a little less greenspace.

after we spent so much time removing all sorts of overgrowth and weeds in our flowerbeds a few weeks ago, you might think that we wouldnt have any more green spaces around our house that we would want to get rid of. well, you would be wrong.

but these outdoor green areas i'm talking about aren't your typical flower beds or gardens or grassy knolls though... they were my front porch railings.

this picture should have come with a warning. sorry.

this, my friends, is the product of basically two years' worth of dirt, grime, and general lack of any sort of maintenance over that time. when we bought the house, we spent our time so focused on fixing up the inside, that anything outdoors-ish was pushed to the way back burner.

and it showed. it showed to the point that it was a little bit depressing to come home and be greeted by this ugly mess first thing.

this was after i swept over once with a broom. yeah.

i was tired of the scuzz.  i was tired of our shutters looking grey when i knew they were supposed to be white. i was tired of feeling like a dirty failure when i walked up to the front door. and i was tired of imagining all the sad thoughts that must be running through people's heads whenever they came to our house, whether or not they actually thought any of those things.

just for kicks, how about a side-by-side in-progress comparison shot so you can really see just how bad the porch was looking before last weekend... yeah. gross.

but give me two hours on a gorgeous Saturday morning, a scrub brush, and two buckets, (one for soapy water and one for clean rinse-y water) and now its like i have a brand new porch! 

the slug slime is gone. the black spots on the ground are washed away. the whatever-was-growing-behind-the-old-ugly-wreath is no more. the bricks are red again instead of green. and everything has shed its greyish-browish winter coat in favor of being clean and bright and springy again.

i evicted a LOT of spiders from around our windows, and a few from the corners of the front door. i figure they'll be back eventually, but for now i'm just enjoying the fact that i can tell that my windows and trim are actually supposed to be white, not brown.

its not perfectly clean, and it probably never will be, because lets face it - its the front porch. its outside. and outside is dirty. which means i'll have to clean it again. and again. and again over time. but for right now? for making me happy to see my porch when i come home? its good enough. and ive decided that good enough is pretty much perfect.



not to mention the fact that i also get to cross "clean the front porch" off my list of things that i would like to do in 2012... awesome.

AND THEN i even took it one step further than that: i decided to replace the old dirty white wicker table that has lived beside our front door for forever with something a little more pretty, and on our Lowe's trip over the weekend i convinced the hubs to walk through the outdoor section with me where i picked out these two plastic planters for the front porch.

and have you met Ted? (he's our  mantis friend)

i havent had time to fill them yet, but i have some pinkish-orange impatiens in the proverbial eaves just waiting for a new home in the new pots on my newly-clean front porch. and just you wait until i get around to painting the front door... you wont even recognize the place, it'll look so good!

so, when are you coming to visit? me and my front porch are ready for you!