Spring Cleaning

The blog has been heavy on recipes lately.  That's because, when I'm busy, they seem to be the easiest things for me to post.

And busy I've been!  I've been spring cleaning.  I started in right after Christmas, tackling one room at a time, beginning with the living room as we were taking the tree down and putting away decorations.

From there I moved to the master bedroom, then to Kat's room, the bathroom and hallway, the kitchen (two full days on that one), and finally the computer/craft room.  Yep, it's a small house, but we have LOTS of stuff.  Things were cleaned and then organized, or sorted to be donated or sold in a garage sale we plan to have in a couple of months.  Walls were wiped down, ceiling fans were washed or dusted, windows and blinds were cleaned, and floors were scrubbed.  It wasn't a non-stop cleaning marathon, though.  Some rooms only took a few hours, but they were spread out over a week.

My really clean kitchen, for the five whole minutes it stayed that way.

Shane helped a lot with the living room and our bedroom, and he spot cleaned the carpeting.  Kat helped me with her own room, but the rest of the house was up to me.  That was my choice, though, so I'm not complaining.

There is still a lot to do around here (garage, basement, shed all come to mind), but it's so nice to have the main living areas really clean.  It's almost like a fresh start, which is just what spring cleaning is meant to be, I think.

And with cleaning out of the of the way, full-blown garden planning is on!  I hope to have more to say about that the next time I come up for air.

Easy Way to Organize Winter Accessories

Maybe I'm just strange, but as soon as Christmas is over and the holiday decorations are put away, I'm itchin' to start spring cleaning.  I think it must be something about the New Year, fresh starts, clean slates and all that.

This year has been no different.  I jumped right in with the cleaning during the last weekend of December, beginning with our coat closet.  I needed a good solution for storing hats, gloves and scarves. 

I remembered that I had an over-the-door shoe organizer that I was no longer using for yarn.  (Well, that sentence makes sense to everyone in my household...). 

I moved it to the inside of the coat closet door, and there you have it -- instant organization.

What a Difference an Hour or So Makes

Here's a quick before-and-after pair.  This is our shelf in the kitchen.  It's supposed to an orderly place for cookbooks, recipe cards and clippings and a couple of baskets for Shane and me to toss our wallets, keys, sunglasses, etc. into at the end of the day.

Sometimes, though, it takes on a life of its and has to be tamed again.  I always feel so much better afterward.

Livable Living Room

There's nothing like coming home from vacation to make me realize just how dirty and messy our house is.  It seems like time away makes it easier to see all those things I've been overlooking and ignoring.  One thing I wish I hadn't overlooked was the breakfast burrito and bowl of strawberries I made for Shane on the morning we left for vacation -- last Wednesday.  I stuck it in the microwave for safekeeping while he took care of a few last minute chores.  We were 30 miles down the road by the time we remembered it was still in the microwave. 

Ew.  Just, Ew.

But enough about my past.  Back to the present.  After catching up on a few things that had to be done today, like watering the garden, bringing in a small harvest, and starting some laundry, I decided to tackle a room of the house.  I let Kat choose for me, since choosing seemed beyond my capabilities today.  She picked the living room, and I tacked on our one hallway as well. 

It's not spotless, but I gave it a pretty good top-to-bottom cleaning:

• Cleared out any items that don't belong in this room
• Organized the hall (coat) closet
• Dusted the ceiling fan and attached light fixture
• Cleaned cobwebs from the ceiling and corners
• Dusted the blinds
• Cleaned the windows
• Removed cat hair from upholstered furniture
• Dusted the furniture, wall decor, etc.
• Cleaned all glass surfaces
• Swept and cleaned the laminate entryway
• Vacuumed
• Spot-treated the carpeting

Here's what I can think of that I didn't do:

• Clean the glass in the front storm door
• Wash the curtains (they'll surely fall apart if I do)
• Organize the photos in the cedar chest that we use as a side table.

That last one has been an item on my to do list since my mother-in-law gave me this chest in 2001.  The only time I open it is to quickly shove another photo inside.  Nope, it's not likely I'll be checking this off my list today.

So, at least one room is livable again.  I'm going to do my best to ignore the rest, at least until tomorrow.

Money-Makin' Weekend and Random Thoughts

• Like Goldilocks, sometimes you have to figure out what's "just right".  Shane said he wanted to work on something, but didn't know what.  I suggested the basement, but the look he gave me let me know he wasn't up for that.  So I suggested just the one corner of the basement that holds the camping gear that we don't use now that we have a camper.  That was a project that was just right for him.  He was able to put about 1/3 of it into the camper, 1/3 of it out to the curb to give away and the rest is listed on craigslist.
   
• Because our logic is a little skewed, selling camping gear logically led to us selling an old Atari game system and several games to go with it. We didn't have the cables needed to hook it up to our TV at home, and the people at the used game store couldn't figure out how to hook it up at all, so we never did figure out if it worked or not.  The game place gave us a little less than $20 for all of it, but that was ok, because we only paid $10 for it at a garage sale a couple of years ago.
   
• We also sold some gold rings that we no longer wore or wanted.  I guess I always figured those "We Buy Gold" storefronts were scams and that they wouldn't be willing to give more than pawn shop prices for jewelry, but I was wrong.  We received FAR more than I ever imagined we would.
   
• On Sunday, we decided to work in the garden.  But somehow that morphed into taking our pop-up camper to the car wash and cleaning it up so we could set it up, get some pics and list it on craigslist.  We had it sold within two hours to the first person who inquired, and had three people lined up that I had to turn down.  Think we underpriced it?  Maybe, but it couldn't have been by much.  I think it's just getting to be the time of year people want to get out in the wild.  I don't blame them.  I can hardly wait to get our bigger little camper out for a weekend.

Bye-bye pop-up.  (Token post photo so that Mark stays happy.)

• All told, we made a good chunk of money this weekend and had only one casualty.  The older of our two deep freezers finally bit it.  It was 11 years old, so we got a lot of use out of it, although we'd hoped it would last longer.  Unlike Shane's usual MO, I don't think he's going to try to fix it.  We'll probably just give it away on craigslist to someone who wants it for locked feed storage or something like that.
   
• We didn't lose any of the deer meat, turkey, chicken or containers of lemon juice in the dying freezer.  Thankfully, all the pork was in our other deep freezer, but we did lose three pounds of shrimp.  I guess the salt-water content in them is why they thawed when nothing else did.  Shrimp was on the menu for Saturday's supper, which is how we found out we were having a problem again.  With nothing else thawed, we decided up going out for Mexican food and margaritas and called it date night.
   
• I've heard some people say that microwave ovens are dangerous.  Now I know why.  After letting a couple loaves of bread rise in microwave, I was transferring the pans to the gas oven below it.  I managed to smack my scalp on the open microwave door hard enough to break skin. Forget radiation.  Head injuries are the real danger here.

So, how was your weekend?  I hope it you sold something and that you didn't get hit on the head.  :)