Sarah in Illinois is here to start off the week. Sarah’s looking ahead to spring–and beyond–and has a great tool to share with us.

I am the type of person that likes to be organized, have a plan, make lists, etc. It makes me feel more focused on the job at hand, and I am more comfortable when I feel I have direction. One thing I did to feel more organized this year was to sign up for a daily email from Spring Cleaning 365. Each day I get an email with one small job to focus on for the day.

Obviously I don’t need anyone to tell me that I need to clean my toilet, or put a load of laundry in, but these emails remind me of some tasks that get overlooked.

When was the last time you took out the bottom drawers of your refrigerator and cleaned underneath? Or the last time you disinfected your TV remote? If you’re anything like me, it has probably been a while!

So I like the emails because they remind me of the areas that I usually overlook. The goal from the website is to do one small task a day and then you won’t spend much time on it, but I find it is usually works out that I do one or two a week and use the weekends to catch up.

This weekend one of the projects I tackled was to sort my plastic storage containers. Between using them for leftovers and taking my lunch to work every day, we have a lot of containers. But over time many have lost their mates. So I took all pieces out of my cabinets and drawers and made matches.

Why did we have so many lids and so few bottoms!?

I couldn’t believe how many tops and bottoms had lost their mates. We had all of these extras left over. I am going to take the extras to my mom to see if she can make any matches with hers and then all the rest are going to be recycled. And now my cabinets and drawers close much easier.

I did do a little work on our home improvement projects this week. Steve installed baseboard and door trim in our hallway last week and I finally took an evening and primed them. Next, I need to prime and paint the walls and put a coat of paint on the trim.

Before

After

The hallway will lead to the addition on the house. So the drywall you see at the end of the hall is where we will extend the hallway to two new bedrooms.

I have drawn out the floorplan and started my list of materials, so I can prepare an estimate for us and for the bank. As I think I have mentioned before, we are doing all of the work ourselves, so we will be our own estimators, designers, builders and coordinators. I am nervous and excited all at once.

What have you been working on in your home? Have you started any spring cleaning? Have you ever tackled a large home improvement project on your own? Does anyone have any advice for us on being our own project manager?

Spring Cleaning 365 sounds really neat, Sarah. Thanks for sharing it. Funnily enough, Matt and I did a tupperware cleanout ourselves last weekend. Although I cannot remember when I last cleaned under the fridge drawers, and I don’t think I’ve ever disinfected the remote.