Revealing my slobbish ways

My friend Annette is having a contest to find the messiest of messes. She challenged anyone who wanted to, to find the most disgusting room in their house and then clean it. You needed to take before and after pictures to prove that you really are a slob and then readers can vote to decide the winner. The reward for the best result is a watercolor portrait of one of your children painted by her. I've seen her work in person and it's amazing. I would love to have one of her pieces. I submit to you for your consideration my before and after pictures of the room I decided to clean. The reason I do this is because if you go to her blog and vote for me, I will obviously have extra chances to win the portrait. So, without further adieu, here is the room I decided to clean. It's called a dining room, but it's never used as that. It's used as my craft, scrapbook, sewing, catch all junk room. I do occasionally clean it, but I have to be honest and say that for the most part it gets ignored. The messes in there are not always visible and I'm an out of sight, out of mind kind of person. It's a room that I have wanted to clean for quite some time, but have lacked real motivation to get it done. A free portrait was just the kick in the pants that I needed.

Before

This is the entrance into the dining room. Peyton went on a mess making rampage several days before this picture was taken. No, I didn't let him crap up the place before I took pictures just to improve my chances of winning. Messes like this can often be found in my dining room. When I took this picture, those packing peanuts had been sitting, undisturbed for about 4 days.

The entrance to the dining room after.

The rest of the pictures are various locations throughout the room, before and after being cleaned.
Before
After

After

Before

After

After

Before

After

This disgusting spot is candle wax that Avery spilled on the rug no less than 2 years ago. I don't know why I had the brilliant idea of burning a candle on the table, within easy reach of children. This was the result of my stupidity. I tried to get some of it up at the time, but when I wasn't very successful, I simply gave up. Sheer laziness has kept me from doing anything about it since. I finally decided to do something and I'm quite pleased with and proud of the results.

Before

After

No, I didn't just take a picture of the rug in another, wax free spot. I really did get it up and here's how I did it. I placed an old rag over the wax (you want to be sure to use an old one because it will be ruined after this) and then placed my iron on the highest setting on top of the rag. The heat from the iron melted the wax and the rag absorbed it out of the rug. You want to be sure to keep the iron moving and not leave it in one spot for too long. If you do, you'll have a ruined rug.

I need to insert a disclaimer here. I know that the room could look better. There are still some boxes piled up in the corners, but for the time being, this still has to be used as a storage room. Once we move Peyton downstairs, I plan on turning his current bedroom into my office, craft, scrapbook, sewing, catch all junk room. When I do that, all the superfluous stuff you see will be gone and the room will finally be used for the purpose it was intended. A dining room.

Thank you Annette for inspiring me to get up off of my butt and improve the look of at least one room in my house. I'm not a total slob, but this room definitely needed some work. I now plan to move on to other rooms and closets and all the other dark and hidden places that could use a good dejunking. If anyone feels like it, go and vote for my room.