Graham Crackers and Dryer Sheets

Well, back over Labor Day weekend I cleaned out the laundry room and little alcove that is like a pantry/dog feeding area.  I just never took the time to sit down and write about it.  These rooms together aren't very much space - probably 6 x 12 feet combined, but there are lots of cabinets and shelves and counters and stuff. Many of which haven't seen the light of day in awhile.

Dryer before...

I did the Laundry room first.  Just putting away all the things hanging on the rack where we hang shirts and "no dryer" things to dry made the room seem bigger.  But, it also meant I had to iron like 7 shirts and a pair of linen pants.  I busted out the ironing board, turned on the US Open, and got to it.  

...and after!

Then there was the washer and dryer under the hanging bar.  There were a few things that had been sitting and waiting for the dry cleaner (for like 8 months), and a lot of gunk. The combination of laundry soap film and clothes lint that had settled on those appliances was gross, and took more than a quick swipe with a rag to clean up.  In my wildest room-cleaning dreams, using spray cleaner on the inside of my washing machine had never come to mind.  But, here I was, elbows deep, getting the inside of my washer clean.  Made me wonder how clean my clothes were getting.  So, I ran a load with all the rags I used to clean it, and a bit of bleach to make sure the last of it was washed down the drain.

the clean inside of my washer

The opposing wall of the laundry room is a counter top.  In the 7 years in this house, I can't remember ever actually doing anything laundry-related there.  But, after I sorted the rags (yes, I actually had old scraps of things that were too useless to even be rags), put the few old clothes into the garage sale bin, hand washed the lollipop out of the halloween costume from '09, and gave the whole space a good wipe down, it looked laundry-folding ready.  And, guess what - that counter top is white!  I had forgotten that.

the "rag" drawer

Underneath the counter were some under-utilized cabinets and a drawer.  After de-junking the drawer, I could put the rags in there.  Handy, but out of sight - I like it.  And, I made sense of the cleaning products and other things that had been lurking on the cabinet shelves.  I took that are used outside, like bug spray and WD-40 (all 3 cans!) out to the garage.  This made room for storage of garbage bags and big dog towels and stuff that usually were perched on top of the dog food bins in the room next door.  A quick sweep of the floor, and the emptying of the trash full of years worth of stray dryer sheets, and this room was ready for a back page feature in "Laundry Rooms Today".  

On to the pantry.  Really the only food storage that takes place in this room is on an old kitchen hutch that got put in here when we had not other place to put it when we moved in.  It has a weird cornucopia of things stored on it, stuff from my desktop at an old job, lots of snack foods and cereal and my bank checks on the lowest shelf.  'Cause who doesn't want to write a check while downing a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch?   

For the cleaning here, I started by putting all the office stuff in my new "office supplies" section of the toy room closet, and the bigger files in the file cabinet.  Then, I threw away any expired food.  Apparently, I must buy graham crackers to make s'mores every time we go on vacation and then bring the rest of the box home, as I had like 5 boxes of stale graham crackers hogging shelf space.   By the time I had those things done, there was an entire empty shelf.  I am sure this will come in handy when I am cleaning out the kitchen.

In the cabinets at the bottom of this furniture, there were some old lunch bags and coolers and the plastic cups that had been retired from the kitchen but that had too many good memories to toss.  I just left the cups.  But, I washed out the coolers so they are ready for a picnic at a moment's notice.  Lots of shelf space down there too.  

All that was left was a generous wash down of the shelves and the dog food tubs and I'd be done.  Oh, yeah, wait -  and the kitchen trash can.  That can was gross.  Dusty and with little scraps of wrappers that stuck in the crevices.  The fact that it's called "stainless steel" is completely a mis-nomer, as this thing had splatter marks all over it.  So, I dragged it outside with a bucket of Pinesol and some rubber gloves, and got to work.  I scrubbed it inside and out; lid, liner, can, all of it.  Then, I left it in the sun to dry.  Much better.  And, now it looks right at home in my cleaned up room.

