From a Cleaner Kitchen to Emptying the Outbox: January Cure Assignments 10 to 20

Half the Cure.

My goodness, I hadn't realised I had had that much to catch up on!

The thing is, of course, I have been doing something...just not everything I wanted to do and certainly not everything I'd planned to do. This weekend was the end, though. I really need to focus on doing my daily four housekeeping chores.....and let January go. I am giving myself until Wednesday.

Here's what I've done.

Assignment #10: A Cleaner Kitchen.

I worked hard the weekend it was assigned.

I cleaned the spice rack:

It's always disheartening when the after doesn't look all that different from the before. But at least the canisters feel better. They get greasy right here beside the stove. 

Behind the stove:

And behind the fridge, though you'll have to take my word for it!

I cleaned all the open shelving, the garbage can, the side of the fridge, the side of the stove and the baseboards.

I washed the top of the fridge, the top of the microwave, all the cabinets, the stove top and the table.

And then I made a pie. To declutter some apples. Of course.

Finally, I washed the kitchen floor just this Saturday.


Assignment #11: Get a Get Together Together.

This introvert never does this Cure assignment.


Assignment #12 Cabinet Clear Out:

Removed one bottle of barely expired calamine lotion.


Assignment #13: Work on Your Project.

I haven't even finished the list of projects I want to complete this year!


Assignment #14: Lighten Up the Living Room.

I did this just yesterday, too. My son walked in and said, "nice job on the living room. The wall looks different without the mirror there."

A-hem.
The mirror has not been there for at least two years. That Value Village painting has been sitting in its place on top of the mantel since.

But I think he's a minimalist at heart. In fact, right after making this comment, he went right to his room and began cleaning and clearing his shelves.


Assignment #15: A Better Bedroom

I had such tremendous intentions. On the floors weekend, I'd spent the entire Friday night up in this room, going over every inch of the floor.

Last weekend, my husband and I flipped the mattress (flip with the Solstice, rotate with the Equinox) and I washed the mattress cover, pillow covers, bedding and couch cover.

Again, this weekend, I spent Friday evening picking up and tidying. But it wasn't until Sunday that I got around to dusting, (vacuuming up the dust!) and changing the sheets and duvet cover.

But, boy oh boy, is it worth it!


Assignment #16: Catch up Day.

Well, it's sort of catch up weekend, isn't it?!


Assignment #17: Bathroom Blast.

I did this Saturday, too. Spritzed all the porcelain, mopped the floor. The room really needs a full day, though, to wipe all the mold off the tile, the grout and the ceiling. Yes. The moisture problem in there is absolutely out of control. And frankly, we have done all we can at the moment, so I have been procrastinating the chore to clean it because it will just have to be done again, and again.....until we know what to do to fix it.


Assignment #18: Landing Strip

All I needed to do here was wash the floor and put down my new entry rug.

In time.

Assignment #19: Surface Sweep

I do this as a regular part of my daily four. I set the timer for 10 minutes and just go through the main floor and pick up and put away everything lying about on various surfaces.


Assignment #20: Empty the Outbox.

And here we are. This weekend's assignment. The last assignment.

There's more in the car!

I wondered why Janel had scheduled an entire weekend for it and also ended the Cure, leaving the last two days of the month completely unscheduled. But now I think I know why. Not only did I need to take the weekend to catch up,  I have five different places to go to to drop things off. I am going to want the time Monday and Tuesday to go to the second hand store, the animal shelter, the Eco-centre, Re-Store (Habitat for Humanity), and H&M (for textile recycling).


So, I figure I'm done...... Except for the floors in the hallway and the dining room, oh and emptying the outbox and I almost forgot, the list, the darn list I have no faith will be completed this year at all...well, except for those things, I'm done.

I am glad I did this. Adios until next year!

From the Weekend: Scenes from The Living Room Cure

 I wonder who the maid was who realised this thing would put her out of work? (I confess, I am writing up this post right after watching Downton Abbey.)

 I used it to vacuum the sofa--both with the slip cover on and with it off. I used it to vacuum the wood floor and the rug (twice). I used it to pick up some spilled soil off of the coffee table (I need to get a better potting mix for the cacti). I even used it to vacuum the chair and all the pillows.

That white slipcover is an absolute bear to get back on the sofa. I had to leave off the cover I usually place on top of the slip cover because it has a large tear. We are having an incredibly long warm spell and the dog has taken to digging in the puddling snow and mud. I've washed the seat cover twice in three days. I have to do it again. And I need to get that cover--an old hotel tablecloth--mended asap.

( The sofa is rather blinding without its navy blanket. The blankets were in the wash when I took these.)

