Spring cleaning

My husband loves a lot of things about me, obviously, but I have to imagine that one thing he does not love is my affinity for list making.  I make lists about everything.  My newest list is a list of all the around-the-house projects we need to do but have been putting off.  There is a greater sense of urgency now that our whole world is going to be turned upside down in November.  So I have a list of all the projects we need to get done and every month he gets to pick one and then we do our best to get it done.

A month ago or so we decided to tackle our basement.  Our house used to belong to my husband's grandparents and there were lots of "treasures" that used to belong to them that still lived in the basement.  I'm talking old engines, wires, a birdcage, a boot, and lots of other crap (because this is the nicest word I could think of to describe it).

This is how terrible it looked before we cleaned

Years worth of trash

During our cleaning, I found a bunch of old baby food jars.  I had seen on Pinterest where someone took old jars and put paint in each, so they had paint handy for touch-ups.  I thought this was genius.  When I saw the baby food jars, I immediately decided to make my own touch-up jars.

The expiration dates on the jars went all the way back to the 1920s, so they were a little dirty.  I sanitized them in the dishwasher and was ready for business.

The jars pre-sanitizaiton

Then we filled each jar with paint and labeled them by room.  This was a little tedious and a lot messy.

We labeled each jar with the room where the paint was used

The colorful finished product

I give this project two thumbs up and think it was the worth the time and effort.  I used to stare at spots that needed paint and think that I would get around to fixing them one day.  It is so much easier and I have put almost all of the jars to use.  And on that note, I need to go touch up the paint in the guest bathroom.