30 before 30: Cleaning up = Growing Up

The Hubs and I agreed earlier this week that this morning would be the morning we spent cleaning the apartment. He's one of those cleaners that he's gung-ho to just GET IT ALL DONE at once. I don't work that way; I like to break things up into sizable chunks, and if I spend too much time thinking about how much I have to do as a WHOLE, I get overwhelmed and panicky and shut down.

So I suggested a compromise: We spend this Sunday morning cleaning, but we only focus on the "back half" of the apartment, which constitutes the bathroom and bedroom; next Sunday we finish the apartment by doing the "front half" (kitchen, dining area, living room), and my "job" during the week would be to get the bedroom ready for the deep-clean by getting stuff organized for donations and throwing out crap. Now, in all fairness, this is probably the area of the apartment that needs the most cleaning, so he agreed that would be enough.

Not only did we deep-clean the bathroom area and bedroom, but we also re-arranged the furniture in the bedroom, too. First time in 5 years we've moved anything around. I don't even want to discuss how gross under the bed was... seriously, how we have survived this long without being eaten by dustbunnies is a miracle. I was so disgusted and annoyed with myself. Blech. (Granted, it takes two to tango, as well as mess up the bedroom, but I always blame myself first. I don't know why.) The bathroom was even worse, truth be told... the tub was pretty gross. I'll admit I was living in gross conditions, but I refuse to go into details or pictures. Just imagine the most disgusting shower/tub combo you've ever seen... we were probably about halfway there.

The Hubs attacked the bathroom while I attacked the bedroom, and about 4 hours later we came up for air with a much cleaner bathroom and a much less dusty bedroom. Plus we moved around furniture, and it looks much nicer.

Now all I need to do this week is to give the shower tiles one more scrubdown (we agreed that if it needs another working over, I'll give it a shot since The Hubs did so much work on it today), get a small night stand for my side of the bed (now that I'm not crammed against a wall), and DECORATE THE WALLS! Whooo! That's the fun part!
I've already got two canvas paintings I've made to put up, plus a cute memory board and some cool scrapbook paper I'm going to use as "art" as well. I've also downloaded a few cute pictures from the Feed Your Soul project that I just need to print and frame, as well as one of the digital "art pieces" I made.

The bookcase is already "decorated" with my books and knick-knacks, wanna see?

The top shelf is books I need to read, the next one down are my favorite books, 3rd and 4th shelves are a mix of academic books and comic books. Yeah, I'm pretty awesome.

Cute, right? I like it. I'm trying not to be TOO girly, since a boy lives in there, too, but I figured since the bookcase is 100% MY BOOKS (I'm an English teacher, after all, and The Hubs isn't a big reader anyway), I could get a little girlified if I wanted to on the bookcase only. The rest of the decorations, if you clicked on the links above, are in the actual color scheme of the room; light blue and khaki are the colors of our bedding, and The Hubs likes those colors. Plus blue is soothing. =)

Aside from being excited to decorate our bedroom, finally cleaning and organizing the home makes me feel like an adult. When we moved in here the year before we married, we really thought this would be a transition place. Naive as we were, we figured we'd be moving out in a couple years once my teaching career was settled and into at least a rental house. Well, it was cheaper to stay here... but we never got out of the idea of "we're only here for a little while, so why bother making it a home?" We were still in college mode; neither of us really treated our college apartments as a HOME, just a temporary docking station... I mean, we practically lived out of boxes, it was pretty lame. Sadly, we continued this practice with this apartment for far too long.

Gradually, we've been working on making it a little more decorated and a little more homey. For some odd reason, though, we kept putting off the bedroom. I'm glad that in this final push to beautify the place that we started with the bedroom... I think it'll finally become the room of sanctuary/comfort that it should have always been, and it makes me feel like I'm finally taking another big step into grownup-dom by actually wanting to feather my nest. I want it to look nice, and I want it to be a place where I'm not embarrassed to have people come over at any given time. Also, I'm just glad I'm finally taking advantage of all this forced time off! FINALLY, unemployment pays off in a way other than government assistance! ;D

Once the bedroom is completed and beautiful, I'll post a picture... I think it'll turn out REALLY nice, and I'm excited for the final product. I'm also excited to get the "front half" done... I have BIG plans for the living room and dining area/kitchen as well. =D

Also, if you like the striped canvas I did... that's going to be a tutorial soon! I have all the pictures done, I just need to bother putting it into words.