Keeping your baseboards clean

My mom was a big fan of clean baseboards when I was a kid, and I definitely respect and appreciate Mom.  However, I am personally able to leave a dusty baseboard untouched for quite a few months years, and I have obviously passed on this trait to a percentage of our offspring.

We are expecting to lodge an undefined number of AIM folks here for a leadership camp this weekend, and at least some of them will probably be sleeping in Katie’s now-vacant room.  Hence, this afternoon, Jessica and I went up there to survey the scene and do any necessary damage control following Katie’s recent spring break.

Now, I had asked Katie to leave her room in decent shape, and to her credit, she truly did.  In fact, the only things that really needed to be done were changing the sheets, dusting a few surfaces, and vacuuming.  However, before I began vacuuming, I decided it would be prudent to take a broom to the carpet edges, sweeping out violently beating out the several months’ years’ worth of accumulated dust and junk, so the vacuum could suck it up.

Once I got started sweeping out the edges, I wanted to finish (not that I’m compulsive or anything. . .)  Jessica graciously pulled Katie’s nightstand out from the wall so I could attack the carpet beneath and behind it, and what did she find, but – SHOCK AND AWE – a check for $96.66, made out to Katie and dated July 1, 2008! Jessica called Katie, who was quite pleased to know that she now has almost $100 more than she thought she had.

Moral of the Story:  Listen to your mother; there is wisdom in keeping your baseboards clean.

If a clean playroom really is a happy playroom,

then our playroom must be downright jovial.  We returned last night from a trip to visit my parents in Arkansas, and Jessica and I were both in the mood to GET SOMETHING CLEANED.  She decided we should tackle the playroom, and we fairly body slammed it.

Not only did we go all the way around as we usually do – working counter-clockwise from the door, but (ducking and whispering) we actually cleared off the wicker shelf.  This is a significant undertaking.  In an earlier life, the wicker shelf stood in the corner of the dining room.  The top shelf was designated for Dad, the next shelf for Mom, the next shelf for science-y stuff, and the bottom shelf for the kids.  I think.  It’s been a while – probably back when we only had three kids.  We did clean off the lower three-fourths of the wicker shelf periodically, but we never could attack Dad’s shelf, because we never knew what of his could be thrown out and what could not.

A few years ago, the wicker shelf wobbled and waddled and relocated itself into the playroom.  Nowadays, no one puts anything much on it, and the same stuff that graced its surfaces years ago is probably still there.  In general, when Jessica and I clean the playroom, we just work our way around to the wicker shelf, pause for a moment of solemn reflection, and go on past it in a cloud of dust and hearty “High Ho, Playroom!”

Yesterday, we actually touched the thing and discussed what would happen if we were to clear it off. We looked at each other, realized Dad wasn’t home and couldn’t comment, and went at it like two wild women.

It ended up being kind of fun; pulling out things like two compasses, some drywall anchors, part of an armadillo’s shell, one piece from Risk, some porcupine quills, two partial snakeskins, miscellaneous Legos, pushpins, two eye bolts, and a kit for studying tree rings – and trying to figuring out what to do with each item.  We eventually succeeded in emptying all the bottom shelves, and then The Great Question remained – what to do with the stuff on Dad’s shelf?

Fearing that it might bite, we approached the top shelf with caution, but it turned out that we were quite safe.  The most dangerous residents of that most sacred horizontal surface were three Bibles, two quiet time notebooks, and a varied assortment of CDs chronicling the early years of our ministry.  Scary CDs, I’m sure.  We did ditch a number of unidentifiable items and an fine assortment of instructions (how to install the gizmo that pulls the breezeway door shut, how to assemble a bookshelf that’s been assembled in the attic for seven years, etc.), then carried the valuables to Scott’s desk.

Actually, we are pretty sure our secret is safe.  Scott never reads this blog, and he will probably be pleasantly surprised to have relocated his Bibles, notebooks, and ministry CDs.  Yes, he will be pleasantly surprised, Jessica and I are very satisfied, and our playroom is happy once again.

On a roll

Having successfully conquered the office closet, I am highly motivated to tackle other areas of clutter, and believe me, there are plenty of areas to tackle.  Yesterday I needed something (now I can’t even remember what!) that’s stored on the shelf of our bedroom closet.  There’s actually quite a bit of space up there, and to keep everything from sliding around, a long time a ago we took a big box, cut the top off of it, and turned it on its side.  That way, we can get to things, but it’s sort of compartmentalized.

