Cleaning: Before and After; Just keeping it real.

Hello again my friends.

I'm going to apologize ahead of time if this post seems off a bit. I am still sick! 

My head is so stuffy it is hard for me to think straight.

My friends, I'm gonna keep it real! I'm gonna show you what happens when I don't keep up with my house every day! This is going to be a cleaning before and after of some of the rooms in my home. I didn't do the laundry room or the bathroom because those two rooms were pretty clean to begin with. I just picked up and mopped those rooms. I also didn't include my kids' bedrooms because I just feel a little funny about showing them. However, those rooms have been cleaned by their occupants. :)

Now for a little background. We had a sleepover on Saturday. The house was cleaned on Sunday. So that means that this mess was 3 days in the making. Now sometimes things will be worse than this (a lot worse) and sometimes better. This was an in between week.

So lets start in the living room.

Here in photo one you can see the blankets and just ordinary mess on the couch. Those laundry baskets are full of clean clothes. My hubby washes and dries the laundry and I fold and put it away.

Here is the other side of the room. It isn't as bad. I just needed to put a few things away and straighten up some stuff.

Here is a good view of the majority of my living room. I put everything in it's place and dusted and vacuumed.

Here is the other side. The room looks much bigger when it is picked up.

Now for my kitchen.

My kids's chores are to do the dishes after dinner every night so there are only the morning's breakfast dishes to wash. Other than that I just had to pick up a few things and empty the trash. I also swept and mopped the floor.

Here is my kitchen after I cleaned it.

Next is the dining room.

My dining room is only 10 feet by 10 feet. So I literally divided it up into two sections. First is the dining room table. This is where my hubby does his school work and my kids do their homework. I also spend a lot of time here planning, studying, and deciding on things.

Here is the other side of my dining room. It contains the kennels my puppies sleep in at night, the school supply tote and my really messy bookshelves that housed books we have already read and no one touches.

My dining room table looks so much bigger after it is cleaned off. 

Here is the after of the other side. I tracked down the lid to the school supply tote and I put a lot of our books in the purge basket. We will be selling them in a yard sale when the weather is better.

Next is my bedroom. When we moved into this house my hubby and I took the smallest bedroom in the house. My room is where everything goes when we are deciding what to do with it. I wish I could say it stays clean but most of the time it isn't.

This is how my room looked before I cleaned it up.

(Please don't be offended by the flag. It is a state of Georgia flag. That is where hubby and I met and where we are from)

Here is after. 

Our room feels so much bigger and comfortable when it is cleaned up.

This shows the same view as the before picture above.

My friends please don't think ill of me or think I don't keep my house clean because I do clean a lot. However, I just to keep it real! This is what happens to my house in just a few days of me not tidying up every day. If I am sick or if we are really busy and I don't have time to clean, this is what happens.

Mainly I just want to let anyone out there who is struggling to keep their house clean know that it is normal. I have 4 kids and 3 pets and honestly I have to tidy up about an hour every day to maintain a clean house. If I skip a day or two then I have to spend a day cleaning up. This cleaning adventure took me around 6 hours to complete from start to finish and as long as I continue to tidy up daily, I will maintain my house as it is now.

I hope you all enjoyed this "keepin it real" post.

Until we meet again,

Be Blessed,

Erin