Ooooh, that felt good.

By: Melanie

My beautiful daughter is turning 2 in three days. We're having a few people over to celebrate. Also, her Gramma Leslie is coming to visit tomorrow. These are two very good reasons to get cleaning. But I wasn't feeling very motivated today to don the rubber gloves and hunker down to tackle an entire room, let alone an entire apartment. So I went about it differently. I looked around and identified a few things that drive me crazy that I never get to and started picking them off, one by one. To make it a bit more fun, I enlisted Elle's help, who is still young enough to be tricked into cleaning by calling it "playing".

First, I folded all of the sweaters in our armoire, the one with the glass doors that sits in our dining room and so is visible to everyone. I even color-coded. It makes me smile.

Next, I took a Magic Eraser (seriously one of the best inventions EVER) and scrubbed the scuff marks off of every door and wall in the house.

At this point Elle was still enjoying our "game", so I tackled the shoe and coat racks at the front door. I weeded out all of the coats and shoes that don't get used regularly, and swept up all of the dirt and dog hair that lurk underneath.

I dusted ledges that are above eye level. I vacuumed the couch. I used the long skinny vacuum attachment that I never use to suck the dust from baseboards and little nooks and crannies behind the radiators and the laundry hamper. In short, I was a superstar.

I love this method of tackling the apartment. When you start with little things, it's easy to feel like you're accomplishing something, and you get the bug to continue. The only real problem with it is that once you've exhausted yourself with the little things, the idea of scrubbing down the bathtub or washing the kitchen floor is just far too daunting. But hey, that's what tomorrow is for!