The big score of this round of cleaning - a vintage Neiman Marcus black patten leather purse with the tags still on it that I found with the coolers.  Must have come from Kevin's grandma's house when she passed away.  I like it though, and may just use it as my purse this fall.

Week 9: Getting Back on Track

The "clean the house" train is definitely loosing steam. Between our great trip in August, getting kids back to school, doing too much "back to school" volunteering, and you know - actual work, it has been hard to motivate myself to finish. Especially when there is still a measurable amount of work left.

And, there have been other hurdles. First off, I tried to consolidate the garage sale stuff that has been piling up. There is just a lot of it, and it is making it hard to get around in our bedroom. Kevin kindly bought boxes and brought even more home from work. But, those were all filled and there was still a bit left over. At least in boxes it could be stacked vertically and out of the way a bit more. To get this task done took a few hours. That's a few hours that may otherwise have been spent working toward cleaning a room. A necessary part, I know, but just something I hadn't accounted for.

Hurdle number 2: The vacuum gave up the ghost. Probably from cardiac arrest after all the paces I have put it through as of late. It was accustomed to a leisurely life in the closet, and this whole regular use schedule (in very dirty places no less) made it decide to revolt. It has now moved from the closet to the newly re-stacked garage sale pile. Right next to the tile cleaner I found in the front closet. Our garage sale attendees are going to think I have a thing against clean floors. Sadly, I think they would be right. But, in the short term, this vacuum disruption has meant that not only can I keep the uncluttered floors fresh, but also that I have to spend even more of my 11rooms11weeks time hunting for the best deal on a new vacuum. Ugh. But, dirt waits for no woman, and I need to get on with it.

This week, I knew the kids were going to be spending Saturday through Monday with the in-laws, so I could use the Labor Day holiday to clean in peace. I will try not to cry over the fact that a free weekend of kid watching will be used for housecleaning rather than a trip to, well, I don't know: anywhere! Back in May, I may have been plotting a garage sale by now, but I will take what I can get. I decided that the little corner of our house that contains the laundry room and pantry would be the target. Initially, I had these lumped into the kitchen, as they aren't really that big. But, upon further investigation - the kitchen may take a couple weeks all on its own, so these guys get to have a week (or in this case weekend) to themselves. And, I wasn't really sure what was in the cabinets in either room, so it might be best to give it my full attention - ok, well, at least the attention I am not paying to sleeping in a bit, catching some US Open tennis, and maybe helping Kevin to celebrate a birthday. As I said, the clean-train is loosing steam...

Drawers, and Shelves, and Furniture, oh my!

As I had suspected, getting the big stuff done in Fletch's room wasn't too tricky. I got the drawers of clothes and shelves of books sorted in no time. But, as I started to try to clean up the other massive amounts of little things: legos, craft projects, comic books, I realized that it wasn't the little things that made Fletch's room so cluttered. It was the furniture. There was a chair from when he turned 2, and a giant toy table from when he was 3 still in there. Clearly, these weren't the right size for our big boy. Out they went - and already, the room looked a lot better.

The toy area before and after:

The hardest part of this room was that the kids were home and wanted to "help" the whole time. So, I put them to work: taking old sporting equipment out to the garage, sorting the endless piles of legos into useable pieces, figure out what the remote control we found actually controlled. Eventually, they got bored, and I got to finish up by myself. But not before we had a good dance around the room to some Buddy Holly covers I was listening to while we worked.

Let me go back to the Lego sorting for a moment. With the big toy table gone, I decided to reinvent the toy storage/shelf thing into a Lego workbench. That meant getting rid of all the junky plastic random toys that were in there, and putting the tubs to use to hold all the legos. It took about 3 hours, but in the end there was a tub for each of the following: Mini figures, mini figure accessories, generic bricks, big specialty parts, small specialty parts, vehicle parts, and mostly completed pieces. Now, if anyone wanted to actually rebuild the ti-fighter or power miners vehicle, they could find the pieces, and the guys to go with them. (I also have these Toy-Story like visions where all the mini-figures are glad to be in the same tub so they can hang out and chit chat when no one is around: "Hey Darth, How ya doin'?" or "Hey Batman" says pizza delivery guy, "Wanna arm wrestle?"