It’s a nice idea, but through the years, mainly because the shelf is high enough that I can’t reach very far back on it and I can’t see up there at all, what really happens is that I tend to toss things up there and hope they land.  Sometimes they fall back down, and I just toss again.  = )  This procedure has resulted in that box-on-its-side being full of many things that are never seen or dealt with.

When I reached up there yesterday, a lot of stuff came tumbling down, so I got on a stool, pulled EVERYTHING out of the box, and put it all on the bed to sort.  Of course, by bedtime, I had not touched any of it, so I armloaded it onto the dresser, where it now sits in a heap.  This afternoon, I decided to start through the heap, and the first thing I picked up was a nice little beaded evening bag that I will never use if I live to be 100.  It was given to me by some friends overseas.  Since I am trying to declutter and when possible, turn unwanted stuff into cash, I decided to craigslist it.

It took me a little while to figure out how to post on craigslist, and then I had to take pictures of the bag and download them and re-size them to post them.  That made me think of the stuff from the shop that Scott had taken pictures of a week ago – other things he told me I could post on craigslist to “earn” myself some spending money.  That meant more posting and more pictures and all that ended up taking over an hour.

And guess what?  The pile on the dresser is all still there.  = (  But I’m on a roll, right?

VERY satisfying

My husband sent our son to a friend’s house for a few hours yesterday evening, so that he and I could go out to eat for my birthday.  However, since Scott said he would do ANYTHING with me that I wanted to do, I told him I’d rather stay home, de-clutter, and eat Papa John’s pizza.  = )  No point avoiding the truth, right?

I really wanted him to help me clear off my desk, and he said he’d be glad to so.  That was at 5:00 PM, and by 8:30, he may have grown to regret those words.  The first thing I picked up from the left-side heap on my desk was a package of DVD cases that we had ordered to use for shipping our ministry promo DVDs.  They had landed on my desk because I couldn’t figure out anywhere else to put them.  We agreed that they really belonged in the office closet, so Scott opened the door.

Generally speaking, we try to keep that door closed as much as possible, becauase it’s a true eyesore.  It’s a small, square closet; maybe a foot deeper than a conventional coat closet.  It has a bar on which hang his and my off season clothes, there are four shelves on the left side, and up high is a long shelf that runs around on three sides. (Poor syntax.  I can just picture a shelf sweating and panting as it does laps.  That’s a lot like my eight grade teacher’s example, “She saw an elephant sitting on the porch.”  Oh, well.  Back to the story. . .)

Almost everything lived in the office closet:  memorabilia from foreign countries, some rocks I can’t bear to part with, trophies and awards Scott received as a kid, extra office supplies, a lot of electrical stuff, my cassette players (for books on tape), miscellaneous headphones, birthday and anniversary cards, a gallon of distilled water (to be run through a mini cofffee maker by Scott’s desk for heating when he wants tea; tap water leaves too much residue in the coffee maker), recycled gift bags, thank you notes, and a door stop – to name a few representative items.

When Scott opened the closet door, nothing actually fell out.  It’s just that there was no possible way to put anything else in.  The pile on the floor was flush with the door at least knee high, and it was growing regularly thanks to stuff falling off the overburdened shelves.  (We also suspect there was some illicit breeding going on in the closet.  As in, leave two padded mailers alone together and soon you’ll have thirteen.) There was simply no way those DVD cases were going into that closet, and that’s part of why I can never get my desk clear.

I asked Scott to help me clean out the closet.

He agreed to clean off the top shelf.

I said there was no point doing any of it if we weren’t going to do all of it.

He looked at me and said, “Well, it’s your birthday and I told you I’d do anything you wanted to do, so if you REALLY want to claen the closet, (insert here a very DEEP breath), we’ll clean the closet.”  And we did.

We sorted more old junk than you can imagine.  We unearthed reams of detailed paperwork.  Some was from our days at BHAG, some from when Scott pastored AFLC, and some from our days at Agape.  That was 13 years and four churches ago!  We filled the office trash can so many times that Scott finally went out and brought in a big garbage can (the kind you roll out to the street) which he positioned at the foot of the stairs, so we didn’t have to haul the bags so far.

