Spring Clean 2015 ~ The Dining Room

I've got that "need to get the house deep cleaned and decluttered" bug. Spring brings it about for me - as I'm sure most of us are starting to feel the need to air out the house and bring that fresh air in and germs out. I also am starting to feel all of our winter messiness closing in around me.
I am so overwhelmed.

I run a home daycare so we have a lot of larger baby items that I would have gotten rid of many years ago now that my own two children are 7 and 9 years old so we need room for the daycare children to play. Speaking of my children, they are in a drawing stage so there is paper everywhere! I keep it for a few weeks and then declutter but often it gets the best of me and piles up (as you will see below in photos of this week's zone).

As I mentioned, I'm overwhelmed. I want to do it all at once but let's be realistic - I'll be too tired by noon! Plus it always gets worse before it gets better. That part gives me a bit of anxiety.

Then I recalled FlyLady! She breaks down deep cleaning and decluttering by zone (or rooms). I chose the Dining Room to start on as it has the highest piles. Coincidentally it is FlyLady's first Zone. I'll do the other areas in the zone also and then pick a zone for each burst of energy I have.
It helps to have someone else tell you what to do and you just work through it. Plus, the donation truck is stopping by tomorrow so I want to have several bags of stuff out on the porch to leave the house for good and support a great charity.

I'm doing drawer decluttering also. It's really bad. Check the photos to see what I mean.

Are you doing a Spring Clean Challenge? I'd love to hear about it!

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This is what I started with:

One of the reasons I dislike spring cleaning is taking off the tape that held down the mat all winter.
It took some elbow grease but it's all gone now!
Why is it so much worse during? This stage totally freaks me out! It is also the stage that I start to get tired...

I love a good before and after shot to see the changes, so here we go...
The homework center.
Before: spread out into lots of containers and spilling onto the buffet.
After: purged and organized.
I still need to get rid of the little pile on the end but it's much easier to determine what is there as it is now.
The table cloth makes it look fresher and more spring-like!

Before: Christmas table cloth, is there a buffet in there?
After: Clean white table cloth with protective plastic cover, changed the layout of the wall just because.

A better view of the wall layout and the cleared surfaces.
You can't see this in the photo but I dusted baseboards and wiped down the walls too.
A little fuzzy but a view further down the wall so you can see where there is more light brought in with the cabinet moved.
The hockey stuff still lives here. For now...
The window blinds, screens and windows have been scrubbed down.

As I put the last item away my daughter came in and loved that she could access things now.
So, of course she promptly took out all the items she forgot she had. Sigh.
(Don't look at the other room ... that is another week!)

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