Spring Cleaning

its that time of the year. spring is in the air and cleaning's on the 'to do' list. of course my cleaning does not have to be done during spring. summer, autumn, winter, monsoon, day, night, subuh, lepas isyak...when my need to clean comes, it comes. this time around my cleaning mood came in buckets. i wanted to do some major work - cleaning, organising, rearranging, throwing (and with that comes buying), painting, renovating. you name it, its on my list. my start year review contained home renovation but that has not materialised so i'll amend it to room renovation.

the boys are at an age where they need space. the parents also need space after 5 years of sharing a room with them. amir and asyraf have been bugging us for a proper room for them. their room is ok, live-able but somehow not that nice to look at. i told myself, i'd do up their room once the B came in so the weekend after B, i started reorganising here and there. the first to go was the bed. we bought a double bed for the boys' room when we moved in. single beds didnt seem appropriate if people came and stayed over. now as we're handing over the room to amir and asyraf, double bed doesnt look nice. at least with single beds, they would have their own space and, hopefully, be repsonsible to look after their own bed.

well, once i put a large furniture on the list, and got tiza to bring a lorry to clear it, more large furnitures were added. the double bed in ariff's room needed to go to. alang-alang, as they say. then the single bed in the unused room downstairs. then unused study tables and unused drawers and a fridge and pillows and bolsters and curtains and stollers and car seats and this huge exercise machine. all in all, we managed to clear almost all the furniture in 3 bedrooms plus 4 boxes of old clothes & a box of toys (that tiza will donate to the red crescent society and to orphanages). hubby and i also threw out 1 garbage bag full of shoes and 2 boxes of i-dont-know-why-i-kept-this junk.

after all the throwing out, we invested in some buying. we bought 2 new television sets and booked 2 single beds. then we took time to see how to reorganise the boys' room. maybe for now, it would be amir, asyraf and ariff in one room. later on, ariff would move with akmal to the other room. since the boys bathe in the bathroom connected to their bedroom, we moved akmal's changing table there too since it contained his clothes. that room looks like a dorm room with 4 chest of drawers.

ariff and akmal's room for now stays empty. we'll move the large mattress that the boys use now to that room and maybe use it for akmal's afternoon nap room (we used to let amir sleep there during the day). before the room becomes useable we need to repair the bathroom first. then of course comes some paint work and some wallpapering and bordering. hopefully that small bit of work can have a big impact on those two bedrooms.

amir and asyraf's room before...3 chest of drawers (separated) and a double bed.













amir and asyraf's room after...the chest of drawers are put together (making it look like a dorm room) and no more double bed.














ariff and akmal's room had a double bed and a table (no clearer picture). both taken out and now looks very bare.















his and his...

the fridge from the tv area upstairs have been given to tiza. the tv brought into our room, replaced by a new tv.














spring cleaning the outside. no more yucky exercise machine...