Cleaning, Part Deux

Thanks so much to everyone for their helpful cleaning tips yesterday! Piper Jacquelyn wins the award for best advice: champagne and a good iPod playlist! (Note to Piper: no actual award/prize involved, sorry friend!)

I went to Target last night and purchased a couple of baskets to organize the mess of magazines currently cluttering our coffee table. I also picked up some Lysol wipes (love those!). And one of those fun flexible plastic baskets.

When I got home, I opened a split of champagne (and, true to character, drank straight from the bottle), turned up the music, and got to work! I cleaned/dusted/wiped down the coffee table and put all the mags in the baskets. It instantly improved the look of the living room by 523%. Score!

I learned a great cleaning tip from www.about.com yesterday - when you clean a room, have a basket handy (hence my new plastic basket) and throw everything that doesn't belong in the room in that basket. Then, deal with the basket later. This is a miracle strategy for me - I am SO the person who picks up something that should be in the bedroom, then takes 25 minutes to look at it, and then it reminds me of something else, and then I start looking through a magazine next to it, and before you know it I'm writing a letter to someone and making cookies and I have completely forgotten that I was cleaning.

SO! I did the living room, and I have a basket of things that I will put away tonight. Score!

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I am still working out a cleaning schedule/calendar that I will share when complete.