Keeping the Kitchen Table Clean

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness
• She is like the merchants ships, she bringeth her food from afar

Yesterday's post in the 5 Days to Clean challenge was about getting back into my groove in the kitchen. Today I worked on getting back on track with my regular daily routine, and also tackled the other end of our kitchen, which we euphemistically call the "dining room", although it's part of one long room.  It's been a real mess lately due to a failure in my other routine--my weekly routine.

One of the worst failures I've had in the last few weeks involves the kitchen/dining table.  It's right by the carport door, and it's the landing pad for everything that comes into the house, from purchases to mail to purse or backpack.  

A few years ago, I started lighting candles every Friday night to welcome the Biblical Sabbath. I was working outside the home at the time, so Fridays involved stopping on the way home from work to pick up a rotisserie chicken from the deli of a local grocery, a loaf of bread and maybe a couple of sides, then rushing into the house, and hurrying to get a space cleared so we could light the candles and eat.  

Fast forward a few years, and I was no longer working, so I did better about clearing the table and getting things ready on Friday, but it was still hit-and-miss sometimes if I got the table cleared all the way before dinner.  

Then we started a Friday night Bible study in our home, centered around the table, so you can be sure that it was cleared every week!  When the Bible study ended, I kept up the habit of using Friday evenings to clear off the table and get it ready for our family Shabbat.  

Even though we use this table daily, and it's still our landing pad for whatever comes in the back door, there was something about clearing it off completely once a week that helped us to keep it picked up the rest of the week as well.  

Then several weeks ago we started attending Shabbat elsewhere, and without that weekly clearing off, the table disintegrated into chaos!  

I made up my mind last week when I came home to a messy table, that whether we are home or away on Friday nights, the table will be cleared and ready.  

And after today---it's ready!

I know from experience that we'll set the mail down on it again, and leave books and papers and everything else on it from time to time--but knowing that it will be cleared off every Friday helps us to be conscious about keeping it (somewhat) picked up the rest of the week.

How do you incorporate your cleaning into your weekly routine? Do you have certain days that you do certain things?

Until next time...

Goovin' in the Kitchen

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness

As part of the 5 Days to Clean challenge, I'd like to say I got back into my groove again today,but unfortunately, I really didn't do too much.   I slept in a little, didn't get up until almost 7:00 a.m.  I did  a very brief quiet time before I got dressed for the gym and headed out.  After our work out, I visited with my mom and dad at their house for bit, came home and grabbed a glass of tea and a bite to eat, checked in here and on facebook, and honestly, vegged out in front of the tv for a while.  

I finally got up to take my glass and dish back to the kitchen, and realized I couldn't put it off any longer, I had to get my kitchen back in order.  

 The photo is a bit dark, but you can get the gist of it.  Not horrible, but not good, either!

I usually try to start at the sink. I  had clean dishes from last night on the drainboard, an empty tea pitcher and some dirty dishes in the sink.

First things first...

...put away the clean dishes.

Second, put the dishes to soak in hot, soapy water.  

While they were soaking for a few minutes, I made some tea and when I put it in the fridge, I used that opportunity to clean out a couple of things and wipe some of the fridge shelves down...

...then washed up the dishes.  

I went ahead and mixed up the cookies I had planned to make, and after they were done I wiped down the stove,  

and soaked a couple of the stove drip pans in the sink.  How in the world do they get so dirty?

In the end I had a clean stove...

clean counter top...

and a clean sink!

My house is still no where near ready for the holidays, and neither am I, but I'm a little closer now than I was earlier today.  

Until next time...

My "Ugly Room Challenge" Update

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She worketh willingly with her hands

Did you see my post last week with the "before" pictures of my "Ugly Room" self-challenge?

No? Well, you need to go look at them.  I'll wait.

Rough, right?

Now let me show you what this room looks like today.  (Pardon the lighting, it was an early morning pre-dawn hour when I took these, and my flash and the lighting in the room aren't the best way to view this room.)

This is the first glimpse you get when you head down the hall.  Better, yes?

Here is the desk area.

Bookcases and cleaned and straightened.  I purged at least 100 books, believe it or not, but replaced them with books from boxes and piles.  This is probably about half of the books we own. There are still others stashed in boxes, our son has at least two bookcases worth of his personal books in his room, and I have probably another book case worth, at least, in my office at church.

The lovely couch is now ready for a nap or a sit, as is the "reading nook" chair.  

And just to show you the reality, we had company coming over, so, while I did do a lot of cleaning, organizing, and purging, I also did some "stash-and-dash" cleaning--put things in a box or bag, and stash it someplace out-of-sight until later!

Another, smaller "stash-and-dash" pile.  

I still to do some work around the desk, too.

And whatever do you do with old journals and sentimental things?  I read somewhere that Beth Moore has instructed her daughters that if anything ever happens to her, they are to take her journals and burn them immediately!  That's how I feel, I would really hate for anyone else to ever read these, and yet I'm not quite ready to torch them myself yet!

