2026, Food, home, Uncategorized

All Is Revealed

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Our kitchen is very long and runs east and west. The living room is at the east end, and an open area where we keep the piano, media cabinet, and musical instruments is at the west end. There is a window on the far west wall. The photo below shows the west window by the media cabinet, and was shot ftom the livingroom.

Our kitchen cupboards are stained a dark walnut brown. They usually don’t show much dirt or spills. We try to keep things pretty neat and clean when we cook, but spills do happen and we wipe them up, of course.

I generally feel pretty good about the cleanliness of our kitchen, and a casual glance most times of day would support that assessment. However, when the sun shines through the far west window, it illuminates every spill, smudge, smear, and dust particle on the cupboard doors that makes it look as though we have been flinging food all over the place and leaving it to it drip down and dry. That is a lot of cupboard front to wash regularly, but the revealing afternoon sun keeps me on my alert. It is one of my least favorite cleaning chores. I suppose I could just shut the blinds to block the sun, but the Dutch in me couldn’t live with the knowledge that the cupboard fronts need cleaning.

What housecleaning tasks do you dislike the most? What do you like or dislike about your kitchen cupboards.

31 thoughts on “All Is Revealed”

  2. Least favorite is probably a tossup between mopping and dusting. I think, mopping probably should be at the top of my least liked list.

    We have bright white cupboards since our kitchen remodel and the thing I like about the best is that if you give them just a little push, then they close themselves.

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  4. I have all my carvings out, 87 in all. So far I have 24 pictures hung with about 25 to go. Much of that are Tamil photos. Yes, dusting is my least favorite task. But I want to look at my stuff while my vision lasts.
    Clyde

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    2. glad you have your art. a previous post must have been about hanging them snd i was concerned youd gotten rid of them. i sm amazed at how many homes have minimal art

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  5. I’m allergic to dust/dust mites, so I really should dust more often than I do. Like Clyde, I have lots of stuff out on flat surfaces, making dusting a chore.

    I have an OCD reaction to smudges on cabinet doors, appliances, and countertops. I can’t stand it. Like you, I know it’s there, and it can’t be allowed to stay.

    Stainless steel is popular in kitchens now, but those surfaces really smudge. I’m OCD about the glass stove top and the oven door, so it’s pretty clean.

    When I moved here, the former owner hadn’t cleaned. Anything. In many years. I had to clean from top to bottom in the kitchen before I could cook, or even store my pans and utensils. I started at the top of the cabinets where there was a thick layer of black grease with dust embedded in it. I used Citrasolv to get that off. Then I worked down and cleaned each cupboard and its door. I ended with the bottom cabinets. It took me two days of just cleaning in the kitchen. The cabinets aren’t anything special.

    Everything here is adequate. I just need to downsize more stuff. Then I’ll dust more often. Maybe.

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    1. I visited Krista at her condo several months ago. She did a valiant job of cleaning, because now it is beautiful and you would never guess at the condition it was in while she scrubbed it.

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  6. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    At the top of the “I hate cleaning” list is cleaning the bathtub and shower.

    I have made it pretty clear on this site that I really dislike cleaning of all kinds. My cleaning lady got another job about a year ago and I have been cleaning since then with a lack of enthusiasm. I have been considering hiring someone again. That makes me feel guilty. I am retired and I “should” be able to handle it, but I will do just about anything else but clean. Everything else, including shopping which I also dislike, tops cleaning the house.

    The east window over my kitchen sink gets the kind of light Renee describes in the mornings. Then every droplet of dishwater that splashed on the window shines with great definition to my embarrassment. The sun moves on, then the window looks clean again.

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  7. We used to have a “cleaning lady” when our children were young, but we spent so much time cleaning up before she came we decided to to it all ourselves.

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  8. Ooh, will have to finish reading later, and I have plenty to write about this.

    Renee – the sun will eventually move and not shine in that window in such a (falsely) revealing way. I’ve had that here, too, at times.

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  9. I’ve noticed that there is a fine layer of dust over everything with the ongoing bathroom project. Have at least another week of that.

    Thinking I should get the windows done…

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  10. cleaning is a good idea snd ill get to it sometime. im smart snd married an honest to goodness cleaning guru. she cleans as she breathes. i got hee re r a commercial carpet shampooer snd she wore it out. has two quickie ones now kitchen counters cupboards floors all magically clean themselves. beds and carpets get cleaned and tended to probably weekly. windows garage yard basement as needed. laundry once a week. i bathe brush my teeth and take pills daily. bathroom laundry room basement when occupied so no maintenance required unless something breaks. im a renter these days so if a problem pops up a phone call for slow poor quality work is the deal and unless its vital (washing machine down for a month) its no big deal. pumice stone on toilets and ceramic stove top ( different stones) are recent discoveries.
    cleaning is like wax in your ears. its happening until you need to deal with it then you do it. always happening always dealt with when needed

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  11. Our kitchen cupboards are old and few, and I took the doors of the cupboard that houses the dishes. We also have 2 open microwave carts (used for larger pots and bowls, and as a pantry), a wine rack, and one more rolling cart for pans. Lots of stuff where dust can collect. I pull everything out and deep clean it about once a year, and it happens that yesterday was the day, as I was “home alone” with some free time.

    My least favorite cleaning tasks are the entire bathroom, and dusting (I sense a theme here) because stuff has to be moved… Basement cleaning is right down there… as is cleaning the birdcage.

    I don’t mind sweeping and dry mopping.

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  15. We get the morning sun in our kitchen and it shows us all the “hidden” drips and splatters. Nothing special about our cabinets, except there are never enough of them.

    Least favorite cleaning is probably the bathroom, though I also hate cleaning the floors. I don’t mind dusting, even though we have tons of artwork, knickknacks, and books. If I have enough time and good music to listen to, dusting isn’t bad.

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  16. I can’t think of any cleaning jobs I hate. That seems like a lot of emotion for something so innocuous. On the other hand, there are some cleaning jobs we passively neglect, like washing the windows inside and out, so that may amount to the same thing.

    Our house seems inordinately dusty, especially since we don’t currently have pets, and it would benefit from daily sweeping and dusting as we are reminded when the rising sun skims the floor. I don’t know where all that dust is coming from unless, as I have heard somewhere, it’s mostly dead skin cells. If that’s the case Robin and I are diminishing at an alarming rate.

    As I have mentioned here before, one of the cleaning tasks I have taken as my responsibility is the thorough cleaning of the bathroom. I don’t clean it as often as I perhaps should but often enough that it never gets to the point where Robin remarks that it’s overdue. For a small simple bathroom it takes remarkably long to clean— an hour or more. That’s because there are just so many surfaces to wipe.

    Our kitchen remodel finished mid-March, so our kitchen cabinets are only two months old. No complaints there. We had a dishwasher added to the kitchen as part of the remodel but we generate so few dirty dishes and our habit of washing our dishes by hand is so ingrained we have only used the dishwasher twice and the first time was a test to see how it worked.

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  17. Evening-
    We live in the country and have the windows open, so everything is always dusty. And let’s not talk about the dog hair either.
    You just have to ignore it. :-).

    We remodeled our kitchen back in 2010 or something. We chose Alder for the cabinets. A nice warm wood, but I wish someone would have said how soft it is. You bump it with a dish, you’re making a dent. If we had it to do over, might not choose that.

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