What I did during Spring Break...or I only wanted shelves

Spring Break to many means traveling to a southern, coastal city, drink lots of "beverages", expose a lot of flesh and spend way to much money.

To me Spring Break means time at home to rest and relax with my children. OK, the laughter can stop now. It really means spring cleaning, working harder than I do at work, and being extremely frustrated with my children.

I spent the first 4 days of my break cleaning my house. I mopped and scrubbed the floors of my house--which really needed to be done--which I had postponed for over a month due to the melting snow and mud. I'm sorry, but it frustrates me to no end to finish mopping/scrubbing the floor and then to have two dogs, two children, one spouse and one cat, all with muddy feet, walk onto my clean-no-longer floor. So, I waited until I thought the mud was gone to re-mop.

I then cleaned the carpet in the living room. It looked just as good as my mopped floors. Being so happy with clean floors, my spring cleaning then spread to the walls and to my drawers and closets. Andy cleaned his room--to my specifications. It only took 2 days. Miss Kat also cleaned her room to my standards only it took her 5 days to get the job finished. Yep, FIVE days.

But all this cleaning made me feel good. I take great satisfaction in having a clean house.

And it lasted all of 24 hours because it rained.

Now, living in an area where our average annual rainfall is 16 inches a year, rain is a blessing. And, we've been in a 7 year drought. You just don't gripe about it raining. Nope, you can't gripe about it unless you've just mopped your floors and cleaned your carpet. Then, you can gripe--a little.

Part of my spring cleaning frenzy is organizing. Cleaning out the pantry, straightening storage areas, making my house more organized and manageable. I've been nagging Kev for several weeks about shelves in the laundry room. I have two small worthless cabinets. I wanted them gone and replaced with functional simple shelves. He's been procrastinating. He must have gotten tired of the nagging, or else felt that since he couldn't work outside because of the wet and the rain, he might as well give in and make me happy. And, if he was working inside, then he wouldn't be tracking in any mud and wouldn't have to listen to me gripe about muddy floors.

Saturday morning, we ran to town to get some shelves. And I thought we'd hang them once we got home.

We didn't.

Instead, once we got home, Kev began emptying out the room and told me we might as well tape and texture the walls. Then, I could paint the room and he'd then hang up the shelves. OK, fine.

(Background info here...we live in a modular home in which some of the rooms have regular tape and textured sheet rock walls. But some of the rooms have vinyl covered sheet rock which is like wall paper. Rather than ripping all the walls down to the studs, we are experimenting and taping over the seams of the vinyl and then texturing the walls, making them look like "real" walls.)

Our quick taping job didn't get finished quickly. I had the bright idea to take out the doorway to the basement, to widen it from the standard 36 inches to what the walls were--which is about a 40 inch opening. We'll never hang a door there, so why have a doorway framed for a door? So, we had to cut sheet rock and tear out the framing for the door. It's a good idea, it was just more work than Kev wanted to do...but I persuaded him with my feminine wiles. Then we discovered that there were nails holding two walls up--but the nails weren't in a stud. So, I again used my feminine wiles and persuaded Kev to rip that off while I ran to town to get one piece of new sheet rock. While driving to town, he called to tell me there were two layers of sheet rock on that particular wall--one was 5/16" thick, the other standard 1/2". You can't buy 5/16" sheet rock...and he didn't know why the manufacturers did this. We decided to work with what we could and still put up new sheet rock. More time and more expense, but I nagged until Kev agreed that we really should do this correctly.

So, now our minor project became a little more major, and a lot messier. My spring cleaning job was destroyed by the rain, the muddy feet that go in and out my house and the construction project. We cleaned up again, but somehow, my house still doesn't feel as clean as it did on Friday.

All I wanted was a clean house and some shelves.

I still don't have the shelves.