I discovered another use for a microfibre cloth--the TV. Slightly damp, it cleans up the TV screen beautifully. It's also a great duster--and with a little glass cleaner the perfect thing to clean the windows and with a little Murphy's oil, a great cleaner for the wood.

I spot cleaned the carpet with good old fashioned vinegar and hot water.

I did the whole room piecemeal, over several days as I had to work throughout the weekend. But a little bit every day gets a lot done, even though there's no great whiz bang of effort--nor of satisfaction, at that.

The Linen Closet

I have been wanting to get to this dratted closet for a while, now. It is upstairs in the hallway between our bedroom and my daughter's. It holds our bed linens, stuff for the powder room (also on this floor) and travel bags.

The problem with the closet is not the closet.

The problem with the closet is that the light in the hallway does not work. We keep the bathroom light on in order to make our way up the stairs, but as you can imagine, trying to access the closet after 5pm can be pretty hit or miss. (We need to call an electrician but we're being ostriches about it as we know the house is not up to code and we're afraid of what the bogeyman might say.)

So it's a mess.

I've also been wanting to tackle this as part of my homework in the decluttering module with Joshua Becker, as part of Courtney Carver's year long course called "A Simple Year."

My first step was to determine just what all I wanted to keep in here. I won't bore you with the details, especially as nothing really changed.

The next thing I did was to figure out the number and kind of linens I wanted to keep.

Here's the breakdown:

In this family of four, my husband and I share a queen sized bed, the kids each have a twin.

For pillows we have:
Ben --1 queen, 1 standard
Emma --1 standard
Chris and I: 1 pair of Euro pillows, 1 pair of queen, 1 pair of standard pillows. (Well, that's the goal. Currently, we have one queen and on standard in addition to our Euros.)

So, if each bed is supposed to have (at least) two sets of everything, though Cheryl Mendelson wisely advises three, here's what we should keep:

Pillow Protectors:
6 queen
8 standard

Pillow Cases:
2 pairs Euro (4)
2 pairs Queen (4)
2 non-matched Queen (for a total of 6 Queen)
2 pairs standard (4)
4 unmatched standard

Sheet Sets (Top flat and fitted bottom):
2 sets Queen
4 sets Twin
PLUS 1 set of flannel sheets for each twin bed.

Mattress Pads:
2 Queen
3 or 4 Twin. (I can get away with three if I don't change the kids' mattress pads on the same day.)

Whew. Got all that?

You notice I left out comforters, duvets, duvet covers, and blankets. That's because I'm just not ready to deal with all of that just yet.  Some of them are on the top shelf.

Professional organizers recommend that you have everything--from all over the house--before you start. So, I folded some sheets waiting in the laundry room, started a load of laundry, and collected a few things I had in storage down in the laundry room.

Later, I found another sheet set in my son's room--clean but covered in dust. I must have given them to him and told him to change his bed a while back.

The pillowcases and protectors.

Here are all the grocery bags I fished out of all the hidey holes in the closet.

 Isn't that ridiculous? There are only two garbage baskets which take them. I decided that I would toss half of them and then sew up a grocery bag holder and put it on the door of the closet to hold the rest.

Several hours later, we have....

Ta Da!

The Donation pile.

I can take them to women's shelters, Ronald MacDonald House, Homeless shelters, Compassion Houses, basically, any charity which has beds. Severely used or torn sheets are better suited to animal shelters for bedding.

And so, here we are, all loaded up again. I was just racing against the light at this point.

I decided to put Queen sized stuff on the top and the twin stuff on the bottom. The stuff in the middle is all bathroom related, since there's no closed storage in there.

(Yep, I kept waaaay more than my allotted 6 queen pillow cases! They're vital to surviving the zombie apocalypse. I'm just sayin')


Ironically, I have a shopping list. In spite of having a ton of bed linens, I am actually short in a few categories. I'm ready for a white sale.

Comings and Goings

today's sunrise. 

Assignment #14.

Create a Landing Strip.

The idea, of course, is to have a place near your exits and entrances for all the stuff that finds its way into your home, no matter who brings it in.

This is a multi-faceted problem. Let's take this systematically.

The Front Door.

Who uses it?

Myself and the kids.

What comes in? (What do you need a place for?)

1) Boots and shoes

2) Coats, Jackets (Personal items like scarves, hats and gloves are stored in the coat pocket and/or sleeve.)

3) Papers my son delivers once a week

4) mail

5) my purse and my daughter's backpack


What goes out?

6) outgoing mail

7) library books to be returned

8) things to be returned to various people

What do we need to store? 

1-8

What have we got?

