Sophomore Year: The Night Before Move-In

So, everyone! I'm semi-back from the grave (well, almost), and I would like to share with you what I've done the past few days.

Last night, I couldn't sleep, so I cleaned my bathroom. Picked up all the laundry, put it in a laundry bag, and brought it downstairs. Cleaned off my little hamper/shelf thing I have. Scrubbed my toilet and my bathtub. Threw away random crap. Cleaned up my sink. Swept (EW).

 Seeing from my bathroom door looking in. There's a bit of a mess atop the toilet and the organizer, due to my pajamas and tomorrow's clothes, respectively. Otherwise, it's so CLEAN!

Bathroom sink. It's also very, very clean. It'll look a lot neater tomorrow, once I take my makeup case and stuff off and head to college.

It took about an hour and a half.

This morning, I tidied up my Corner, as I call it. It's where I plug in everything that I have to plug in. It's also a catch-all for all of my crap. 

(Sorry the angle's weird; I was looking from over my bed. But you get the general gist: It's EXTREMELY messy. Eurgh. I was always scared that things were going to crawl out and get me. I did find two spiders, which I promptly squished and vacuumed up.)

All nice and neat and stuff! All my chargers are neatly tucked away, I can actually see the floor, and everything has it's own space! (I threw away a lot of stuff.)

This morning (and some of yesterday), I packed all of my college crap in boxes and carted them from the upstairs, to the dining room, then to the basement, so I could inventory everything and my mother could help me organize things as needed.

Starting from the left in the back, you see the two foam mattress pads (I'm giving one to my room mate), my mini-fridge, the pillows, hampers (under the pillows), and the over-toilet rack (and the handle of the swiffer sweeper). In the front, I have my little plastic drawers and all my shirts that I'm taking with me. Between the drawers and the toilet rack, I have a laundry basket filled with all the cleaning supplies that I'm bringing. To the left of the basket (also behind the drawers), I have my little black ottoman, which is filled with my little fan, styrofoam cups, power strips, RAID, and plastic spoons. My suitcase is also there somewhere, and it has my pants, underwear, hairbrush, socks, and "hygiene" items in it.

In these white box, I have all my food, my little plastic cup and bowl, my insulated cup, and my cokes. Beside the white box, I have two packages of mini water bottles (they fit better in the fridge, they were BOGO, and I don't drink a lot of water in one sitting, anyways). In the red box, I have my little speaker pillow, my lamp, hair towels, and other miscellaneous items. In the clear box under the red box, I have my blanket, my mattress cover, my bathroom rugs, and my TARDIS blanket. (I'm obsessed.) My printer's in the back by the couch.

All of these boxes are downstairs in our basement, where my dad keeps his hunting trophies and we keep our old furniture. (It's a fully furnished basement, with a bed, a minifridge, couch, chairs, sink, bathroom, and closet. And all sorts of stuff stuffed in the closets.)

So, after I've gotten everything inventoried and organized, my mother and I went shopping to pick up a few extra things, like a bowl, some more hangers, and some cereal and stuff. (I'm going to have to get milk and yogurt and stuff on Saturday afternoon, probably. From CVS. Because I have Extra Care Bucks.)

We spent the rest of the day trying to figure out why my scholarship wasn't showing up in my student account. (It's all been fixed now, so no worries!)

I picked up my sister from school and we got milkshakes.

We took my sister's clarinet to the music shop later, found out that it's rusted (so began the hurried "CALL EVERYONE WE KNOW THAT HAS A CLARINET!" freakout), and it will be about two weeks before she can pick it up.

Took home Papa John's for supper, and we watched M*A*S*H*.

After supper, I went downstairs and cleaned out my car. I took out all the mats, wiped down everything with Armor-All, and then vacuumed EVERYTHING. The floors, the mats, the seats, the cupholders... It's extremely clean now. I even took off my shoes before I got back in to adjust the seats, because I didn't want to get it even the slightest bit dirty. 

I also washed the mats (that was backbreaking), and I even vacuumed the trunk.

I wish I'd had time to wash my car, but it was already 7:30 and still 85º outside, so that was out of the question. (I hate the heat.) So I'm going to college with a filthy car on the outside, but a clean car on the inside.

