Another fine mess I've gotten myself into

I think I'm missing some important cleaning gene. With all of the cookies we've been delivering, I've been in and out of a lot of houses, some unannounced, and they have all been basically tidy. If people walk in to my house, especially unannounced, they would find backpacks piled on the couch, dishes piled in the sink, papers piled on the table. Basically, we live our lives in and around piles.

If you ever had the pleasure of visiting my old house, not only did we have piles, we had some active dirt going on, especially there at the end. I've made a real effort to do better with the new house but it still isn't as good as it should be. While I was sick last week, RF and WF did a great job of helping keep things running and people fed but cleaning wasn't on either of their radars. On Thursday, my Daisy co leader stopped by to get the cookies for the meeting since I couldn't make it and I was totally embarrassed by how filthy my house was! The dishes had completely taken over the counter, the kitchen table was covered in papers and toys and under that layer it was sticky where someone spilled syrup and didn't clean it up. I do better at seeing messes than the kids or RF but I have a HUGE capacity for simply ignoring things like that.

I will spend hours doing marathon cleaning binges but can't seem to take the 5 minutes it takes to stay on top of it, to begin with. The kids and I spent 2 hours cleaning the garage top to bottom Friday night. To be fair, it hadn't been cleaned since before the bathroom remodel because we were using it as the staging area for everything for the bathroom. Then I got sick, then we filled it full of cookies and I got sick again. But still, it was dusty and gross and smelly and took 3 people 2 hours to clean it. Saturday, I spent 2 hours cleaning my kitchen. I did the dishes, washed the counters, table and chairs, scrubbed the stove and cleaned the fridge, dishwasher, the cabinets and the walls, as well as sweeping and mopping. Today, I cleaned the kids' rooms, our room, the bathroom and changed all the sheets, besides re-vaccumming the rest of the house.

It took about 6 hours of solid work to get it all done but it looks great right now. By tomorrow, it won't look great and by Tuesday or Wednesday, you won't be able to tell I did anything because I just don't stay on top of it like I should.

The latest injury

I started my yearly purge this week. In purging stuff from my bedroom, I managed to severely stub my toe. Today, 24 hour later, it looks like this.

This picture so does not do justice to the bruising and swelling that this injury involves. I'm fairly certain it is broken, although it doesn't hurt much anymore so I could be wrong. Either way, bruised and swollen and cut open and ugly looking. See what I get for cleaning the house! :)

Operation: Clean the damn house (and a few other things)

As part of O:CTDH that I started before Christmas, I spent most of yesterday and part of today getting it back in order from Christmas break. Heaven help us when summer comes but hopefully by then it will be a habit to clean regularly and not such a dramatic thing. My house looked like wild raving animals took it over for awhile. But it is much better now! After I did the generaly clean up, I moved on to scrubbing the bathroom. Usually, I just wipe everything down with Clorox every few days and call that good enough. It disinfects, it gets the toothpaste out of the sink, it is good enough (no matter what, the bathroom with always be my weak spot in cleaning). But today I scrubbed the hell out of it. I got out the "soft cleaner" and attacked that mess. I climbed into the shower and went over every inch of it, getting it clean (don't get me wrong, it doesn't look clean because it is old and stained and I think I might have created some toxic gas trying to get it unstained when we moved in but I assure you that it is, in fact, clean). It makes me smile a little every time I go in the bathroom and see the couple of unstained parts sparkle just smidge :) You know you are truly pathetic when a slightly sparkly shower surrond makes you smile.

Tomorrow, I finish the bathroom, which includes the sweeping and mopping, knocking down cobwebs, and scrubbing the outside of the tub and the walls with the Magic Eraser. If I can manage that in a reasonable amount of time, I'll start on my bedroom, which I'm not looking forward too. I have to move my bed and clean all the crap that has fallen under it over the past however many months. Not appealing in the slightest and a definate factor in saving it for last (and the fact that is has a door that I can shut so no has to see the mess when they come over :) ).

Wii Fit is kicking my butt. According to it, I'm doing nothing but gaining weight (which is somewhat odd, since I haven't gained any weight since I had the kids). I gained 50 lbs with The Boy, never lost it, had Ms Thang, lost a little from being sick but gained it back by the end of the pregnancy. Since then, my weight has fluxed a pound here or there but since I started doing the Fit, I've gained 6 lbs, with no change to my diet or activity level, aside from commiting to 20 on the board each day. Something fishy if you ask me! However, I'm a hula hooping champion and I rock the yoga. My sides are also sore (from hula hooping, I assume) and my let leg hurts so it is doing something at least.