I also did a massive round of dusting. Lamps, vents, base boards, blinds. And, I cleaned the windows and sills inside and out. I even woke up a VERY BIG spider. It was actually funny, as usually there are lots of things around to grab and smush a bug with, but everything thing was put away, so I just stood screaming at it for a second before running to the closet to grab a shoe. If there was even an argument to leave a pair of shoes out; being at-the-ready for spider killing seems like a good one.

In the end, there were 2 donation bags, 2 garage sale bags, 2 trash bags, 2 pieces of furniture and a full vacuum cylinder of dirt taken out of Fletcher's room. It kinda blows my mind that all of that was jammed in there. Now, he can actually find his school uniforms, put his shoes in the closet, and play with his toys. Mission accomplished.

The Closet before and after:

The dresser before and after:

Week 8: Fletcher's Room

Because week 8 of my mission was the final week of summer, I was feeling a little bummed. I should have been done by now. Not to say that the house isn't tremendously better than the day back in June when I hung up the back packs and busted out the swim bag. But, still. It would have been nice to kick back in a clean house as soon as the kids headed off for school on day 1.

So, for the final week of summer, I thought I would tackle Fletcher's room. That way, at least he would get to start the school year off with a clean room. And, Vi's room was still in pretty good shape from back in June, so it made me feel like they'd both be in a good spot.

Fletcher's room was not going to be too tough - no icky mold or really old stuff to sort through. But, he does have one unique cleaning obstacle that no other part of the room suffers from. It's Lego-dustitis. See, the legos have the ability to leap off the table where they are supposed to be played with and spread themselves evenly about the carpet. This is probably because the table was really designed for someone half Fletcher's age, and so it's too small to actually play at. The problem then, isn't just the legos-layer that covers the room. It's that it is too hard to get to the ones at the far side of the table to play with, so they just get dusty. And, it's too scary to think I might vacuum up a lego Darth Vadar light saber (or my favorite - the mini figure maracas), so the carpet gets really dusty too. My nose scrunches up in a sneeze just thinking about it.

On top of the legos, Fletch doesn't like to part with things, so there is a lot of clutter. Old "plans" for Club Penguin igloos, puppets made with popsicle sticks, things that have beads and glue and feathers and that kind of stuff. It will be tough to figure out what to keep and what to toss. And, finally, Fletch's closet needs some work. This was the guest room before we had a second kid, so we used the closet to store things that we worth keeping, but kept out of the way, like sleeping bags and my wedding dress. Now that he actually has clothes and toys of his own, that stuff will definitely have to be pared back. (goodbye old ugly coat dress?)

Still Clean After 3 Weeks

How has it been 3 weeks since I last posted? The good news is that work continued a bit, even if the writing hasn't kept up. The bad news: summer ended and the job isn't done. Well, I'm not gonna worry about that, I'm gonna stick to the good news part.

So, in the 3 weeks since I actually cleaned my bathroom, it has managed to stay that way. No spiderwebs, or mold on the ceiling, or gunk in the corners. Still bright and shiny! I even took the kids away for a week in early August, and when I came home and went to put my toiletries away I was a bit surprised to see my clean bathroom - I had forgotten how nice it looked.

However, it was no small feat in getting it there. After the day and a half of de-cluttering, I got out the chemicals, cranked up the fan, opened the window and got to the dirty work. There was lots of spraying and scrubbing and rinsing and then repeating it all over again. About 4 hours worth. By the end, my arms were SORE!!! Like, not being able to lift them over my head kind of sore. Still, after it was all said and done, taking shower in the super-clean bathroom felt great. Still does, every day.

Here is my clean sink.....

Here are the cabinets before and after...

The rest looks pretty great too, but you'll just have to take my word for it, 'cause I feel funny putting pictures of my bathroom up on the web. Somehow, talking about my daughter's underwear collection is ok, but showing the world my face soap seems a little too private. Whatever. At least it's clean.

