Family, Faith, and Fridays: 34 Weeks of Clean Rinse and Repeat Week 12- The Family Room and DVDs

After Week 10's assignment of bathrooms and last week's entryway assignment, I do have to wonder how many of you still like me! Or are sticking around. I promise this week is not quite as hard (mostly) and it may even be a week off for a few of you. If that is the case, you can use this week to catch back up on any unfinished weeks. Like books! Just saying ;)

So this week we are headed to the family room. Or den. Or whatever you choose to call the place where you spend time as a family. Ours is currently in our basement and does not get as much traffic because of that. It is, however, a hang out place for the kids and their friends, and is where we retreat on Fridays for family nights and weekends to hide from the world.

My favorite view in this room!

Here we go!

First things first, so clear out the clutter. One of the things that seems to happen when we stay in one place for any length of time is that we collect things in piles. Somehow those piles just grow in layers and we start to not even notice the piles. Now is the time to notice the piles! And get rid of them! Take everything out of the room that you can for now. You can put it back (some of it, that is) after we deep clean! I know it takes a lot of effort, but by starting with a clean slate, you can better see what your needs are. It is also a pretty stark reminder of how much STUFF you have accumulated without even noticing.

We have an obvious obsession with quilts!

Now on to the dusting! Bet you will be surprised at how dusty the tops of things are. A good waxing of hard furniture will keep it looking like new! With all of your shelves empty, this is pretty easy to do.

- Don't forget to dust or wash any artificial plants or flowers. Helpful hint, if you leave them out to dry, make sure you put them out of reach of DUMB dogs who think they look good enough to eat! Yep, that happened!

If you have windows, curtains, and mini- blinds in this room, you know what to do! Wash curtains or at least shake them out, wash windows, and tackle those silly min-blinds. Or you could trash them, just saying! ;)

Don't forget to wipe off or vacuum lampshades, light fixtures and switches!

On to the soft furniture. One sure fire way to tell you have kids is to check the nooks and crannies of your couches. YUCK! You never know what you will find there! If you have slipcover type furniture, I would encourage you to wash them. Just think about how many sweaty bodies have sat on them in the past year. Leather polish will help restore any leather furniture as well. Wash any throws and pillows you have, and replace only what you really love and use!

Floors and baseboards are next. Mop, vacuum, whatever it takes!

We had a few technical difficulties, but Ashton got it fixed. Thank goodness she is the vacuuming queen!

And now the fun part. NOT! This is the room we house our DVDs, so guess what? We are clearing out DVDs. Luckily, Riley is the queen of movies and loves to organize them, so she does this every time she comes home to visit. You can see that even though we just did this last year, there were still videos we decided it was time to let go of. Some were old VHS tapes and we decided it was time to let them go, or movies that every time I pull them out and say "let's watch this" I get moans and groans. No need to keep the ones we keep avoiding! I made a list of a few we would eventually like to replace with DVDs, but we will see if they are really missed first.

This area in our home houses my work area for now. I did straighten it up a bit (trust me it is an improvement) but I left the bigger task of organizing it until our "office" week. Let's avoid that for a bit longer, how about?

Before you walk away with a smile on your face for a job well done, take one last look around! Do you have stuff just filling a space? Do you love everything you see? Does it have a purpose? Because 34 Weeks of Clean is just not about cleaning, but also about taking back our homes in the clutter department, I challenge you to get rid of extras. If you don't love it or use it, lose it! Time to clear out the clutter! Everything you have sitting around takes up space- physical and mental. Surround yourself with only the things you love- move out the rest.

I have been sharing the prizes our friends at Redeemed and 621 Gifts are blessing one participant with (who shows us their weekly progress on our Family, Faith and Fridays Facebook page), so this week I thought I would show you what we are adding to the fun! Yes, it contains some of our favorite cleaning products including a glass cleaning cloth from Norwex, some bath salts to pamper yourself after all of your hard work, and my favorite book on de-cluttering, Clutter Free, by Kathi Lipp! You will love her, she makes me laugh!