TB was late getting out of school and when I asked him why he said "my teacher held me back and told me to talk to you about *sarcastic mimic*being responsible with my hair" He explained that people want to touch the hawk and he doesn't want them to so he was running in the classroom, trying to get away from someone that wanted to touch him. I told him that if someone wanted to touch it and he didn't want them to all he needed to do was say "do not touch me" at whatever volume he needed to use to get results. He said they aren't allowed to yell in school and I pointed out that he can't run in school or hit in school either so what other choice did he have, really? He probably shouldn't snarl, like I did in a pregnany hormone induced frenzy when some old lady that I didn't know rubbed my belly without asking "How would you like if I walked over and grabbed your boob? You wouldn't like that? Then keep your damn hands to yourself, you old bag" Obviously, I don't deal well with handsy people LOL

When I got home, I had an email from the teacher telling me her side of it. She said that "his hair is becoming a distraction to himself and others" She said that he is rubbing it in people's faces (he says this is in response to people pulling it) and letting some people play with it. I don't know if that meant that he is letting people play with it in class and it is disruptive or if he is only letting some people touch his hair and not everyone. IMO, he can't control what other people do, only himself, so disruptions to other people are not my problem. I did point out to him that he can't let people touch it during class and that he can't rub it on anyone, but that is rude and not a little gross. We shall see what the next few days bring. I get the impression that she doesn't like his hair and is looking of things to gripe at him about it. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe it will go smoothly and this will be the end of it. What I do know is that I won't cut his hair to please her. There is nothing in the school dress code policy preventing it (I checked before I ever did it, just to be on the safe side) and there isn't much she can do about it. Except make him miserable and he already hates school and begs me to switch him classes so I don't think it can get a lot worse.

Tomorrow, I get to go buy socks and a replacement bathroom step stool. I bought some at Target in the dollar section that are great. They cost $2.50, are plastic and are higher than average step stools. TB broke our bathroom one tonight and now has to pay to replace it. Any recommendations for step stools you like? I want it to be plastic (the wooden ones are great but I'm afraid they wouldn't hold up in the wet of the bathroom), inexpensive and tall. The tall was critical when we bought it because MT couldn't reach the sink at all. Over a year later, she is plenty tall enough to reach, even without the step stool, but now she uses it in the kitchen to help me cook and the tall is required again so she can reach the top of the counter.

Neat Freak

First of all, I need to point out that I rarely come up with good titles, although I try (when I grow up, I want to write titles like Quigs LOL). Today, I'm giggling like mad at my title and that makes me happy. On to the post.

I'm generally lazy and slovenly. My house is generally a mess and usually that doesn't bother me. Recently, we've started having people over more often (I tried to keep people the heck out of my house as a general rule before) so I had to clean it up. Surface cleaning, the type I do most often, just wasn't going to cut it so I kicked it up a notch and really started CLEANING things. I have managed to finish every room in my house except my bedroom(on the agenda, I just didn't feel like it today), the bathroom (I need to really scrub the hell out of the tub, but otherwise it is done), RF's room (he needs to clean off his desk and I need to vaccum) and TB's nook (we are going to clean the hell out of that place over break. He has had it set up only a few months and it is already a health hazard. He is gonna hate it but that is too bad).

Overall, I'm really enjoying the effect of the cleaner house. We have less stuff because I have been mercilessly tossing things, which means less stuff to keep clean in the future. I've managed to stay on top of the rooms that I've cleaned and I'm making the kids, who are more than old enough, help out, especially with picking up their junk. They hate how dictatorish I've become about cleaning but that is just too bad. They need to know that they can't trash the house and then walk away and let someone else clean it up. I'm done being the maid.

I'm also using up stuff that I've been saving. When TB was little, I sold PartyLite for awhile. Basically, it was overprized junk but I have a ton of it. I never could really burn it because TB was facinated with the flame and would try to pull them over or climb to get them. My kids are old enough to leave that kind of thing alone now so I've been burning candles like mad. Anytime we are home for any length of time, I light them. I started digging through the "candle cabinet" looking for a pillar candle and I discovered that I had over 20 dozen tealight candles, several pillars, some tapers, a few jars, etc etc etc. So I dug out a bunch of candle holders and I'm getting rid of all of them. My goal is to have the candle cabinet empty by spring. At least empty of candles. I have a bunch of nice (expensive) holder that I intend to keep and use with cheap candles in the future.