Say Cheese!

I am working my way through the bathroom. The first step was to get rid of all the clutter. The massive cleaning will come after. For such a small bathroom, there is quite a lot of storage. Inside the linen closet are 5 shelves that go about 30 inches deep. There is also the medicine chest, and the cabinets under the sink.

But, even having all these places to put things is no reason to have the odd collection of things that I found there. I threw away 3 bags of trash. Yes - three - full whole bags. Everything from 5 year old pregnancy tests to a large bag of TWA travel soaps. First off, TWA hasn't been around for over a decade. When questioned, Kevin confessed that as a young professional back in the early 90s, TWA had screwed him once, and the only way he could think to get back was to steal all the lavatory soaps every chance he got. While clearly this scheme worked - after all they DID go under - I'm still not sure why he had to SAVE all the soaps.

Of course there were the obligatory expired medicines - I think the prize winner was from 1996. And, lots of hotel bottles of shampoos, lotions, old hair styling products (did I ever use stiff hold gel?). But the thing I found the most of was dental products. Some of it is attributed to the fact that we each get a goodie bag at our bi-annual dental visits, but it went beyond that. 24 sample tubes of tooth paste, more then 3 dozen mini packs of floss, 3 packages of flosser replacement heads, 3 different electric toothbrushes, and about 15 unopened toothbrushes. Aside from the used electric ones, I may hand out these products at Halloween and keep the flavored Tootsie Rolls for myself.

In addition to being overly stocked in the dental hygiene department, we had lots of overlap in the face department too. In the course of cleaning this and the other bathrooms in the house, I have found no fewer than 4 Norelco razors. Just how many chins does one guy have? But, before I dared to complain, I also found about 8 different bottles of moisturizer for my face. Some quite expensive. And, do I ever use any of them? Nope. Well, almost nope. Sometimes for a few weeks in the winter when my skin dries out. But certainly not enough to warrant 2 different types much less 8.

All of these discoveries made me wonder what exactly we think of our own faces. Why do we save all this stuff and never use it? Or, if we don't use it, why do we keep buying it? I don't know if I'll ever figure out the answers to the questions of our vanity. But, I do know that now there are far fewer things in the closet, so I may actually be able to find what I need. I also can put my toiletries IN the medicine cabinet rather than having to perch them all on the counter.

Week 7 - Tiny But Mighty

Knowing I had a short week (we didn't get back from vacation until Monday night), I picked the tiniest room left - the master bathroom - to tackle in week 7. It is an oddity of this house, that the master bathroom is so tiny, just the width of the tub, and not even an electrical socket at the sink (for scale, I think 2 of this room could fit into the toy closet). It also has a pocket door that doesn't lock - so much for privacy! But I digress.

Anyway, when I started the summer, I had big plans for the week with my bathroom. I was gonna clean it up lickety-split and then I could...bang! Paint it a new color. It's so small, I really thought it was possible.

But, when I opened the cabinet of shelves full of 8 years worth of sample size shampoo bottles and expired medicines, the dreams of a newly painted bathroom evaporated. Just put that into the "to-do" pile of improvement projects once the house is clean. (Maybe I should actually write that list down).

Aside from just being dusty and a bit gross, there are other big challenges in this tiny bathroom. One is the mold. I promised that I wouldn't embarrass my better half by publishing the mold photos. But let's just say the fan broke for awhile, and as a result, some of the wall condensation from our poorly vented showers turned to mold. Major yuck. The good news is, the fan is operational again - and once it is clean it should stay that way.

The second challenge will be the tub. It has this weird texture that clings to that soap/dirt build up like I have never seen anywhere else. I wash it down regularly, but in all the little crevices have gotten really bad. I am envisioning myself gasping in the fumes on my hands and knees to get this fixed. Probably why I have never tackled it up to this point.

Anyway, wish me luck. I am trying to envision a clean and happy place as I work. I'm not sure that's gonna be enough.