We found numerous “treasures” to give away to friends.  (At least I hope they’ll still be our friends.)  And we loaded quite a few grocery bags for the thrift store.

We even tackled the dreaded electronics box on the floor of the closet.  (It really was still down there, but it had buried itself beneath the get well cards, some ties Scott will never wear, and some shrink-wrapped sheets of Strawberrry Shortcake gift wrap from the dollar store in 1997.)  In our house, we have a thing about electronics parts and cords.  We can’t get rid of them.

Now, on one in our house is gifted or even particularly interested in the electronics repair business.  In fact, we finally found the new, unopened soldering iron (the one we couldn’t find when Scott determined to fix my broken crock-pot a few months ago, forcing us to borrow one from a neighbor) BEHIND the electronics box.  Despite all that, we keep every cord of every kind (never wrapped up or rubber-banded), every charger, every converter, and every item that remotely resembles anything to do with a computer or a telephone – forever.  When we happen across such an item, we simply open the office closet door and toss.  It may or may not land in the electronics box, and wherever is does land is precisely where it stays – until last night.

My Beloved and I actually sorted through ALL those wires, ditching most of them, and tidily coiling the rest with rubber bands.  Except for one router, all the gizmos went, and we now have only enough (neatly organized) phone cord to reach out and touch everyone in a three-county area.

After conquering the electronics box, we culled and sorted all the remaining truly useful stuff and found places for it on the shelves.

Now the floor of our office closet is bare.  You can even see the wood flooring! The shelves are neatly organized, and there are almost four shelf-feet of EMPTY SPACE!  And that’s after clearing off my desk and relocating into the closet much of the stuff that has lived illegitimately on, in, and around my desk for lo these many years.

I’m so very pleased with the result, and it was the perfect way to spend my birthday evening.  In the words of my dear Jessica, “Oh, that’s VERY satisfying!”

Oh, rats! (a commentary on decluttering)

When I declutter, I end up with a few items – usually small – or rarely as much as a grocery bag’s worth of stuff for the thrift shop.  When Scott declutters, it’s a whole ‘nother animal.  I tackle things like one small drawer, or one cubic foot of closet space.  Yesterday, Scott began tackling the garage and the shop.

I became aware of the situation when Andrew came running into the house hollering for my camera.  You must understand out out-building configuration to fully comprehend the situation.  We live in a house.  Attached to the house is a one-car-sized portable building that was once used as a garage.  It sports lovely green indoor-outdoor carpet, and we initially used it as a playroom.  It’s now a glorified storage area and ping-pong arena.  We still call it the playroom.

Directly behind the house is a smokehouse.  It is the final resting place for things like sleds, split wood, potting soil, and sunflower seed for the birds.  We call it the smokehouse.

Along the driveway is an old, crooked, wooden, divided building with a tin roof and gravel floor.  If you drive small, fuel-efficient foreign cars, you could conceivably park one in each side.  However, we tried that once and had to do $1000 in repairs to a car that a pack rat invaded and tried to destroy.  There are wooden doors on this building, but they don’t close very well (leaving foot-wide gaps), so we don’t close them at all.  We use it as an open, two-stall storage area for relatively indestructible things like the grill, lawn chairs, charcoal, odd pieces of plywood, and bicycles.  We call it the garage.

Directly behind (but not attached to) the garage is portable building #2.  It’s a little barn-looking building with a wood floor, a loft-ish shelf at the back, and a tiny workspace on one side.  We park the riding mower, push mower, and weedeater in there, along with rakes, extension cords, gas cans, a few quarts of oil, weedeater twine, shovels, and tomato cages.  We call it the lawn building.

At the far back edge of the property is our size extra large portable building #3.  I’m not real good with estimates, but I’d guess it might be ten feet wide by 20 feet long, with a large shelf at the back.  The former owners used it as a large shop, and we use it for (you guessed it) some tools and a lot more junk.  Up on the shelf, it houses things like the baby crib, a few sentimental baby clothes, and other paraphernalia of early childhood.  The two workbenches along the right wall accommodate Scott’s tools, and the rest of the space is filled with (in my opinion) stuff that we need to throw out but with which My Hero is unable or unwilling to part.  From time to time, these have included such treasures as dining room chairs with broken off legs, a washing machine that leaks, a couch with ripped upholstery, etc.  Occasionally someone tackles cleaning out this building, but within 90 days, no one can tell one ever tried.  We call it the shop.

