17 February 2010

Helping a Brother Out

My husband Joe has a lot of clothes. Way more than I do. And although he is the hardest working person I know, the poor guy comes home to share the smallest bedroom in the house and no closet (the one in our room houses our washer and dryer). As my grandma would say, that's a fine how do you do! Joe's clothes are therefore in several places around the house: in his dresser, on the shelf in our closet/laundry room, in my daughter's closet upstairs, and in the hallway closet I use for my hanging clothes. Until Cleaning Club this week there was no real rhyme or reason to what went where.

To top it off, Joe and my two kids were in a car accident on the Friday before Cleaning Club that totaled his car. They are all fine, but the residual emotional stress and the work necessary to deal with the aftermath were taxing on all of us this weekend and I didn't really know what we were going to do when Cleaning Club arrived Monday morning. And although nothing physically happened to me, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and really looking forward to having Shannon and Jennifer here with me, regardless of what we accomplished.

Once they were here I was able to think through what I wanted to do (which started with emptying my dishwasher and reloading it, as doing anything else here while the dishes sat there seemed silly): something to help organize Joe's clothes world better.

We emptied out the shelf in the laundry closet which was loaded down with sweaters and sweatshirts that neither of us really ever wear.


We sorted through them and loaded up a couple big bags of donations (which Jennifer quietly loaded off to take to Goodwill for me, a huge help). We were left with a tiny stack of my sweaters that went back on the shelf.


We decided to divide Joe's clothes into dress clothes and casual clothes. Dress clothes would go upstairs in his half of my daughter's closet, and casual would stay downstairs in his dresser. We went through his dresser drawers and refolded and reorganized them. We moved anything dressy up to the upstairs closet and did some rearranging and cleaning out while we were there.



We put all his ties on a hanger and all his underwear and socks in these hanging baskets. Look, Joe's underwear! This blog is no longer PG.


Joe was so thankful when he saw what we'd done. Not only did his clothes make sense now, but the sweaters above the dryer had worried him (apparently a fire hazard). I think it made him feel loved to have our little team working on something just for him.

A funny side story: A couple days after CC, Jennifer's daughter spent the night with my daughter. The two girls apparently got the Cleaning Club bug and spent hours cleaning my house! They dusted and washed windows and organized and scrubbed and decorated in almost every room in the house. It was amazing!


Beware: Cleaning Club is catching!

A note on photos: Jennifer didn't bring her camera this week, so we used our point and shoot. And we forgot to get any of Michael, who was of course in the middle of it all barking orders.

4 comments:

Shannon said...

That Michael! He's just.so. bossy.

Too bad we didn't have Jennifer's camera--think of the detail shot we could have gotten of Joe's underwear for all of Blogland. LOL!

I am so glad that you are all physically okay, even if the emotional aspects of the accident may take a little while. Still just holding all of you close, close in my heart. I am glad that what we worked on has made Joe's life a little bit better.

Jennifer said...

I just love that we have gotten to the point where we don't even have to have a good plan in mind- we just want to be together for the friendship and emotional support and we know there will be something productive happening in the end. It is so helpful to me to have this day every week to be able to talk out our joys and troubles while we dig in and make something in our homes more functional.

::sniff::

I'm so proud of how well your whole family has handled this accident- I think it has made you closer and made us all think harder about how much we all mean to each other.

::sniff::

That and sorting through Joe's socks and underwear. How can you not feel close to someone after that?! I'm going to be watching for those bright orange socks that we saw too. ;)

Sarah Hubbard said...

I too have been reminded after the accident, just how much you all mean to me and have been holding you very close and dear to my heart. I'm really glad everyone was physically ok and I know that the emotional aspects will pass over as time goes by! Woohoo for getting Joe's clothes under control! You ladies are so awesome making the time to support one another in such a way week in and week out in this busy world that life is. Constant inspiration and constant friendship! Can't wait to see these orange socks on Joe now that we all know he has them! I love you ladies!

Hazel said...

lol, its no longer PG! We had FUN cleaning.....That's why we did it! (Duh...)

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