Edgar’s favorite part of going for a walk is coming home, allowed to run off-leash from the mailbox to the front door and wait for me to catch up.

QUICK THINGS TO DO TODAY:

• Quickly tidy up before you leave the house (or if you are a stay-at-home mom) so you come home to a fresh relaxing home: Put dishes in dishwasher (or take them out and put them away), wipe kitchen counters, vacuum the most trafficked room in your house. You might think you don’t have 2 minutes to vacuum before you leave, but I challenge you to try it!
• Did you do your refrigerator maintenance cleaning over the weekend? Maybe Halloween activities made you skip this week? Try cleaning one shelf, one drawer or two door shelves when you get home tonight.
• Also when you get home tonight, shine and freshen bathroom sinks and mirrors, empty wastebaskets in bathrooms and replace toilet paper if needed. Remove any soiled looking bathroom towels or rugs to the laundry room if needed and replace with clean ones.
• Take vitamins and drink some fruit juice or eat fresh fruit (I am enjoying an apple right now!)
• Laundry finished over the weekend? I didn’t have time to wash my bedding this weekend, so I’m doing it tonight. Looking forward to sleeping on clean sheets and cuddling up with a freshened quilt.
• Light candles tonight. I know so many people who own cupboards full of candles but yet forget to ever light and enjoy them.

TODAY’S PROJECT: Living Room

Tonight I’m doing a thorough cleaning on my upstairs living room. It’s a bit messy right now – the carpet has muddy dog paw prints, there are drool marks right where their noses and mouths can reach the couch, the pillows need to be fluffed, and a few leaves got tracked in from our walk yesterday.

This is the most light-filled room in the house so it’s my favorite. I use this room in the mornings sometime to sort mail, pay bills, and do big work projects where I need to spread out merchandise on the floor. In the afternoons I watch Oprah up here when I’m taking a break from my work, eating a late lunch, and reading magazines. If I am sorting a drawer or a box of stuff in the evenings, I bring it in here to do it in front of the TV and fireplace.

Besides the dining room, this is the main room I entertain in (now that my puppies have destroyed the downstairs carpet to the point I’m embarrassed to have Movie Nights anymore). When guests are over, I spread appetizers and drinks on the coffee table, light a fire, and welcome them into this room while they wait for dinner to be served. Or I watch TV up here if someone else in my house is watching something different on the downstairs TV.

Because I do entertain so often, I need this room to always be in fabulous shape, ready to go at a moment’s notice. (I will admit that I often rush upstairs right before a cocktail party to hide the coffee table’s pile of papers, mail and magazines I was working on earlier that day).

Some of the things I struggle with in this room are my overloaded bookshelves, and a hard-to-reach ceiling with spiderwebs and candle soot. But keeping the room maintained constantly in a clean manner makes it a lot easier to go through and do a full cleaning today.

I’ll clean out the fireplace, then scrub my glass fireplace doors. All the better to show off the warm dancing flames of the next fire I light! The living room windows need to be washed and have the tape from the Halloween lights removed. This should take less than fifteen minutes. I can watch Oprah while I do this, or listen to music. I’m in the mood for some Loreena McKennitt.

I have a fireplace mantel and three windowsills to dust, plus two huge bookshelves and all the room’s baseboards to dust. I’ll move the couch, coffee table, mail table and end tables and vacuum under them. The upholstery on my couch and two chairs needs to be vacuumed. The curtains were laundered during Spring Cleaning, so I will just Febreze them and leave them alone.

The lamp needs to be dusted, and I need to throw out the two candles I finished burning tonight, then replace them with two new Mexican Cocoa candles I treated myself to at the grocery store yesterday.

For a finishing touch, I’ll put a bowl of Gala apples on the coffee table. I’ll fluff the pillows and be ready to settle in late tonight with hot cocoa and the current book I’m reading.

LOVELY BLOGS: Cococozy

This is a fun interior design blog, with stylish finds and fresh ideas for your home. Currently posting about blue glass lamps, her chic Mexican resort vacation, and a modern bachelor pad done in yellow and white accents. Lots of interesting things to drool over here!

http://www.cococozy.com/