Spring cleaning / clothes swap

Spring cleaning isn't exactly one of my favorite things to do and now being married it has become a bigger challenge.  I get a wild hair and run amok thru the house on short bursts, that are usually fueled by guilt of sitting in front of my laptop reading too many blogs, answering mail and without a doubt watching "estrogen T.V.".

I do my best not to fuss at my honey when I am on cleaning mode because I am smart enough to know  my husband isn't synched in to my cleaning energy surges, but there are other times when I feel there is so  much to do and  I just want to scream at the fact that I zoom thru the house while he reads, blogs or other and doesn't even notice the commotion.

Let's face it, few are the men who are cleaners!  Those are usually obsessive compulsive or germophobes, so I am more than happy to be the one in our marriage who leads the fight with grime!

There are times when I announce early in the day that there will be cleaning going on, and that his participation is required.  I toss a few tasks needing attention and ask him to get to them sometime during the day or weekend.  I am NOT his parent asking him to do his chores and don't believe I have to supervise him--though there have been times when on Sunday evening he has not gotten around to any of those tasks and I tend to get bitchy and it motivates him. 

There is usually whining over some of the cleaning tasks that marvel him.  Like wiping down all the doors in the house or de-calcifying the coffee maker on a regular basis.  Perhaps he just was never involved in such tasks growing up, or perhaps learning how to clean from my grandmother has something to do with it...

Anyways, so far this year we have had only a little Spring cleaning and thanks to a wonderful invitation for a Swap (clothes and house goods) by a friend we were able to purge a few of the things that were just taking up space. A friend has been holding swaps twice a year for a while and this was the first I was able to attend.  I had never gone to one.  I associate a swap with rummage sales or flea markets.  Far from that; the gathering I attended consisted of one host, several friends invited, wine, party food and gently used items one is willing to part with.

The spirit / point of the party is to de-clutter your home and allow someone else to enjoy things you might have loved at one point that no longer fit, do not go with your current decor, or gifted items that aren't really you but you have kept for sentimental reasons.  At the end of the party, anything that is left over is bagged or boxed and donated to a local charity that picks up donations at your door.  I had a blast and hear these girly parties are going on everywhere!

I took to the party a dress purchased on sale that never fit properly and was afraid to pay outrageous tailoring fees to fix or ruin it doing the alterations myself.  Home decorations that sat boxed in the garage since our last move, custom jewelry I hadn't worn in years but spending good money on them made me hoard away, and an assortment of clothes I haven't fit in to in over a year! (Some too big, and some way too small)

I left home with three boxes full of items and came home with only a bag of a few items I absolutely loved!  A couple of blue glass bowls that will go great as serving bowls with my current dishes.  A set of tall coffee mugs, also blue, that hold enough liquid for my caffeine addiction and last a beautiful Isabella Fiore purse that I absolutely fell in love with. Can you say SCORE???

Hope you are finding order and beauty this Spring time ..