Clean up your life

Back in April, I took pictures of my "trouble spots" and posted them for Mrs Chicken. Last month, we had some friends over for dinner and despite cleaning all day, I was still vaguely embarrassed to have people over (I know, my friends, not gonna critize too harshly, etc, still it stressed me). Since then (and since I'm hosting dinner again next week), I've been on a cleaning mission. Each day, I take a room or section of room and clean the hell out of it. I started in the laundry room an put all the laundry away, swept, mopped, cleaned off the window sill, etc. Then I moved to the living and sorted my art center, tossing any old markers, drawn on pieces of paper, etc. After that I moved around the living room, cleaning, sorting, dusting, swept, mopping, vacuuming and scrubbing the walls. Then I moved to the kitchen, taking apart the fridge and scrubbing the shelves and walls. Then I moved to the dining room and cleaned off the butcher block, my desk, and bar.

I still have to clean off the fridge top, scrub one side of it (I didn't realize it was that dirty until I was sticking magnets on it today and it is a mess), clean out the pantry, clean the bathroom, and my bedroom (and coerce The Boy into cleaning his room as well, but that is going to happen over break when we have plenty of time to devote to it). I will be mostly done by next week and what I don't get done won't be in public areas of the house so I won't have to worry about it. Now I just have to stay on top of it and keep it clean so I don't have to work like a maniac in the future to get it clean again :)

For contrast, I posted the link to the pictures taken in April for the Dirty Housewives and then the pictures I took today of those 2 areas.

Hm

Feeling too crummy to come up with an interesting title.

We had people over for dinner last night. This is seriously something we NEVER do but I did it. I spent ALL DAY cleaning the house. RF scrubbed the kitchen for me while the kids helped with the living room and dining room and I cleaned the bathroom. Seriously, every time I thought I was actually done, I found one more thing that had to be cleaned. At one point, I scrubbed the lid of the trash can because I thought it looked bad. I know the people that we had over are my friends and they wouldn't have ridiculed me too badly but I suffer from house jealousy. They have nice, newer construction homes. I live in a crummy basement of a house that was built in the 50s and remodelled to include a the basement by someone who knew nothing about house planning. It was some kind whose MIL got sick so he threw up some walls in the basement so she could have a place to stay in their house. So I over-compensated for the age of my house by cleaning like a mad woman. Then I cook all afternoon.

I was supposed to go to BN with S and J and their kids but I'm super glad I passed. I was under the mistaken impression that I could get everything done I needed done in a couple of hours. What a joke that was :)I'm sad we didn't get to go to the museum, but I'm glad dinner worked out.

I got a call today from the PTA president about bringing the PTA into the 21st century. I'm always pushing for more techy stuff and always getting rebuffed. If something isn't easy, people aren't going to do it. She decided that I was right and we are meeting today to discuss how to modernize our communication. Good stuff.

I have a cold. My head is all stopped up and I feel like crud. Blah.

I watched about an hour of Sweeny Todd last night and I was bored to tears. I like musicals, but I don't like where nearly every line is sung. I prefer normal movies that randomly break out in song. I saw Les Mis a few years ago and hated it. Sweeny Todd is pretty similar. :( I had hoped it would be good but I was disappointed.

Friday filler

Rogers asked what voice lived in my head. The voice that lives in my head is a complete OCD perfectionist. It wants labels and time tables and "a place for everything and everything in it's place" That is not how the voice outside my head sees things and since she is a bitch, she wins. However, to try and instill some order to this chaos we live in, I'm working on cleaning my house. Each day, I plan to clean off one flat surface (you may remember the dirty housewife pictures a few months ago) each day and I'm sorting one toybox each. Any toys that are broken are getting tossed. Anything that is missing parts is getting tossed. Anything that is decent, we just have too many of or don't play with or whatever is going to the CARE swap. Looseyfur, keep your eyes open for a big box o' crap to show up at your house one day :)

TB is going to cheer camp. It is being sponsored by one of the high schools and he decided to do it (after first questioning what, exactly, cheerleaders are supposed to do). We signed him up so he will go to the camp on Sunday the 14 and cheer at half of the football game on Friday the 19th.

