No, it's not a joke, I'm just coming back in from a long absence and thought it would be polite. :)
I've started up here and there with a plan or a poa or basics, but I just wasn't getting anywhere. And I could
blame it on illness and things, or I could just suck it up and admit that I'm a lazy wench most of the time and just wasn't hauling my ample butt up out of this chair (or bed, more likely) to get any real work done. I'm not sure what bit me Saturday night, but suddenly I thought I was really ready to get moving. I decided to start in one end/corner of the house and move out from there doing anything and everything I could reasonably do along the way.
I woke up Sunday morning, ran over to the dollar store across town (which of course uses "run" in the sense that I drove, because there's no running from me, especially across our admittedly small town), and plunked down a bunch of money on cleaning supplies and came home to get to work. Incidentally, all that stuff I bought? 2 things I thought I was out of I had several of, 2 things I thought I had I can't find, and in the first 5 minutes the new long-handled duster went missing. Oh, and I still don't have anything that will cut through grease effectively. And so it goes.
I really did work yesterday. Probably a solid 4 hours all together. What I got done was a generally unused, small corner of my kitchen - but it's DONE, man. I'll give you the tour:
Oh yes, let's start here. I was mixing dilutions of a few cleaners into empty spray bottles, when I spilled straight-up bleach onto my navy stretch capris. *headsmack*
I remembered to start taking pics after I moved the popcorn machine out of this corner and picked up the first few things - including the lid to a round, covered trash can which we haven't owned in about 2 years. This is possibly the "deepest, darkest" corner of my house, kind of an afterthought corner in the back end of the kitchen. The only thing it's good for is storing the popcorn machine, and as such has been much neglected an abused.
After picking up, sweeping, and scrubbing, this is as good as the floor gets. The vinyl flooring came with the house all scratched up that badly, I swear. The tall piece of wood leaning in the corner is part of the door frame of C's room...a story for another day. It's staying there, out of the way, until I work my way around to there and figure out how to reattach it decently. Or maybe it's the one from my room? One of us is missing part of a door frame.
That's my large freezer on the left, which at one point - when my desk was in this part of the house - was "cleverly" used as a white board. The last brainstorm session stayed too long and now it won't come off. At least you can't see it from the rest of the kitchen. Oh, and one of the kids *coughCcough* added to it later, I found. The hanging cords were disGUSting. I barely remembered to unplug them before cleaning, but I did.
There are 2 windows in this corner, which was lovely when I spent the day there at my desk. Now, they're really just pointless. Worse, they're awful. I cleaned the glass and trim inside, but they're no better to look through than when I started. It doesn't photograph well, but the screens are torn, and there are hundreds of bugs, leaves, and other things stuck between the screens or storm windows and the interior pane. I don't even know how to clean that all out. I'll work on that later, when I'm cleaning outside I guess.
Here is the aforementioned popcorn machine. It, itself, still needs to be cleaned, but it's back in its home now that the surroundings are much better. It's hiding the cleaned and better contained cords.
Once again I started moving things before taking the opening picture. Perhaps you can see above that there were random dishes stacked to the left of the microwave and others on top, in addition to Santa there.
The microwave was actually worse than it appears, because half the mess was on the glass plate that I'd already put in the dishwasher with everything else I moved from this area. This poor microwave, by the way, is from around 1983. I distinctly remember when we got it; it was such a "new" thing that the appliance store that sold them held cooking classes free with purchase for something like 6 weeks, to teach new owners how to use them. I used to have the microwave fudge recipe from a class memorized. The fancy button settings don't work anymore, the meat probe thermometer is long gone, and it isn't even-heating anymore, but by golly it's still kicking.
The left side done...
...the right side, not so much. Those boxes there have been sitting, unpacked, since my mom moved in, in 2007. I found Christmas plates, crystal glasses, and an almost full (large) bottle of rum.
The microwave done...
...and there it is. That's a lot of Pediasure on the left, that used to be stacked on the floor in front of the microwave. The picture on the windowsill is an old one of the family from when C was a baby; I found it with the boxes and cleaned it up. Inside the buffet is almost entirely Christmas dishes, so I'll clean those and the interior shelves in November when I get them out. There's no need to open it until then so I'll leave it alone for now.
So that was my Sunday triumph: one useless corner, one piece of furniture (exterior), and one countertop appliance. Onward and upward from here.
