keep my house clean enough that I'm not embarassed to have people over.

Done:
-Bought and hung curtains
-Bought, assembled, and am using new dining room set
-Rearranged dining room so it’s ACTUALLY a dining area
-Organized closet better
-Lex cleaned and is in the process of better organizing her office
-Made patio more inviting with table, chairs, and plants
-Bought a shower shelf and arranged all the toiletries

Still need to:
-Get in the habit of vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen regularly
-Have apartment management fix the washer, tub, and sinks and paint over water stain on hall ceiling
-Get a vertical blind that looks like cloth rather than this ugly plastic thing

Have had Lex’s niece and nephew over despite the fact that house wasn’t 100%

We bought the vacuum cleaner, and we regularly clean the carpets. That helps SO much. The apartment just smells so much better. The place is still so cluttered, especially with “Christmas carnage.” Once we clean up that part, things will be a bit better, but there will still be clutter. We need more storage before this place can be truly tidy. I think we need to do some rearranging to maximize the space, too. It would also help if we could get into a regular cleaning routine: washing dishes, taking out trash, vacuuming, dusting, etc. Upkeep would be so much easier if we didn’t wait until it got really bad.

I’ve bought bookshelves, a coffee table, some ottomans, a shelf to act as an entertainment center, and some containers to organize all our cds and dvds. I’ve gotten ALL of the moving boxes out of the living room. As a result, it’s looking much more presentable. I also bought picture and poster frames and finally decorated the walls. It took me a year, but I finally did it! We still don’t have a vacuum, but I’m working on it!

We do not own a vacuum cleaner. We do own a steam cleaner, a carpet sweeper, and even a carpet “rake” (or something…not sure what to call it…helps get up pet hair). Even so, we are not able to get the MASSIVE amounts of pet hair up out of our carpeting without a regular vacuum. Must remedy this if we are to keep the house as a normal, acceptable level of clean. Lex wants a really expensive Dyson cleaner. Some friends have one. Must admit that it works like a charm and might be worth the investment. It will have to wait a bit while we save, though, and in the meantime we will have to put up with a nasty, fur-covered carpet! ICK!

While I’m trying to clear the collection of 2,000+ record albums from the middle of the living room floor, they are still in a long stack alongside my bookshelf and in smaller stacks around the living area. A couple of our friends who live in Pittsburgh just happened to be in town the other day and were five minutes away when they called and said they would be dropping by! I almost had a heart attack. The place was a wreck. I ran around like a whirlwind trying to create places for people to sit and clear away some of the wreckage. I wish my house was just ready for folks, and I didn’t feel the need to apologize for the condition of things.