A narrow hallway right by the front door and around a corner,  a wider hallway with a coat closet. Let's take it in turn.

By the front door we have the carpet for boots, the small wooden child's chair for all sorts of things (currently holding my son's papers. When I am getting ready to leave for work in the morning I put my purse and lunch kit on it. Sometimes, it is a place to put my purse down so I can get my boots off.) The child's chair is in the entrance arch to the living room. Across from it is the doorway to the dining room/home office.

That shelf is mostly decorative, but it does hold outgoing mail at the moment. The bin underneath it holds some library books and a bag of borrowed items to be returned to its owner.



Around the corner is really where the hard work happens.

yes, the two hallways are different colours. That will likely be changed during the Spring One Room Challenge in April.

That dresser (and the calendar above) is command central. School papers which need signing go into my folders--and then get returned to the kids' folders. (Well, that supposed to be how it works. In my son's case, he tends to give them to me right when he comes home from school and immediately retunrs them to his back pack. My daughter wakes me up the morning they are due and frantically waves a pen in my face. We're working on it.) My husband and I also have our own folders. I highly recommend that everyone in a household have a place like this for their own papers.

We collect grocery and gas receipts (separate from our other receipts) so there are envelopes to catch them set up here, too.


One drawer in this dresser is devoted to hats, mitts and scarves, year round. I go through and purge it in the fall. (This way, too, if I do find the odd hat or glove lying around, I have a place to put it without having to find its owner or her coat.)

The coat closet also doubles as a broom closet, so I have all sorts of things here. Most importantly, it is the home for our coats, bags we use to take to the grocery store, bags we re-use, empty backpacks and my purse.

The Back Door.

This is the way to the back yard and the garage.

Who uses it?

Mostly my husband, the dog, sometimes me and the kids.

What comes in?

My husband and his workboots (which he likes to change out of before he goes out to play with the dog), his lunch bag and book bag. Groceries. dirty, filthy dogs paws.

What goes out?

All of the above, plus, in summer, sports stuff.

What do we need to store?

In addition to the above, I need access to gardening supplies, (gloves, a hat, secateurs, and a trowel), a table cloth and roasting forks.

What do we have to work with?

A teeny tiny entry way, and stairs going up to the kitchen and down to the basement.

The shoe pocket organizer holds mostly mosquito repellant and odd bits at the moment. The drawer underneath holds things we won't need until summer.

First, the stairs leading up to the kitchen.

On the left wall, a strip of wood with cup hooks holding keys and the dog's leash. On the right, a towel bar with the long shoe horn and a rag both for the dog's paws and my husband's boots. On the ledge, the spray bottle is to discourage the Beagle's barking. (On the floor to the left is a bucket with cleaning cloths to be taken to the basement laundry room.) Those are my husband's work boots and winter boots/shoes on the stairs.

As you go down the stairs there's boot shelf with a curtain rod above it on the right.

Those sandals are being held up by a bent hanger, the boots by a hanger clip. Sandals and keds live in the pink magazine holders. Beneath the shelf are hooks for bike helmets and a bag holding fishing gear.

Opposite this are the baskets, also suspended from the flooring joists.

They hold hats, summer work gloves, ball mitts and rollar blades and knee pads. They've held all sorts of sports equipment through the years.

(That mess underneath the baskets belongs to the epic basement clean up project which is next month!)

As far as curing goes, I dusted the navy shelf, cleaned off the top of the white dresser, and sorted through the paper work. I decluttered the baskets at the back door, vacummed the magazine/shoe holders and the wire baskets. Then I washed the walls and swept and washed the stairs. I vacuumed the hallway and the coat closet floor, too. Yep. I'm tired.

So, there we have it. I think I've covered how we --and all our stuff-- come and go.

Any questions? I'll answer in the comments.

The Pantry: At Last. and Experimenting on my Face

Dear lord, was it really Assignment #4?

I know I hadn't been ready for it when it came.

But I have done it now.

I have, actually, tackled this particular bookshelf which I call my pantry many, many times. I actually love this strange unit--a holdover from my childhood when it used to be stuffed with record albums. I've expanded it with closet organizer shelving.

It sits in the basement opposite my laundry area.

My goal was to re-organize it, declutter the old stuff and wipe out every cubby.

To be honest, it was daunting.

The first surface, emptied.

It took about an hour.

The oldest thing I found was a box of lemon pie filling mix.

sigh.

2004.

I'm not even sure how that is possible as I have purged the pantry more than once in the last ten years! Maybe I got it from my Mom? Maybe I just never looked at it?

I also found my stash of peppermint tea. I thought I'd had some! And it was just in time, too The largest package expires next month.