Then we packed the car. The trunk is full to bursting! My suitcase, printer, ottoman, water bottles, and laundry basket are in the trunk. The mattress pads, pillows, hampers, and all my hanging clothes are in the back seat (along with my umbrella). Everything else is going to go in the truck tomorrow morning!

My room mate got to move in today. (I'm going to have to rearrange the furniture when I get there tomorrow, anyways.)

I'm excited and nervous at the same time. This girl's a complete stranger. Sure, we like some of the same things, but I hope I'm not too weird for her! :/ Wish me luck!

Cleaning, Part One - My Room

If y'all can remember all the way back to the beginning of the month (or maybe just to the middle), you'll recall that one of my resolutions for this month was to clean up my room and my closet.

I was off work today, and my mother was going to have my sister and me clean the downstairs, because, apparently, it's filthy. (I can't tell. Then again, maybe we're just so used to the filth by now...) Anyway, I said, "I was going to clean my room," so she decided that we'd clean the upstairs today. (We cleaned the basement on Monday, my only other off-day this week.) We cleaned the office first, as a group effort, then Sarah and I went to our respective rooms and started cleaning.

I had no idea where to start.

Yeah, it's an absolute disaster. Thankfully, you can't see my bathroom from here.

I decided to start by cleaning out one of my dresser drawers so that I could fit some more clothes into the dresser itself. My dresser has seven drawers, but I've only ever used three of them for clothes. The other four are full of random crap. So I cleaned out three of those drawers, put my oversized shirts (VBS shirts, community events, etc.) into one drawer, my "nice" shirts into another, my sweatpants and shorts into yet another, and my jeans into one more drawer. The final two drawers I organized into my underwear/sock drawer and my tanktop/bra drawer. (Sorry for any guys reading this.) It didn't take quite as long as I thought, but it still took around two and a half hours, total. (I took breaks in-between. Hopped from one mess to the other.)

Mid-drawer organization.

After I'd finished with my clothes (I had everything put away into its respective drawer, and had taken out all the stuff that was too small/too big/didn't fit right), I went downstairs to have some lunch. I like food, and today I had a corn dog. Then I went back upstairs, and decided to tackle my bathroom, as a change of pace.

I swept first, and then got down and scrubbed the bathtub and toilet and organized my little hamper-thing. Then I turned my attention to my sink.

The iPad's just there for my music.

It's like an explosion happened. I clean it about once every two weeks, but it ALWAYS ends up looking like this again. This time, I'm going to take special care to keep it nice and clean. After about ten minutes, it looked like this:

Everything's nicely organized.

I hope I can keep it looking like this for more than just a few days. It shouldn't be too hard, because I got rid of a lot of unnecessary things that were just clogging up sink space.

Then I returned to my room.

Getting there...

I still had to pick up all the stuff on my floor, and then clean off my bed so that I could put my sheets back on. It was a challenge, but I finally managed to do it. I vacuumed and then pulled the chair out so that I could do my curtains. (I got about two whole cats' worth of fur off those curtains o.o And it was so hot. The sun was coming straight in the window, and the vacuum was overheating from all the fur.) Thankfully, my mother helped me with my curtains.

I started cleaning at 10:30 or so this morning. I finally finished at 4:37 this afternoon. That's six (not-so-solid) hours of cleaning right there. I'm exhausted. I haven't even taken a shower or put on different clothes yet. I may skip the shower and just put on different pajamas. It's a bit too late in the day to even think about looking nice -.- Not like my family's going to care, anyways.

Isn't it gorgeous?

My bathroom's clean, too!

Now all I have to do is wait for my rugs to come out of the washing machine, so I can put them back on my bathroom floor. It's been a long day. I think I'm going to go find myself something chocolate! 

This was probably a very boring post for most of you, but I wanted to share my accomplishment! I'm amazed I was able to get everything done, and while my dresser's not quite as clean as I'd like it to be, and I've got some stuff at the foot of my bed that I need to tidy up as well (it's not pictured here at all, because it's like a mini-disaster area itself), I'm counting this resolution as D.O.N.E. Now I can sit back and relax a little bit.

I just hope I'm able to keep it this clean for a long, long time. I hate cleaning, so if I'm able to keep it looking nice, I shouldn't have to clean big-time for a while yet.

Have a great day, y'all! (Or what's left of it, anyways!)