Help I need help cleaning my house!

[tiggger1]

We are remodeling our house. We are adding an addition that will include a whole new roof, a huge kitchen, 1/2 bathroom, master bedroom with a walk in closet and Living room and remodeing the rest ( redoing the full bath, changing our old bedroom into a hallway and a nursery and making the office bigger. The only room that isnt really changing is emma's ( all we need to do to her room is move the window to the other wall and make her closet bigger)

I am excited that the house will be bigger and nicer when it is done but hubby just informed me that we need to have the house empty in about 2 weeks keeping only the bare necessities. First of all, how can I empty a 900 square foot house and put it all in storage ( we have a 40 foot storage container in our yard) in less than 2 weeks with a 3 year old, who wants to "help"? also, we will be living in the house for all of the remodel except for about a week ( when the roof is put on and the sheetrock is sanded) so what do I keep? my daughter is having a fit whenever I try to take something out of her room to put away for a bit... we basically need to move everything we need into our bedroom...including my daughter bed! and toys'

any ideas on how to clean my cluttered house and what to keep and what to keep in the house! I am going crazy and even though I have been cleaning for a week and taking stuff out, it is stuff full of junk and my house is trashed!

 

[CEDmom]

Wow, you have a lot going on. The first thing I'd do is find someone who will watch your DD in their house for the day.

Go through her things and pull out those that she plays with all the time - these stay. Put other toys in plastic bins that will go into storage but can be rotated out during the renovation.

Keep 1 set of dishes and flatware for each person, keep 1 pot and 1 pan plus a few microwave safe dishes. Everything else goes into storage. Stock up on paper plates and plastic utensils.

Keep a set of sheets for each bed and an extra one for your DD in case of an accident. Keep 2 sets of towels for each person. Everything else goes into storage.

Clothes are tough. I'd keep a weeks worth of stuff in the house and pack the rest in suitcases and garment bags to go into storage.

I hope this helps. When we were selling our house we had to put a lot of stuff in storage and it was initially tough on our DD to be w/o all her stuff. When it came into the new house though it was like Christmas with all the stuff she'd forgotten about.

 

[golfgal]

A couple suggestions, take the things you are keeping and put them in a room or area of the house, have a moving company come in and pack everything else up and move it to a climate controlled storage area or you can do all of the above yourself.

I would start by making a list for a day of everything you need, starting from when you get up to when you go to bed. Take all of that stuff and put it aside and then pack everything. If you contact Walmart or Target or wherever and ask them to save boxes for you, they will. They are usually broken down so you can haul a bunch of them at one time. Go to the newspaper office and get end rolls of newsprint and use that to pack. You could contact the PODS company and they bring a trailer and as you pack your stuff, haul it to the trailer. They have storage facilities to keep your stuff while you do your renovations.

Do you have a garage? Maybe you can move everything in there instead of packing everything and taking it off site.

 

[golfgal]

Another thing to think about is having an electrician come in and wire an outlet for your stove and fridge somewhere in your house (like in your garage) so you have a place to cook. It will save a TON of money not eating out every day.

 

[tiggger1]

thank you very much! Its crazy. we are still waiting for the building permit but that should be in within the next week. As soon as we get that the old living room goes bye bye( it will become the new master bedroom, but it used to be a porch, so its always too cold/hot plus it also it has a crawl space under it and yucky skunks and oposseums decided it would be fun to have babies there and we have had a few die under there!)

we have a camper that we will be staying in so we will be able to use that for most of our clothing and stuff so it will be ok but I am more concerned about getting everything out in 2 weeks!

 

[tiggger1]

ops wrong post!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Pack up stuff out of your big furniture then hire someone to move the BIG furniture first.
That way you can get it packed well into the storage unit. There is an art to it and you do not want your stuff damaged.

Once the big stuff is out of the way get yourself some boxes and start packing.

Don't worry about "decluttering" right now. 2 weeks to empty a house is too much of a time crunch.
You can "declutter" and decide to ditch things when you unpack.