Source for this image here.
The snow has begun to melt a little today - and I'm not sorry! Although it looked beautiful when it was freshly fallen, by now it has started to look very dingy and slushy and dirty - not pretty at all. It's wet and cold and difficult to walk in, and we're all quite glad that it's finally begun to beat a retreat. Papa Bear hopes to be back at work soon - which I'm not so happy about - but it will be nice to get back to our usual routines.
It's Cubby Bear's birthday this week, and as always before a special occasion I hope to be able to do a bit of spring cleaning. It feels right, for the weather and the time of year! Usually when I spring clean I use the Emilie Barnes technique of doing "15 minutes a day from total mess to total rest" - yes, just 15 minutes of extra cleaning and organising a day can quickly lead to a lovely tidy home!
One thing that I do find helps to get our home tidy quickly is having enough storage space. At the moment, where we live just now has very little real storage space, and it's something I have to work at daily, juggling what we really want and need to hold on to, with the tiny amount of storage space we have. I've got very clever and inventive over the years at how to store things!
However today's 15 minute chore was to get the living room nice and clean. As well as doing my usual dust, polish and hoover, I paid some attention to an area on the carpet where, unfortunately, during our busy Christmas holiday, someone knocked over a glass of Lucozade (Gatorade) - the glass was mine, so it was my fault as much as the other person's - I shouldn't have left it on the floor to get kicked over! Oh it has made a bad stain though - it's bright orange, and that bright orange mark is still on the carpet pretty much a month later.
I've bought some Vanish to try to get rid of the mark - my usual technique of dabbing it thoroughly, washing with water, dabbing some more and then getting as much of the stain up as possible using rubbing alcohol (which is usually brilliant at getting rid of stains on all kinds of surfaces - without harming them) - this time around didn't work. So the Vanish is going to be applied today! I hope it works - it's in such an awkward position, right in the line of vision as you walk into the room. I can't cover it with a rug either, because the settee is right next to it. I'll report back later to say how well it worked!
There are all sorts of things I can try if that doesn't work though - here's a website that has many suggestions! I definitely plan to use the recipe for home-made carpet freshener too - we can't use commercial brands, as they aren't bird safe (I'm going to wait until the birds are safely covered up, before using the spray I've got, today). But this is - so I'm keen to try that out as it sounds lovely and fresh!