On our property, unused, unwanted items of bulky size generally move first to the playroom, where they rest for a year or two, then out to the shop, where they decay for another year or two.  Then, when Scott’s out of town, Jessica and I drag them back down to the place where there would be a curb if we had one, and someone usually hauls them off by sundown.

All that to say that we have been in possession of two unused twin size mattresses.  One of them I can’t even remember the story on, and the other was one that our local urinarily challenged member had soaked.  I was in favor of burning mattress #2 or taking it to the dump, but Scott felt that we should save it.  Why?  I have no earthly idea.  It was a cheap mattress that had been given to us in about 2000, and it stunk to high heaven.  So, it went out to the garage.  Yes, the garage, the two-stall, open, doorless, gravel-floored garage where our Cadillac had been ransacked by rats.

So when Scott embarked on his grand decluttering project, he and Andrew first tackled the garage, from which Andrew came running to get my camera.  “Mom!  You won’t believe it!  There’s a rat IN my mattress and I’ve GOT to get a picture!”

Did I really even WANT such a picture?

I was working on banking stuff and I just gave him the camera and kept plugging away.  A few minutes later he was back with two pictures, which he insisted on showing me.  Yes, indeed, a rat had nested into the mattress, and she was suckling two babies as her photo was snapped!  Good night!

Scott placed a huge blue tarp on the driveway right in front of the garage, and dragged the two mattresses onto it.  In addition, he piled some old bikes (or maybe parts thereof), at least one dead computer monitor, and who knows what all else into a heap on the tarp.  He announced, “I have a special trash pick-up coming on Wednesday.  We need to put all our junk on this tarp, and they will haul it off.”

Of course, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.  However, I am just thankful that Scott’s willing to clear some of his out!  After all, I have half a grocery bag for the thrift shop and he has about five cubic feet for the trash man – so far.

Three sizes fit all

Every now and then, I have an idea that turns out to be really smart.  A couple weeks ago, I acted on one of those thoughts, and boy, has it ever been nice.

The topic would be leftover dishes.  Unlike some families, we do endeavor to save and eat our leftovers.  Well, at least we put them in the fridge, label and date them, and either eat them or throw them out seven days later.  The meats and carbs generally get eaten, and the veggies often get ditched, but that’s beside the point.

The point is that I have a whole cabinet in the kitchen crammed full of leftover dishes.  I am not exaggerating.  Many years ago, I swore off round leftover dishes, because they take up too much space, both in the cabinet and in the fridge.  Also, because we have so MANY sizes of the little beasts, at one point I even labeled the tops and bottoms with matching numbers, to try make things as little easier.

Then a couple years ago, I found some cheap Zip-Loc leftover dishes that I really liked.  We used them for quite a while, but eventually, the lids started cracking.  When I then bought some new Zip-Loc leftover dishes, which appeared to be exactly like the ones I already had, it turns out the Zip-Loc folks had very slightly re-engineered their lids, so that they would not quite fit the previous bottoms.  This was extremely.  To make matters even worse, a few months later, the tops and bottoms were re-engineered a second time, so that there were now three types of tops and bottoms, all the same size, and all of which looked like they’d fit together perfectly.  However, no matter which bottom you put the peas in, you’d have to try ALL the suitable lids to proved that NONE of them fit before losing your cool and dumping the peas into another bottom and trying again.

In addition to all that, there’s the matter of sizes.  We had small square shallow, and small square deep.  We had oblong small shallow and oblong medium shallow.  We also had square medium shallow, as well as the ever-popular oblong medium deep.  Then there were those few odd-sized larger ones that are rather difficult to describe.

With Katie in college, when the other three kids went to an AIM Family Camp for three days last month, it was a very quiet, very empty house.  Also, with 2/3 of my dishwashing crew in absentia, I found myself doing all the dishes at every meal.  One evening Scott offered to help by putting away the leftovers.  In so doing, he experienced a pea event similar to the one just described, and while the kids and I are well-accustomed to that tedious procedure, he was not.  Furthermore, he was decidedly not being entertained.  After three tries for a lid, he fairly threw a misfit back into the cabinet, muttering something like, “. . . have too many stupid leftover dishes around here. . . ” under his breath.

