It felt like an episode of Hoarders

The countdown to the end of my maternity leave is on and I have a To Do list a mile long staring me in the face. One would think I could have found some time to do these things during the last nine weeks but it just didn’t happen that way. So now, it’s time to kick it in high gear. Today I tackled the living room carpet. The goal was to have everything cleaned and drying by lunchtime, but a broken carpet cleaner through a serious wrench in that plan. So, finally, at 11 a.m. I ditched the idea of getting ours to work (Mike had cut a hose in the process of trying to fix the thing) and headed to Hy-Vee to rent a Rug Doctor. And as long as I was paying for it I figured I might as well clean my bedroom, bathroom (yes there is carpet in the bathroom that we haven’t gotten around to removing in the five years we’ve lived here) and closet. It was an all day job that completely wore me out.

Since the floors weren’t completely dry by the time I had to go pick the boys up from daycare I decided to leave the furniture stashed in the kitchen and let the boys run free (with socks on their grubby feet) in the living room. And they loved it. I didn’t get any picture because I was too busy taking video (more of that to come). I think they also enjoyed climbing on the piles of furniture and toys shoved in the dining room. Seriously, the mountain of stuff looked like I belonged in an episode of Hoarders.

The boys were loving the extra space so much they begged me to keep it like that until bedtime, which meant we would have to eat dinner in the living room … on my newly cleaned carpet. Thankfully, they were eating a very white dinner (rice, chicken and pears) so I could look like the best mom in the world and oblige.They even got to watch TV while they ate. Double cool. 

And now my carpet looks as clean as it is ever going to look again. It isn’t perfect but it is 100 times better than it was. My back and arms … that’s another story.