Cleaning Downsizes Dirt & Helps Organize

This is the perfect opportunity for getting all the carpets cleaned: no one's around but me for a while, our young adults are planning to visit in a few weeks, and the upstairs was done about a year and a half ago and the downstairs carpets are 2 and 3 years old. I'm ready! The effort of getting as much as possible off the carpets and getting other surfaces cleared so that furniture can be moved is tremendous...especially in a home with too much stuff! Every one of our too-many end tables has too many dustables; these have been moved to the kitchen table, mostly.

My original plan was to take as much off the carpet as possible and move the rest to the hardwood and tile areas. A sudden brainstorm reminded me to leave a large path for the steam and vacuum tubes to run between the driveway and all the carpets. With my free hardwood and tile areas decimated, it still was workable.

Without mentioning names, I will mention that I made one mistake. I was lazy. My daughter was home for the July 4th holiday, and I was too lazy to tell her I was planning to get the carpets cleaned. I didn't ask her to leave her room ready. It wasn't negligence; I kind of felt sorry for her because she has been working outdoors in this searing heat so much lately, and she had to drive 4 hours each way to be here. I wasn't feeling too energetic myself. So the weariness of it all kept my mouth shut. The hardest thing we did over that weekend was put fluids in her car - it entailed a trip to Walmart, complete with asking a man who was also shopping in the automotive area for advice on transmission fluid. There were two kinds, neither of which were actually "transmission fluid." Fortunately, the guy was able to help us. Why the transmission fluid wasn't right next to the two kinds of other transmission things (cleaner? lubricator?)I don't know!

My daughter left her room ready for a room cleaning, not a carpet cleaning. I tackled that one first or I would have never gotten the house ready! I put some of her things on shelves, put clothes into a big plastic laundry basket and stuffed it in the closet, and cleared some things onto the wooden platform that she has as a canopy over her bed.

The other difficult room was the office. There are a lot of things stored on the floor! Plus I did move DHs work table out, by first moving everything from on top and underneath. There is still a snarl of wires about a foot wide and 7 feet long under my work/computer tables. I decided to just leave it there. It's not as if it drops food on the carpet anyway. I'll sit down there and vacuum by hand under it.

I still have more vacuuming to do. I worked hard to get the upstairs vacuumed. It took 5 separate vacuuming sessions. For me, this meant 5 trips upstairs to get the Roomba placed into each room and started. Actually, it took more; some to rescue the Roomba from a tight spot.

The downstairs isn't vacuumed yet. That's today's chore. I have to use the regular vacuum for some of it. Oh, and the stairs! That is the hardest vacuuming of all - note to self: do it first!