Turning from my Palmolive water, I said, “You know, I have thought about throwing them all out and buying new ones that are all the same.”  To which Scott replied, “You won’t hear any complaints from me!”

Now, I have learned in 21 years of marriage that there are times to strike while the iron’s hot.  This was clearly one of those times.  In less than a week, I was home with some $25 worth of containers; all the same brand, and in only three sizes:  square shallow and square deep, which both use the same lid (how fun is THAT?!?!?), and oblong shallow.

Jessica and I had a ball sorting out all the old ones.  We actually matched a lid to every container, and the mismatches went straight to File 13.  The complete pairs were then packed into 13-gallon trash bags and stored in the cellar in case the kids want them when they move out.  I didn’t used to make plans based on “when the kids move out,” but life has progressed to a point that I must accept the fact that such events may be in the not-too-distant future.

Now my leftover cabinet is happy and so is my husband.  Furthermore, putting those puppies away is a snap.  If it’s a square, you put a square lid on it, and if it’s a rectangle, you put a rectangular lid on it.  No searching, no trial and error, no frustration.

I should get a point!  Now I wonder which mess I should tackle next.

Amazing what guests encourage you to clean

Two AIM sisters from Delaware will be spending a couple nights with us this week.  Katie knows them, and Jessica has met one of them, but I don’t know Courtney or Emily.

I keep a fairly messy, dirty house, and most of the time those things don’t bother me too much.  What really gets my goat is clutter.  I can’t STAND clutter.  Anyway, things like dusting, sweeping, and mopping can go a long time without happening around here.

Yesterday, I thought I heard the vacuum cleaner running.  It wasn’t Josiah doing the boys rooms, and it wasn’t Andrew doing the living room.  The only other place we have carpet is in the attic, but – no, surely not.  However, went I went to the attic this afternoon to weed the library with Katie, I poked my head into her room and it was not only neat (this is somewhat uncommon); it was clean! I suspect the guest girls will be sleeping up there.

That motivated me to get my buns in gear, so I cleaned our bathroom, dusted, swept, and mopped our bedroom, and swept the office, hall, and lower stairs.  I feel that I have accomplished something, and I hope it’s still evident when the girls arrive tomorrow night.

In other news, I am doing fairly well on my de-cluttering goal.  I am trying to remove from our house at least seven things every week for a year.  I started on February 24, and so far, I have removed 32 items.  Today’s item was huge, but I can’t take any credit.  When we re-did the living room, I persuaded My Hero that it was time to stop using the blue couch that was given to us 11 years ago and which I’ve never liked.  = )  I wanted to put it in the playroom, but he said he wanted to give it to someone – not just let a stranger pick it up.

It’s been in there for a couple of months, and today a man who’s the youth pastor at a local church (whom Scott had shown the couch to a couple weeks ago) came and picked it up!  They will use it in their youth room.  Their young people have been praying for furniture for that room.  Scott’s glad it went to a good cause, and I’m glad it’s g-o-n-e.

Corner work

Another homeschooling, blogging mom had the wonderful idea to de-clutter her life one messy corner at a time. I look around my house, and every conceivable place has piles of junk. Our office is now so bad that the piles have oozed off the desks and onto the floor. They have been kicked toward the walls, so that there is a pathway to get from the door to each desk, but it truly feels like the walls (I mean piles) are closing in on me.

I am overwhelmed by trying to de-junk the whole house or even a whole room, so today I tackled one very small “corner:” the top of my dresser. Most of the dress looks okay, but there is a basket on one end taht has become a catch-all for anything I can’t figure out where to put. Today I emptied the basket, ditched much of its contents, and actually put the rest of A-WAY (a foreign concept in our home).

Now I am trying to decide which “corner” to tackle next. It’ll have to be some aspect of this office.

My life is too cluttered.

Today I looked around the house and realized that there was stuff piled in every corner and on every available surface.  I am SO TIRED OF ALL THE MESS!  So, after I vented to Scott, he and the kids worked really hard to get some areas picked up and cleaned up.  Now I am motivated to continue the process, so if I can do some little thing each day to de-clutter, or at least throw out some piece of junk, I will be making progress.

I cannot blog right now. Boo hoo.

I know my limits, and I have reached one.  When the piles on one’s desk top off even with one’s shoulders, it is time to avoid blogging and clean off the desk!