My Bucket List for Spring
There is no big home improvement project on the horizon at my house this season. My husband has already purged and cleaned the garage, so in general we are way ahead in terms of spring cleaning. However, I do have a few goals for this sometimes warm / sometimes cold season that I hope to complete before school is out for summer. Wish me luck!
Baby Book For My Last Baby
The youngest in my crew will be turning two-years-old soon, so I really need to get crackalackin’ on his baby book. It should be easy, as I take plenty of pictures. Digital downloads converted to a hardcover album sounds easy in theory, but still I struggle.
I will get this done courtesy of Amazon or Walmart. It is my hope that the task is a joyful journey back through memory lane. I really want all my children to have a baby book. My oldest is over a decade old, so her baby album is old school with printed pictures and cut-ups of construction paper. Handwritten notes plaster her baby book and give it a vintage feel.
The next three kids have been members of the digital age since hour one of existence. It is a blessing and a curse. A phone with a camera amounts to so many digital images. Plus I get a little OCD when it comes to skimming down the photos and getting these types of projects assembled.
It took me three years to get my oldest son’s baby book done, so if I can complete my youngest’s this spring I will be a year ahead of the game.
The Dreaded Third Stall
When I wrote earlier that my spouse had already Marie Kondo’d the garage, I should have clarified further. Our double stall and main garage area is looking pretty nice. The same can not be said for the dreaded third stall. It is where outdoor toys and dusty tools go to die. This area also houses the mini-jeeps that are popular with the preschool crowd but also constantly need batteries charged.
I need to get rid of these jeeps. My husband wants them gone. My daughters could care less about them ever since I enacted martial law driving restrictions on these toys. After seeing my oldests go rage racing as another holds on the back-end while wearing roller-blades, I had to mandate an age restriction. That’s right! To be safer, a child has to be younger in order to operate these things on my street. The driving age for the jeeps is now five-years-old or younger.
I know I have to get rid of these motorized toys to make room for an actual vehicle. Yet the middle child in me thinks it is not fair that my older children got to experience way more seasons of fun with these two-seaters than my youngest. He would probably never notice, but I would know and that mom guilt is a killer. I am open to suggestions for how to make peace with this whole scenario.
Space for Hobbies
I have another motive for clearing out the third stall garage. It is to benefit my husband and his many hobbies. He brews beer, raises bees, makes bread, constructs bat houses, and likes to tinker. These are all fine hobbies, but throw in a demanding job, four kids, and me…well hobbies take a backseat a lot of the time. And I want that backseat to not be our master closet or basement or kitchen counter or broom closet.
The third stall could hold my husband’s keg-a-rator, glass carboys, pieces of wood that will potentially get used eventually, baking gadgets, tools, bee boxes, etc. He is convinced that if the toy jeeps were gone there would be more space (true) and more organization (potentially true).
Ultimately, I want to get a few of these items check marked as done so they are no longer hanging over my head. Especially with summer and warm weather on the horizon! I want to be free to play outside, write, read, and enjoy the months when my kids are home from school. That means I need to get in gear and complete some tasks.
What are you looking to accomplish spring cleaning-wise?
