{ Assignment #1: Flowers & Floors }
The January Cure, a month long home organization effort, begins with buying flowers and cleaning the floors. When I first started the Cure four years ago, I thought that this was a bit ridiculous. We should buy flowers after the space is clean, and clean the floors close-to-last, as they will get dirty well before the end of the month. After reading the helpful and conversational approach from Apartment Therapy, I found their process helpful (read why over there). Part of the Cure is not exactly knowing what the assignment is going to be the following day. There is a calendar of the main title/assignment to help with planning coordinating your life, but I found that it was easy to free myself of the worry and wonder of what tomorrow would bring. Just focus on today’s cleaning and today’s assignment.
So, flowers on Fridays. I got the cheapest $6.00 yellow flowers and placed them throughout the house interspersed with our Christmas decorations. Immediately they brighten up the space and help me to meditate on the Holy Family while reflecting on the desire to improve the space.
My mother taught me that when cleaning the floors you need to start with the baseboards (she would also say that you should dust furniture first, but that’s beyond the scope of the Cure assignment right now). I dusted and then washed all of the baseboards that I could honestly reach without moving the extremely heavy furniture. I find the Swiffer extendable duster very help with reaching behind the TV and sofa. I followed that by sweeping the kitchen floor, vacuuming it and then hand washing it to make sure that I could get everything out of the tiny cracks between the fake-wood planks of the veneer flooring. I repeated this process in the bathroom, and a similar one on the carpet in the main living space.
My husband was around for the weekend and camping-out in the bedroom while I was cleaning. I’ll get to the bedroom later on this week.
Have you started the Cure? How are you doing?
Right from their website:
“Taking just one month and investing some effort (21 do-able assignments in total throughout January) toward a cleaner, more organized and more peaceful home. If you are ready to get your place back in shape (and reap the rewards for the whole rest of 2016) the very best way is one manageable step at a time, during our once-a-year-only January Cure. By the end of the month, you’ll be have a cleaner, fresher, more organized home, guaranteed!”
The best way is to sign up for the weekday emails from Apartment Therapy (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/collection/january-cure-2016-895). They will send you an email each morning with the task, with a click-thru to their website for more information.
Complete the activities, gain inspiration and motivation from others in this journey, and be sure to connect with others along the way.
Apartment Therapy (www.apartmenttherapy.com) is an amazing website to find resources and ideas, especially suited for small spaces or spaces that families need to consider form and function. They share real-life situations with funky wall sizes and lack of closet space. The real deal.
Connect with others through the daily January Cure prompts, and on social media using #thejanuarycure as the hashtag. Use #districtlight so that I can more easily find you and comment too. Come back to the blog and post your insights too!