Spring Cleaning

I know it's not spring, but Fall Cleaning just doesn't have the same ring to it. I spent the weekend cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning some more. While I had cleared most of the stuff we had stored in the kids rooms out, I hadn't had a chance to give them a deep cleaning to get rid of the insidious drywall dust.

We had the ILs over for dinner on Saturday for FIL's 79th birthday and my wonderful MIL stayed the night (in our currently hideous guest room in which we basically plowed a pathway from the door to the bed through the stacked piles of junk that have yet to be unpacked) to help me clean the kids' rooms on Sunday.

We started in Matthew's room, pulling everything off the bookshelves, dresser, and bedside table. We vacuumed the baseboards, cleaned out the clothes in his dresser, wiped down all his shelves, and then moved everything back in.

The bookshelves were no mean feat, as this boy has a serious book collection.

Some of those shelves are stacked two-deep. And he has another big bookcase in the hallway right outside his bedroom door.

It's so nice to have everything freshened up. Matthew just moved up to this bedroom on the third floor in January. He was previously in the room that we made into a bathroom and he really didn't want to move upstairs alone. So over Christmas break I repainted both rooms and the hallway on the third floor and we had it carpeted. Right after we moved into the house we had the pine subfloors refinished, and while they were pretty, they weren't very cosy. They weren't in fantastic shape either, so I didn't feel too badly covering them up with carpet.

I love his new room upstairs. It's on the back of the house and has slanting attic ceilings and a fun little nook where his desk is. It's just perfect for a kid.

He's doing a project on a famous person for school - and he chose van Leeuwenhoek. He invented the microscope and is considered to be the first microbiologist. Yet more evidence that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree (Pioneer Germ Fighters was Alan's when he was a boy).

As you could probably tell from his room decor, Matthew has a serious love of the ocean and all the creatures in it. I think that there's a good chance that he'll be a marine biologist when he grows up.

We've been trying to figure out what to do with his huge shell collection. He filled some glass containers for the basement bathroom to try to get some of them out of the way. He has more shells stacked in containers next to his dresser.

And we framed a few of his best specimens that we found on some of our trips to the Carolinas and Florida.

There are  quite a few things to take care of in his room. In no particular order, chores I still need to tackle include:
1.  Put up trim around his window.
2.  Paint the closet door and window trim.
3.  Put a doorknob on his door so that he can get back out if he closes it (this current state does have some advantages!).
4.  Paint the heating vent cover and reattach it to the baseboard.
5.  Build some shelves over his doors and window to display his growing collection of trophies. I hate those ugly things, but he won't let me toss them. I figure if they're up high, I won't notice them, or have to dust them.
6.  Get some artwork up on the painfully bare walls.

But right now I'm not going to think about all that has to be done. I'm going to sit back and admire his shiny clean room.