Today I wanted to share some house-cleaning/organizational resources that I found awhile back and should really take advantage of over the next month...

1.  Vocalpoint's Spring Cleaning Worksheet - I'm not sure if you have to be a member of Vocalpoint or not to get access to this page, but even if you do, you really should join.  This is a great website that provides occasional, if not frequent, freebies, which they refer to as "Try-and-Tell" programs.  Basically, you get something for free in the mail and then review it on the site - so worth it.  So anyway, this worksheet is a downloadable pdf that is very visually pleasing and almost exciting - makes you want to clean and takes away the work of having to come up with all the various things that need to be done!  From vacuuming to dusting to donating and even hanging wall art, pretty much everything is covered.  Although I do love making lists, I think this worksheet may be far more effective in the long run for cleaning my house.  Check it out.

2.  Extract the Odor With Vanilla guest post by Alesha on The Krazy Coupon Lady's blog - I personally LOVE the smell of vanilla.  It's such a clean and comforting scent.  Well this article gives some great tips on how to use Clear Imitation Vanilla Extract to provide pleasant smells throughout the house whether as a replacement air freshener or to wipe down your fridge or microwave.  I don't know about you but, after I order pizza and it sits in the fridge for a few days, my fridge couldn't smell funkier :-(  I'm looking forward to trying to wipe away that smell with something far more inviting.

3.  4 Weeks To a More Organized Home Challenge from Money Saving Mom - This is an incredibly inspiring series that I just have not been able to start this month as it does happen to be the very end of the semester and I'm trying to wrap everything up with flying colors.  I may set aside the month of May to go through this challenge as it would be incredibly helpful for me in regards to having a respectably clean living space and developing habits of maintaining neatness.  While the big projects would still be around for me to focus on throughout the year, this challenge would SO help me reduce the distracting clutter that makes the big projects SO much more difficult.

Hopefully I can soon share that I have actually taken advantage of these great articles.  I really need to just suck it up and put the pedal to the metal!!


And just a super quick update on my April Goals which....oh wow...there are only 3 more days left in April!!!  Well, the bugs are all nicely organized - I just need to clean out the empty vials.  I can easily set aside an hour tomorrow to throw out old food in my pantry and freezer - the fridge is totally up to date (yay).  It shouldn't take too much effort to figure out what to do with the containers laying around...I hope.  And in regards to the education stuff, I'll just come up with a practical list of separate goals to think about in the coming months.  Could be better, but hey, every little bit counts :-)

Happy cleaning/organizing!!