Spring Cleaning - Fun ... right?

When we moved into our current home 4 years ago, the upstairs carpet was the color of faded blueberries.

Actually, it was the color of half-rotten faded blueberries, as it was dotted with a few massive, questionable stains.  Kids? Pets?  I don't know.

I don't want to know.

So, before we moved in, new carpet wasn't even something that needed to be negotiated.

"Ooh, let's do white!" I exclaimed while browsing carpet samples.  "White would look so clean and pretty, and would match any color we put in the upstairs rooms!"

Stupid.

stupid stupid stupid.  I mean, what was I thinking? Why not.. oatmeal?  Or taupe?  Something that would at least mask scuffs and dirty spots?

But no.. I wanted stark white.

Now that we've moved the studio out of our home again, we can enforce the "no shoes upstairs" rule and try to return our carpet back to its once sparkly state.

Or.. something close to it, at least.

This is the room that was used as our consultation area before we moved our business out of the house.  There was black suede furniture in here that really did a number on the carpet.  The pictures don't show it at all.. but trust me, it looks pretty bad.

But these sons of a gun are my arch nemesis.  Urgh.  After years of pet and human traffic, the front edges of each step are dingy and dirty.  And don't even get me started on what a pain they are to vaccuum!

If I had it my way, our next house project would be ripping the carpet off of these puppies and installing hardwood.  But, I doubt I'll get my way.  🙂

After I pre-treated the problem areas, Matt hired the services of Eco Clean Solutions to clean the entire upstairs with an steam cleaner. Let me just say that watching bucket after bucket of gray-ish water being poured down the drain is extremely gratifying. Our elderly girl huddled in her bed, not a fan of the noise the cleaner was making.  She just passed her 17th birthday, and much of her time is spent sleeping in this bed, sleeping in our bed, or walking to and from the laundry room (aka cat room) to eat.

vroom vroom!

Later that evening, once the carpet dried, we attacked one of the closets in our office.  There are no progress photos (I don't want to scare you with the massive mess) but we did find an interesting half-melted gel candle buried in the heap:

We were able to get rid of about 50lbs of junk, which is currently sitting in the middle of my kitchen waiting for trash day, since it wouldn't fit in the garage. We also noticed tons of dried leaves and other debris in our gutters. That's when we realized we needed to opt for gutter filters from mastershield.com. Patented copper technology makes these gutter filters one of the better buys on the market today for homeowners. Cleaning the roof is dangerous so we hired roof cleaning perth professionals to do it for us.

Spring Cleaning is a pain, but let me tell you, it feels good.

What has everyone else done to spruce up their homes this Spring?  Leave a comment and let me know!