The Handwriting on the Wall: Spring Cleaning Teacher Style

So this might not be true for all teachers, but for me, it seems crazy to spend my one week of Spring Break cleaning the house. Instead, I procrastinate and save it for the summer when I get bored and really need something to do other than lay around reading one of the five books I am trying to finish. Andrew and I knocked a good chunk of it out Friday and Saturday, but I am still trying to finish checking off that list. We have done all the normal stuff: scrubbing bathrooms, cleaning out closets, wiping down the blinds, and even dusting the leaves of the only house plant I haven't killed in four years.

My favorite room to work on was the kitchen. Not so much the pulling out of the range and the refrigerator, but the reorganizing of each drawer and cabinet was a blast. Nobody should be allowed to have that much fun doing such a nerdy thing! I actually spent seven hours in this tiny room. If you have recently eaten one of my special orange cranberry muffins or brownie cups, you have no reason to worry. It's not that my kitchen was all that dirty, but I removed everything from the cabinets, wiped them down, and replaced everything in a much more logical, aesthetically pleasing way.

Just look at her shine! Doesn't it look just a little like Ina Garten's kitchen? She is my inspiration for all things in the culinary world.

Today I worked on organizing the drawer full of photos from the last four years. I was afraid that would take hours, but turns out the packages are dated, so it only took about 30 minutes. Ummm, could have done that months ago instead of writing it on about 15 "To Do Lists." They are organized chronologically in these sleek silver boxes from IKEA. If you haven't been to this store or Atlantic Station, make sure you are well-rested because you will not want to stop the shopping madness. I got four of these boxes for about $15. I wish I had gotten a few more!

I hope I am not reading anyone's mind here, but in case you are thinking that I spend a little too much time taking pictures for my blog posts, let me just tell you, today made all of that seemingly wasted time worth it. While any picture depicting this kind of organization would excite me, I'm afraid that might not be true for all of you readers. So, I tried to take a relatively interesting picture of these boxes, but as is usually the case indoors, the lighting was horrible. It definitely wasn't worth setting up a tripod, and I hate using the flash - especially on these metallic boxes; the glare would have been ridiculous. I remembered seeing something about white balance in my camera's manual, so I tried playing with it. Here are the results.