How does this depict a baby-sitting swap, you ask? Come on, moms. When else are you able to singly experience the joy of turning a corner of nasty neglected piles into a shining (that's stretching it a bit), pile-free zone, but when your kids are out of the house?I was overjoyed to turn over my 2 oldest children to a friend while my baby slept so I could do a bit of corner-cleaning. All I have to do in return is have her 2 kids over to play with mine for a couple hours. Which may be even easier than taking care of mine alone. Now, if you total the number of corners in my apartment that need attention and assume that by the time I finish them all I'll have to start here again, I could be doing corner-clean-up for the rest of my baby-sit-swapping days. I'd rather go out for a cup of tea, really. I guess that's why so many of my corners need work.
Do your corners and surfaces accumulate like ours do? What do you like to do with your time alone? Do you get any time alone?
In addition to tackling some of the scary corners of our home, I'm also in the process of reorganizing our stored baby and kids' clothes. What an ordeal. I plan to post a picture on that, eventually.
I swap out with my neighbor. She has 3 kids the same ages as mine so it's a perfect fit. We each get 2 hours a week to clean or do whatever we need to get done. I don't know how I got anything done before she moved in :).
ReplyDeleteI need to work out a deal like that--but we have so many "hot-spots" in our house that I don't think I'd get through them all anyway. Maybe I'll just wait until the kids go to college! :)
ReplyDeleteWhen my mom had my girls last week I cleaned out their closet and mine, cleaned a few of our 100 junk piles, and sewed a purse (with a bad outcome). It was great! Oh, and of course I surfed the web too much.
ReplyDeleteoh boy, do I have corners like that. The corner next to the computer is the worst, in fact.
ReplyDeleteWould you mind if I asked your friend to move into my neighborhood?
I don't swap all that often; mostly because everyone's kids I kn ow always want to come here! Also, I like to play too much and never seem to end up tackling what I should.
ReplyDeleteI am glad to kn ow that others have corners like that. I think every corner here is like that! :-)
I too am being swallowed by piles. Piles everywhere.
ReplyDeleteI too think it's easier to watch my kids when they have friends over.
I too am about to tackle a giant reorganizing of all the outgrown baby and kid cloths.
Bravo to you for tackling it all. I'm going to keep procrastinating.
That looks awesome! Time to myself, what's that? No, I got to a knitting group once a week obviously not the key to getting stuff some around the house. I'm with Alexis when college rolls around. :) Congratulations on getting it done!
ReplyDeleteI know all about piles. I like this idea of the before and after since it doesn't show where the stuff all got moved to another pile. :)
ReplyDeleteBut seriously it's great with no kids around because you can actually walk the stuff to where it belongs without someone hanging off you. i gotta find someone to swap with...
Alright, everyone, don't get the wrong idea about me. This is just one corner out of the many I tackled and Jessica called me on it--I didn't show you the junk that managed to relocate itself to another pile!
ReplyDeleteI rarely get to swap out my kids, so I'm always super excited when I have the chance to do any project like this. The other corners will be waiting quite some time.
I recently joined a local babysitting co-op and love the idea! My husband and I can't wait to take a turn at having our babygirl watched by someone we trust. Here's hoping you can continue to take full advantage of this great concept!
ReplyDeleteOh, and yeah, piles are everywhere these days. I try to attack either laundry or a pile every night after she goes down. Some nights are more successful than others!
I get to take my youngest to a Parents' Day Out program at church while my oldest is in Kindergarten. I LOVE it! It's funny how my brain now thinks of things as, "Can I do this when I have the baby?" If yes, then I don't waste my precious alone time on something I can do with him!
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, I have TONS of piles. Every single day I try to clean them up by the end of the evening, then they multiply overnight so I have to do it again the next day!