I noticed over on Mom's the Word that her post is about having a cut-off-time for chores--this is especially true when you tackle something huge like my "ugly room".  There is no way this could all have been done in a day--even a week, to be honest, unless every thing else is neglected.  But laundry and cooking and dishes still needed doing.  I had a funeral to attend, and church and grocery shopping and company coming over--I needed to attend to the rest of the house, too.  And besides that, you can only work on clutter and cleaning and organizing for so long before you start to make poor decisions about what to keep and where to put it--as soon as I started getting to the point of just mindlessly wanting to through it all away, or alternatively, box it all up and avoid dealing with it, I knew I needed to take a break.

My "ugly room" is still far from finished.  I need to do another sweep through the bookcases and purge a little more.  I need to go through the "stash-and-dash" boxes one at a time. (Oh, and did I mention that I stashed a few boxes in the closet, too?) But at this stage, it's at least clean--you can't imagine the dust I've inhaled in the last week or two! And it's do-able, and approachable.

My "ugly room" is no more.  Now it's just a room---not good or bad, it just is what it is, and I'm up for the challenge to make it into a peaceful retreat for this family of book nerds. I want to change the curtains, add something to a couple of the walls, maybe a throw rug to cover the worn-out wood floors, who knows?  It's still far from pretty, but it's definitely a change in the right direction!

Until next time...

This post is linked to:
Make Your Home Sing at Mom's the Word
Make it Pretty Monday at the Dedicated House
The HomeMaking Party at Hope in Every Season

My "Ugly Room" Challenge

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness

Do you have an "ugly room"?

You know, the room that starts off as one thing--a spare bedroom, or an office--and then transitions into a multi-use room--a spare bedroom/office/library/extra closet space room. And before you know it, it becomes the "I have no place to put this, put this in the "                         room" room. Or, "Put this in the                         room, I'll put it away later" room.  Maybe even the "Quick, someone is coming over, put everything out of sight in the                               room" room.

Feel free to fill in the blank with whatever yours is called.

Whatever name you use, it becomes the dumping ground for whatever you don't have space/time/energy to deal with.

I have one of those rooms.  Mine is euphemistically called "the front bedroom", even though there isn't a bed in it anymore, and it's actually on the back side of our house.  Our house belonged to my grandparents at one time, and that's what they called it, so that's what we call it, too--although, in their day, it was actually a bedroom! And it was the "front" bedroom, because it's the first bedroom you come to when you start down the hall from the "front" or more public portion of the house. But I digress.  Or as we say in the south "chase a rabbit".

Lately, though, I've been calling mine the "ugly room", because that's what it is to me.

And I'm determined to change it.

In April, when I was posting on the "Clean in 30 Days" house cleaning challenge, I thought I would get the rest of the house clean first, and then tackle this sore spot.  And then in May, when I was doing the "Clutter Busting Challenge", I kept thinking that I would get to this room eventually.  In both cases, I got sidetracked by life from my ultimate goal of Getting This House Clean From Top to Bottom--including my junk room.

Sidetracked by life, and also, I admit it, personal dread of even tackling it.

I am making a resolve, though, to quit running and hiding from challenges, and instead to tackle them--head on, if I can get the courage, or on the blind side just a little at a time if that's all I can manage.

I really enjoyed blogging about the Clean in 30 and Clutter Busting challenge, so I decided to make my own challenge, I'm calling it  My "Ugly Room" Challenge.

Step one on any 12-step program is to admit you have a problem.

Well, I'm going to do one better--I'm going to take you on a little tour and show you my problem room, in all of it's ugliness.

When you walk into my ugly room squarely from the door, this is the sight that greets you.  This is my office corner, which, as you can see, has the requisite equipment--desk, chair, printer/scanner, filing cabinet, paper shredder, and even task lighting--note the reading lamp clipped to the edge of a file drawer.  Lighting is atrocious in this room, all we have is a ceiling fan light in the middle of the room, so when you sit at the desk, you create your own shadowed work space, and with the paneling, it feels slightly cave-like.  

And, as you can see, we have no lack of paper clutter.  This is my "to-be-filed" stack. I told my husband that I didn't file because, although, there was a filing cabinet and desk, there was no place to sit at the desk unless I waggled in a kitchen chair.  So I requested a new office chair as a gift, which I received--in December.  Hmmm.

Slightly to the left is the old desk chair, which actually belongs to my son, and as you can see, has issues.  Ha!  My husband thinks he can fix it, so we haven't gotten rid of it, but once it's fixed, it'll take it's place in another room.  Behind that is an old easy chair, part of a past effort to make a cozy reading nook beside the bookcases.  (See "lack of good lighting" above.)

