Weekly Home Blessing Hour

One of the best tricks I've learned from Marla Scilly, aka The Fly Lady is the Weekly Home Blessing Hour. This is just a fast run through your house doing seven tasks. If you have a really huge house it will probably take you longer than an hour and if you have a small house of course it will take you less time.

The tasks are:

• purge newspapers and magazines, you know you aren't going to get around to reading the paper from two weeks ago, so you might as well put it in the recycle bin. Ditto those months old women's magazines.
• Dust your house. Now Marla does not mean the old fashioned get out a rag and the furniture polish. She recommends a real ostrich feather duster which will actually collect a huge amount of dust and spiderwebs and I concur. When I shake my duster outdoors the cloud of dust that flies out is amazing. Now don't fall for one of those cheapo feather dusters at the discount store. They will not work the same, for this you must have a real,  honest to goodness ostrich feather duster. If you have really high ceilings you are going to want that one with the 6 foot extension pole.
• Take out the trash. Get the big trash bag from the kitchen and go room to room, emptying all your smaller trash cans into it. I have small trash cans in my bathroom, bedroom and under my desk.
• Vacuum but just do the middles! This is not meant to be move all the furniture in the room and vacuum every square inch of carpet. This is just the middles of the rooms and where you walk all the time. This is what gets the most dirt and wear any way. 
• Mop all your tile and linoleum floors, especially your kitchen and entry way which get the most traffic. Personally I prefer an old fashioned cotton string mop and wringer bucket, but use what ever you like.
• Change the sheets on your bed. Marla suggests that you have two sets of sheets for each bed and that you store the extra set, not in the linen closet, but between the mattress and box springs! Isn't that a handy idea!

Declutter all those old worn sheets taking up space in your linen closet, put the spares under the mattresses and revel in  your new found storage space!

• Polish your mirrors and doorknobs. Mirrors collect dust and in the bathroom attract a lot of other things. Doorknobs collect germs and dirty fingerprints, especially if you live with small children or a mechanic.

Since I am most often off on Saturday and Sunday, I make my WHB list on Saturday and start then. On Sunday I try to finish it off. Other folks do one task each day of the week. Work it out however you want, but DO IT!

You will be amazed; never again will the garbage under the bathroom sink be overflowing, your carpet will look new longer, your mirrors will sparkle, your living room won't be overrun with old newspapers and magazines. It seems simple and it doesn't seem like much to do, especially in short, 10 minutes bursts, but it will make a big difference in how your house looks when you get in this habit each week.

Today's decluttering mission was to finish up the shelves I started on yesterday so here's the pictures!

Wow, the front room is almost empty! And that is a very good thing, because once I have the clutter under control I'm planning on moving my front door from the center of the 'L' (red curtain on the left in the photo) to smack dab in the middle of that far wall. The reason for that is because the roof line on this part of the house is quite low and where the door is now I cannot install a screen door. Moving the door to the other wall means I will be able to put in a screen door and on nice evenings I'll be able to turn the cooler off and enjoy a fresh breeze.