2021, Family, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Cleaning

26 Comments

Today’s post comes to us from Ben.

Kelly and I both took some time off over the holidays and we both had things, “projects”, we wanted to do. Kelly aspires higher than me and she wanted to paint a room or something. I always think that sounds like a lot of work.  

I had two plans: 1) Clean the refrigerator. 2) Clean off the counter in the mudroom.

I did actually manage to get them both done. On Sunday. Before going back to work on January 4th. I laughed at myself that I had to wait until the last minute to get them done.

Neither job was hard of course. Not like painting the living room or anything.

The fridge wasn’t terrible: there was the usual crud on the back of the shelves and bits stuck in the edges. Is there a good way to clean a fridge? The warm water turns cold so quick. The glass shelves scare me a bit because I’m always afraid I’ll knock it off the counter or drop it in the sink. And I didn’t want to take EVERYTHING out at once; I cleared one shelf, then shifted things around as I cleaned and replaced things. I used the vacuum for the crumbs.

Once done it looked very nice and I didn’t even redo the shelves or anything, just put it all back just like it was. I think the layout works well.

The mudroom counter, just the one side, had turned into a catch-all. It wasn’t hard to decide what to throw and what to take out to the shop and what to keep. Then moved that bit, cleaned and scrubbed the counter. Good to have that done too. Easier to keep it clean in the first place, but oh so easy to just set stuff down too. Any horizontal surface turns into a catch all if we’re not careful.

What’s your next quick little project?

26 thoughts on “Cleaning”

  1. i’m finishing my warehouse to mini storage and the rest coming home transition

    i let my wife know yesterday i was bringing home
    a truck full of stuff
    it did not go well
    this first couple weeks of my being home instead of at the warehouse will be interesting followed by post surgery bed rest
    i promised to sort through and sort all the crap i’m bringing home
    i love
    my crap…

    Liked by 6 people

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    1. I think this would be a great start for a novel, or memoir:
      “i let my wife know yesterday i was bringing home
      a truck full of stuff
      it did not go well”

      Seriously though, congrats on finishing the warehouse – that sounded like the MOST monumental task I could think of.

      Liked by 3 people

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  3. Well, we have yet to wash off the kitchen cupboard fronts, but I have hopes for February. The garden seeds are all ordered now, so that means getting things ready to start seeds in March. Husband has grand plans for the church vegetable garden, which means our starting some special container tomatoes and peppers that we can’t find at the greenhouses in town. We ordered from seven different seed companies.

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    1. It turned out to be from 8 different companies-hot peppers from Sandia Seeds (a New Mexico company), Jungs, Johnny’s Select seeds, Burpees, Baker Creek seeds, Territorial, Shumway, and John Scheepers.

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    2. oven cleaning used to be hard. today you just hit the oven cleaning button and deal with that smell for 6 hours
      i know it helps to chip out the big chunks before you hit the go button but you’ll figure it out

      welcome to the trail

      how ok’d is your grandson
      i’ve got one who’s 2 1/2 and on le who’s a month
      i like em

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  5. So I take it, Ben, a room was not painted? 🙂

    Oh boy, let me count the ways… There’s an small antique shelf in the basement that we took apart in July; had been painted a garish yellow, and Husband stripped sanded down the boards. It’s tricky to reassemble because one or two boards are warped, so it’s been waiting in the basement. A couple of weeks ago we started on it again, but there it is…

    Husband will add an electrical outlet to the wall of my bedroom that hosts the “fireplace”, etc.

    I have all my mom’s journals and photos to go through, also in the basement. While I’m at it, I could go through MY journals and some photos.

    We could take the shop vac and CLEAN the basement….
    You get the idea.

    Liked by 3 people

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  6. I am resolved to finally get all my genealogical materials in order and for the most part into a set of three ring binders. I’ve been working on this for years without much progress and I’ve decided that I’ll never get anywhere unless I do some culling. I have scrapbooks and envelopes and piles of photos and documents from both sides of my family.

    What I need to do is systematically go through each pile and packet and sort out the stuff that isn’t directly family as well as poor photos I have better examples of and get them all into a common format, which in my case will be archival 3-ring sleeves. I ordered a variety of sleeves and binders yesterday. To do that, I need to dismantle most of the scrapbooks, none of which were ever archival quality. Some of the material was relocated from its original source into those scrapbooks with adhesive pages covered by a thin plastic sheet. Over time, the adhesive on those pages either dries and lets loose of the insertions (a good thing) or it solidifies and permanently bonds, making it difficult to remove things without destroying them.

    At any rate, once I get everything I intend to save into sleeves and the sleeves into binders, everything else will get discarded and I won’t have to wade through it all ever again.

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  7. I’m going to make a threshing machine. It’s for winnowing bird seed. The instructions call for a computer hard drive fan, cardboard and duct tape.
    I don’t forsee a Red Green disaster.

    Liked by 4 people

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  8. I’m pretty good at small projects. In fact I try to take big projects and break them into small projects so that they actually get done. Today’s project was to get some happy birthday cards together for my mother who told me on the phone yesterday that she is all out. Horrors. And taking a page from Jeanne, who chimed in on the trail a couple of weeks ago, instead of saying to myself I need to clean out all the drawers in the dresser, I’ve been doing one at a time every few days. So now not only are all the dresser drawers cleaned up and organized but the downstairs drawers are as well.

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  10. I have to do something with the deadbolt lock on the front door – the bolt has been fussy about going into the slot on the strike plate for a long time, and now it’s really balky. I think the door has settled a little in its frame.

    After I do that I’ll look at the drippy kitchen faucet. And the sticky garbage disposal. It’s always something.

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