I started reading The Other Boleyn Girl for book club. I didn't read our last book because it sounded stupid (after listening to the discussion about it, I'm so glad I didn't waste my time, I would have hated it). I thought the same thing about this book but Quigs read it and suggested that I try it because it was pretty good. So far, I have to agree. It is a little dirty and pretty funny at times :)

I have been super impressed with the last couple of meals I've made. I made a meatloaf the other night (Quigs and Loosey, let me know what you think) and I thought it was really good. Then tonight, I made kabobs and the meat was some of the best I've had. I LOVE Old Time Meat and Deli for my meat. There is a new meat store that has opened up closer to me and I keep thinking about trying it but I really like OTMD and can't bring myself to try switching.

I have to go to the farmer's market tomorrow. I don't know what I'm going to get because my mom came home with a huge bag of tomatoes, which is generally what I buy the most of. I do need some green beans (aka crack, which despite assurances otherwise, I like much better than sugar snap peas) and if I take the van, I'll get a watermelon. If I take the scooter, I'll have to pass on it because there is no way to get it home. I'll also probably pass on the corn because I'm tired of it nearly going bad before I can use it. I'll pick that up at the farmer's market over here

TB is losing his teeth. His front bottom ones are are loose. One is super loose ( a few days to a week at the outside before that one is gone) and the other is a little loose. I have been cutting corn off the cob for 2 weeks for him because he can't eat it. But I stupidly didn't think of that and sent him and apple to school for lunch today. I felt a little bad that he couldn't eat it but I did tell him that I will cut them up for him in the future

Speaking of apples, I am ready for the Best Apple Ever. They come out right after TB's birthday and I'm on the waiting list but damn I want them now!

My throat hurts. I think it is allergies but in any case, it is a pain. I'm tired of downing Tylenol all the time.

Dumbass

I was cleaning a pan and I left it on the stove to boil so that the bacon gunk would come out easier. Then I came in the living room, sat down and set about finishing my book (which seriously, I'm sick of books killing off my favorite characters). It took longer than I thought to finish it and by the time I was done, I had forgetten all about the pan. That is, until I smelled a horrible burning smell! I ran into the kitchen and turned it off before it caught fire (it was smoking a little) but now my house reaks and I'm afraid I ruined one of my good pans :(

Dirty thoughts

My house is FILTHY. A couple of weeks ago, my Swiffer broke so my house hasn't been mopped since then (and it kind of needed it the day the Swiffer died so it has been awhile). I finally got a new Swiffer today and set about cleaning my kitchen. I swept and then assembled my shiny new Swiffer. I sprayed and mopped and mopped and sprayed. When I was done, the pad was absolutely BLACK. Typically, I mop about once a week (not including the everyday mess clean ups that I do) and I can do the living room and the kitchen with one pad. The pad is rarely as filthy as it was today with just one room done.

I also stripped and remade all the beds, turned my mattress (for the first time since I bought it, I've always had a waterbed that didn't need turned so this is a new thing to me.

I still have a bunch of laundry to finish and put away (that used to be my biggest housework downfall but we have a system that works pretty well so I don't get too far behind anymore) and run at least one more load of dishes tonight

Tomorrow I need to:
scrub the bathroom
Sweep the bathroom
mop the bathroom

While Ms Thang had her bath, I scrubbed the bathroom and then as soon as she was out of the tub, I scrubbed it so that is all done

vaccum the dining room

vaccum the living room
sweep the living room
mop the living room

It seems like there is something else I need to do, but I can't think of it so it will probably not get done.

Edited: I need to run one more load of dishes, start another load of laundry and put everything away

Dirty Girl

Mrs. Chicken wants to see how dirty my house. Fortunately, today was house cleaning day so she won't get to see how truely dirty it usually is. However, I have taken pictures of the two areas of my house that will never ever be clean no matter what I do. Yes, I'm aware she asked for one area and one picture but she can pick which one she thinks is worse and one picture just didn't do the mess justice :)

The first 4 is the area surrounding and including the built in "blanket cabinet" and shelves in our living room.









The following 4 are of the bar in our dining room. It ends up being the place that everything that doesn't have another home goes to live.

What should I do?

