Odd Lots (aka Big Lots) for about $20 a piece. The one in our bedroom actually looks nicer than the others though. I picked them because they were neutral colored. The dining room rug is really gross at the moment, but because it's so cheap, it's free to be destroyed.

When the living room rug was recently pooped on (and stepped in and walked on and footprints of poop went from the living room through the dining room, through the hallway into the kitchen yuck yuck yuck! ) I spot cleaned the whole thing. First I wiped everything up with vinegar, then I scrubbed with sal suds in hot water with tea tree oil and lavender oil, then rinsed the soapy part again with just water and vinegar and lavender (I think I added the oils, can't remember). That's how I clean everything in my house though - vinegar, baking soda, hot water, essential oils and sal suds. Not altogether, but the essential tools. Oh, and I add a little olive oil to vinegar & lavender to dust with.