Weekend Rewind: Cleaning, Organizing and Nesting

I wish I was tracking my steps this weekend because oh my gosh I am literally DEAD! Hence the reason for the late post today! Why does it seem necessary to clean and scrub the siding on the house, vacuum and organize the garage & basement and make sure the outside is looking great, all before baby arrives? I literally stopped myself multiple times this weekend asking those questions, (#nestingphaseisreal) but here we are Monday with everything in line, shockingly!

Friday night Pizza Party

Friday night we had a pizza party at my brother and sister-in-law’s to just hang out, let them have a break and visit our newest nephew! The kiddos were loving him to say the least – poor guy is getting bombarded!

This party was broken up when we heard the music from the good ole fashioned ice cream truck and made a run for it!

This little miss got her twin!

Sweet girls!

Never can get a picture with everyone looking or smiling – it’s skill of mine!

Outdoor Chores

We were up bright and early every day this weekend tackling some tasks around the house in prep for baby #3 arrival. We started with an outdoor list and made our way in the house. It is so crazy how quickly things can get out of hand outside – not to mention how slowly it takes for things to move from our garage to the house! We still had bins outside from when we moved in a year ago – how were those never relocated?!

We cleaned up cobwebs (I use long sticks from the yard and just collect them by moving the stick in a circular motion), vacuumed the garage, organized outdoor equipment and toys, edged the driveway and walkways, strung lights on our patio fence, rearranged the pool deck and sprayed off anything that needed to be cleaned up – CHECK!

Hubs and the kiddos washed both cars and had a blast doing it – CHECK! That was a great way to keep them occupied, although at one point I found them on the front porch sitting in rockers next to each other just chatting about life, ha!

We capitalized on the sunshine, washing baby’s car seat, any toys that I pulled from storage bins and even strollers. I sprayed everything off and let things completely dry in the sun!

Cleaned and ready for storage – my son is a total slob so this was the best I could do stain wise…

Cleaned and ready for baby #3! CHECK!

Okay, so this was an amazing tip that I want to share with you! For some reason, the siding on our house will collect this greenish residue – we are unsure what it is exactly, maybe you know what it is?! I always thought it was grass clipping particles that would get stuck on the house and deck if the lawn was mowed later in the evening and the moisture would trap it, but who even knows?!

How sloppy does this look and how did it even get to this point?!

There is no way I would hire a power washer to come out and clean our house for $300. We did borrow our parents power washer in the spring to clean off our concrete slab patio and attempted to spray the house – it was just way too aggressive and water was getting everywhere!

Then it occurred to me when cleaning the pool one day, we could easily use the pool scrubber brush and some soap to brush off the siding! So, this is what we used, how we did it and how it turned out!

Dawn dish soap

A bucket
Pool brush and pole
Hose
Ladder

My husband filled a bucket with water, added some soap, got on the ladder, brushed back and forth and sprayed off the soap and dirt with the hose- he was able to knock this out super fast! Totally recommend this if you have the same issue we did!

Thank goodness we don’t have to look at that crud anymore!

Indoor Organization

So as much as I was so confused as to why we were doing organization outside, it actually was something we needed to do. Working from the outside in helped because there were crucial items in the garage that we needed to bring in the house! I purchased these amazing heavy duty steel shelving units at a store liquidation for cheap last year and we finally set them up in our basement to store all my bins.

So we set up the steel shelving units and pulled out all our baby bins! It worked out perfect to get these set up and also pull out all my baby supplies too, so we are ready to go!

I rewashed all the baby boy clothes newborn-6 months so I have those ready to go!

I am totally relieved that we have everything we need for baby and can now finally relax a little! I will share a part 2 for our indoor organization this week and show some of my tips and tricks on how I keep our stuff stored and organized!

A huge thank you to our family—they came over to help lift, assemble and knock out things on our to do list!