What I am currently doing:
Sitting on the couch making a blog entry
Thinking about putting on jammie pants and a sweatshirt and maybe digging up a blanket.

What I should be doing:
Going to Kinko's to print calendars
Going to Dollar General to buy Kleenex and Sudafed (we are all getting sick here and it sucks)
Taking Lizzie to the last story time, ever, at the old library.

Alternately, I need to clean the living room, including moving all the furniture and sweep and mopping the floor.

What will I do? Probably keep sitting here and then feel guilty that I got nothing done.

Moving

Not out of my house but we have moved nearly everything in the house around in the last few days. Several months ago, I set up centers for various activities around the house and it has helped keep my house so much cleaner!! The centers worked great over the summer when dh was working fairly normal hours. Since he has started working nights, they haven't worked as well. The two favorties, art and kitchen were in the dining room, nearest his room. I was forever shushing them and eventually making them leave the centers because they were being too loud. Last week, I decided that I needed to move them into the living room. Well, I don't have enough room in the living room for all the stuff so I had to move blocks and trains into the dining room. I backed blocks up to my desk (partly hide the crap that falls off my desk) and put the train under the bar. Then I decided that I was tired of the laundry room the way it was. We drug out this nasty old cabinet (it was a ktichen counter that someone had tried to cut a sink in and then covered with masking tape when it didn't work) Since we just stored soap in there, it wasn't a big deal. I decided that I wanted to put the dressers in the laundry room so that I could put clothes away as they came out of the dryer. Previously, I had been tossing clothes on the floor (my typical place for storing clothes, unfortunately) and then I set up a basket system, where each person had a basket in the laundry room and I would toss each person's clothes into their basket as they came out of the dryer. This was working well, but the baskets were taking up lots of room and it was hard to get through to the washer. The other issue was putting away clothes because they all go in the room that Evan sleeps in. I couldn't put them away during the day and I couldn't get them back out in the morning either. We have moved the dressers in there and they take up way less room. I still have a basket for Lizzie because her dresser is in the other room and I'm not going to move it into the laundry room. As long as I put the clothes away as soon as they are done, it shouldn't be an issue. We are hanging a bar on one side and hanging up all the clothes in there and a shelf on the other side for non-dresser folded clothes (pants). We are also mounting a shelf for soap and bleach and other things like that and then I'm mounting a shelf over the art center for things that need to stay with it but that I don't want the kids to have access to all the time (beads, hot glue gun, extra paint brushes, etc) Since none of the dressers are in dh's room, he drug his desk into his room while I was gone picking C up at school. Now I have to clean that area up (it has been awhile since it has been vacuumed really well under his desk) and then clean my desk off. Then I'm going to move my desk in to the nook that his was in, next to the file cabinet. Then I have to clean really well where my desk used to be (also quite some time since it has been vacuumed well) and then I'm going the flatten the blocks against the wall. Not sure what I'll do with the extra wall space (our desk have been in the same place since we moved in here 5 years ago) but I'm sure I'll find something to fill it.

So I should be cleaning the dining room but I'm sitting here on my tail blogging about how I'm going to clean it. Lame :)

I have a secret

I was really productive today (no that isn't my secret, I'll get to that in a minute). I didn't get up until almost 10 but in the last hour I have cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom, picked up the living room, swept and mopped the kitchen, living room and bathroom, straightened up the laundry room (none of the clothes are put away, but they are all sorted into baskets and off the floor). I changed the sheets on mine and C's beds, fed both kids, ran two loads of laundry and took a shower. Now I have to feed myself and figure out something to do that doesn't involve going outside, since the weather bites. This is about the cleanest my house has been in 3 weeks and it all started because I decided the sink in the bathroom was icky and I was going to wipe it down before I got dressed this AM (I keep Clorox wipes in there so I can wipe stuff off because I hate to actually clean the bathroom). Since I was doing that, I decided that the rest of it needed done to and then I decided to do the floor but I hate to get the Swiffer out for just the bathroom so I picked up the living room so I could do it to and then just caught the kitchen on my way through. Since the floor was done in there, it made sense to clean everything else so that it would all be done. The laundry was just a different beast but I've been putting off doing it for at least 2 weeks so I finally just had to suck it up and get it done.

My secret is about dh's job. I can't tell and it is killing me so I'm going to tease you so you can die with me. Hang tight for next week though when all will be revealed. :)