Spring cleaning madness!!

I decided (in all my wisdom!!) that as the weather was forecast to be raining all this Bank Holiday weekend, that instead of going out anywhere (and having all the hassles of parking) that we'd have a Spring Clean instead!! Mr Messy and the kids just loved the idea - NOT!! But a bit of sulking and pointing out that the house was beginning to look like a pig sty, soon got them agreeing with me.

We've tackled the dining room - that's it just one room! I cannot believe the amount of cr*p we have been storing for YEARS! The recycling boxes are full, we've filled 2 or 3 bin bags of rubbish and got a huge pile to go to the charity shop. I've now got a whole cupboard all of my own - which I've put my scrapbooking stuff into. Perhaps now that its all in one place, and accessible I'll actually get on with doing some scrapbooking!!

I've also come to the radical (for me!) idea of getting rid of my big and bulky desk top computer, and moving to a laptop!! I'll then be able to get rid of the bulky and ugly computer cupboard and just have a little laptop stashed away somewhere.

My other radical idea has met with unexpected family resistance. I want to get rid of the coffee table and not bother getting another one - we don't use it for anything other than shoving magazines on and its pushed up right against the fireguard so doesn't look great, it would be nicer to have the space for Little Prince to play, its broken and scratched to death. However, Little Miss Sensible and Drama Teen want to keep it, because its been there forever (ie before they were born), it was a wedding present (well it was bought with money we were given by our Aussie relatives), and its got sentimental value - they both learnt to walk holding onto it! I can understand why they feel like they do, but holding onto possessions no longer bothers me - so long as I have my family (people) round me things don't matter at all. Not sure I can persuade them of that though - so we are sticking with the coffee table for now!

Tomorrow we need to get some of the rubbish and recycling carted off to the local tip and I've got one more cupboard I want to empty and sort out. I've also got to get Mr Messy to finish the bits of sorting he has started - as he is currently living up to his name and leaving bits and bobs, half sorted piles all round the dining room and kitchen!! Aaaargh!

Over the last few days we've all been chatting more about having another exchange student, and after going through the profiles with a fine tooth comb (we rejected one because she was too religious, another because she sounded too attached to her computer gaming), we narrowed it down to two - one from Hong Kong and one from Germany. I wanted the one from Hong Kong, but everyone else wants the German (they all said we've had so many Chinese Host students that they want something different) - so that's the one we've decided to request. The local co-ordinator is coming to see us next week to discuss it all with us and that's when we'll find out if this one is still available. If she is then we are put in contact with her, and are encouraged to write/email and get to know each other a little before she arrives at the end of August. Hopefully with this girl being from a fairly close (geographically) European country there won't be the extreme differences of culture that we have struggled with, with our other two long term exchange students.