So, here we are.

Ta Da!

I also did today's assignment--clearing out the bathroom cabinets. Nothing too exciting there.

The wall cabinets in the bathroom downstairs:

These two cabinets are right beside one another.

The bathroom "cabinets" upstairs:

All that's left is my daughter's toothbrush. I don't know why she doesn't like keeping it in the cabinet.

The oldest things I found?

ahem, cough, ahem, those cleansers and moisturizers?

yeah, those.

dated 1996.

sssh.

(I actually put some moisturizer on my face to see if it was Ok. As it sat there and sat there and refused to be absorbed, I started to feel all weird. What if it gave me a rash or something? So, I grabbed some tp and wiped it off immediately. What was I thinking?)

I just may take that rack down.

Boom da da boom.

From the Weekend: Scenes from the Bedroom Cure

Found on my husband's nightstand while curing the bedroom.

I hadn't really intended to do the "cure" quite this devotedly. I'd intended to do it the way I always do on-line events like this--pick my own tasks and do them at my own pace. Instead, it seems I am doing almost all of the assignments--and when they are assigned, too.

Along with hundreds of others all over the world, I cleaned my bedroom this weekend. I started Friday and finished Saturday.

The assignment was simply to clean. I took it a step further and decided to incorporate one of Joshua Becker's assignments from "A Simple Year." To wit, to declutter this room as one of two areas of my home and get rid of anything "unnecessary."

Once again, I started with a room badly in need of both cleaning and decluttering.

This was taken from the doorway:

This is rather embarrassing, but I had let things go--I knew the big clean up was coming and I was working 'til 10 pm all this week---excuses, excuses.

Immediately to the left of the door, we have the dresser. (That is the closet door to its left)

Then, the loveseat/dog's bed. I have had this piece of furniture since a room-mate dragged it home from a University reading lounge back in the eighties. (Room-mate and University shall remain nameless.) It's an incredibly sturdy and heavy piece of furniture.

On to the bed wall. It is a lovely little alcove just big enough to feel cosy.

And then, to the right of the bed (and tucked behind the doorway) are the shelves.

Oh, the shelves.

I have been thinking about culling their contents for months, now.

Easy to purge: the Simple Scrapbooks magazines I've had for years--but never referenced. Time will tell if I regret that decision, but I doubt it. My scrapbooking style is as simple as can be--and I don't really need books for ideas, anymore.

More difficult, however, were the books dealing with my faith. I have had periods of intense belief and periods of indifferent, almost non-belief throughout my life. I am in one of the latter right now--and I am not completely at peace with it.

When I started purging the books --the books on what it means to be a Christian woman, the books on prayer and the books on God's character, and so on, I was scared. Really scared. I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know what I was doing. Was I saying good-bye to ever believing in God again? Was I committing to being an agnostic? Was I turning my back on God? I wasn't sure I was ready to do that, but those years I was a practicing Christian were truly some of the worst years in my marriage and family-life.

I decided to keep two C.S. Lewis books, Mere Christianity (which I have read) and The Problem of Pain (which I think I've started but not finished). I committed to reading the latter within six months. I will decide then whether to keep my books or let go of them.

It also occurred to me that if I ever do return to my faith--I just might want a different library.

Marie Kondo would have me pile these books on the floor. My knees argued back--and won!

As I considered each book, eventually I found myself picking up each one, holding it in my hand and asking myself, "Does this bring me joy?" Then, if the answer was no, I put the books in the box and said, out loud, "Thank you for your service."

And so I built a pile of boxes outside the door.

As you can see, I decluttered more than just the Christian books.

The rest was easy.

I decided I didn't want to see these boxes underneath the love seat anymore.

What did they store? One box was full of painting clothes suitable for a range of weights and seasons. I kept something in my current size suitable for summer and trashed the rest. The other box held summer clothes for a person about eighty pounds lighter than me. I pulled out two pairs of pants and the rest went out to the hallway.

I vacuumed everything that could possibly be vacuumed, including the mattress and the window screen. I dusted and I dusted and I dusted. I washed the mattress pad and pillow covers, sheets and pillowcases. I vowed to buy new pillows and wrestled the duvet into its beautiful cover and put a new and better piece of fabric on the poor old worn out loveseat.

I practically have a brand new room.

Ready?

Nothing is styled. I basically finished, took photos and then rushed off to work.

And here we are, the shelves! I am most proud of these.

I pulled out a few toys I've had in storage. That duck on the bike is one of the silliest things ever.

So, there we have it.

One clean and decluttered room, ready for whatever the year may bring.

Boom da da boom.

ETA: I finally got the shelves tidied up and styled. Here they are: