Cleaning (Edited at 4.30pm)

Sunday was carpet-cleaning day. It's something I've been meaning to do since early Spring, and eventually had the motivation on a sunny day when we could put all the contents of the living room out onto the lawn. I took the kids over to Evesham in the morning to collect the machine while Bill started clearing both downstairs rooms. When I got back there was still a ton of clearing to do and then vacuuming and then carpet-cleaning. All on an extremely hot day. Phew, I'm glad that's over! I was half-expecting the carpets to change back to their original colour when relieved of all the dirt, but they can't have been as bad as I thought as although there was plenty of dirty water emptying out of the machine, the carpets look the same colour!

Bill and I looked longingly at the mostly empty and clean-looking living room, wishing it could stay that way, but I guess all the toys and junk has to come back in, at least until we get a makeover from Life Laundry.

Bill and I also discussed the children's future sleeping arrangements. Tamsin's room is the smallest bedroom, with the 2nd bedroom being our guest room (and junk-dumping room!) where my Mum often sleeps when she comes to stay. However in a year or so, we think we will have both girls sharing in that bigger room, and change the small room to the guest room. Tamsin has been wanting bunk-beds, as her friends have them, but we though getting each of them (at appropriate ages) a cabin bed each with play/storage space underneath might be better. So I started showing Tamsin the beds in the Argos catalogue, and she fell for one which can have a castle-type canopy and a slide coming off it. Trying again on the sleeping-in-her-own-bed task, I promised her she could have one of those beds if she stayed in her own bed all night till it was light in the morning for a month.

In the small, dark hours of the morning she crept into our bed again, and on going into her room this morning she was surprised when her old bed was still there. Hmmm, methinks she didn't quite get the message!

Today's tasks are:
Return carpet-cleaning machine to shop - done
Walk dog - not done
Go swimming - not done. Tamsin didn't mention it/forgot so I kept quiet
Drink lots of water (am feeling rather lethargic, due to dehydration I think) Done & feeling better
Tidy living room contents back to their proper places, decluttering and editing as much as possible. Not done

So what have I done? Brought in/folded one load of washing. Put wet washing on line (and no0w it's raining). Put another load on to wash. Cleaned out chicken house. Done track. Spent too much time on computer. Tamsin had her first ever Happy Meal at McDonalds - does that count as cultural education? i.e. education about our culture, not high culture of course!