And that brings us to--the bookcases. These were my pride and joy at one time--stacked and organized and arranged just so--but somewhere along the line we got more books than they could hold, and as we pulled and read and put back, and meanwhile, kept acquiring more books--it's become so difficult to find what we're looking for, I think we've actually bought a couple of books more than once, because we couldn't find the original, or even worse, forgot we already had it. And this is not to mention the books we bought when we were living elsewhere that are still in boxes, because, obviously, there was no place to put them when we moved back home.

And now to the lovely hand-me-down sofa that lives under this pile of clothes and books and baskets and bags and who-knows-what-else.  It's really a pretty sofa, and very comfortable for both sitting and napping, which you can't say about just any sofa.  And yet, here it is, un-sat-or-napped-upon because it's to much trouble to un-load it, and where would you put the stuff on it, anyway.

As you can see, I have all of the bones to make a really nice office/library/sitting room, it's just buried under so much stuff, that you can't even see the bones, much less flesh them out and build on them.

Can anyone relate?

I've actually already been working in my ugly room a little at a time this past week.  It has to be a little at a time, because any more time than that and I find myself so overwhelmed or wracked with indecision about what to do with some of the items in there, that it becomes a waste.  There are moments that I've gotten on a roll and done more than I intended, there have also been times that I find myself sitting on the broken chair and reading, or looking at old photos that I've unearthed, or even speculating on just how long some object has been hidden away in a box without me even remembering it was there. I've chased a lot of rabbits when I needed to be purging and decluttering and cleaning.

A lot of the "stuff" that I'm finding is perfectly good "stuff".  It just isn't relevant to who I am any more--like books on parenting small children, or hobbies that I don't do any more.  Tax forms from more years ago than I care to remember.  Double and triple prints of photos where I was obviously just trying to use up the end of the roll. Collections of things that I don't really collect any more.

So I'm working on it.

Sometimes we just get busy, and things suffer for it.  But sometimes I think having an "ugly room" can be a symptom of larger issues for some of us.  At times I find myself bogged down in life, just like I get bogged down in my "ugly room".  I have the bones--the basics--for a very fulfilling life, and yet I  manage to fill it so full of stuff--not bad stuff, just stuff that may not be relevant to who I am anymore--so that instead of feeling fulfilled, I just start to feel ugly, inside and out.

Like my ugly room.

When that happens, I need to stop and re-evaluate, what is relevant and useful and pretty, and what is not.  
My ugly room is changing, little by little, and so am I.

Line upon line, line upon line.  Precept upon precept, here a little and there a little.

I'll keep you updated.

Until next time.

This post is linked to:
Show and Tell Saturday at Be Different...Act Normal
Make Your Home Sing Monday at Mom's the Word

A Virtuous Woman Cleans the Microwave

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness

Today is the last day of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge at Money Saving Mom.  I've enjoyed this immensely--not only getting my house to a much cleaner state, helping myself get back into a morning routine of daily maintenance, but also seeing the posts from other participants. You can see the link-ups at Money Saving Mom or on the MSM Pinterest board.

Today's task is to clean electronics--tvs, computers, smartphones, etc.  We have some of these things, and they probably do need cleaning, but my microwave (the project I was intending to do yesterday and didn't) is in desperate need of cleaning, so I decided to tackle it today.

I have a big, old (28 years and counting) microwave that has quit on me a couple of times, but my electrician husband always manages to fix it. Bless his heart. I really earnestly covet a smaller, faster one, but to be honest with ya'll, we mostly just use it to heat up leftovers anyway, so I'll stick with my dinosaur until it "passes" for good.

Kind of gross, huh? I always wonder what exactly exploded in here that managed to drip all down the front... 

...and even onto the inside of the door.

The easiest way I've found to clean a microwave is to put about a cup of water in a two-cup glass measuring cup and microwave for about four minutes--long enough to bring it to a boil and steam up the inside a little bit.

Then just wipe clean.  Well, maybe wipe a couple of times, rinsing your cloth well in hot water in between...

Even the inside of the door wipes clean!

Have you enjoyed these Cleaning Challenge posts?  I know I've enjoyed doing them.

Next month (which starts tomorrow!) I'll be joining the fun again over at Money Saving Mom with the Clutter Busting Challenge--which is to get rid of 7 things in your house every day for the month of May--that's 217 things gone! 

I think I'm up for it.

Until next time...

A Virtuous Woman Gets Sidetracked--and Overwhelmed

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness
• She is like the merchants ships, she bringeth her food from afar

The day this post was started (Monday) was Day 29 of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge at Money Saving Mom.  Our task was to clean one thing that really needed it that we'd been putting off--a drawer, a cabinet, the microwave, etc.

It was my intention, when I'd read ahead and seen what Monday's task would be, to clean my microwave--lots of spills and cooked on messes in there that I've been putting off taking care of!

But meanwhile, Saturday on my way to a Women's Ministry meeting, I saw a man selling these beauties on the side of the road, and when he was still there as I left the meeting, I couldn't resist, and stopped and bought a whole flat of these beautiful Louisiana strawberries.

All of you ladies in the cold, are you jealous yet?  April in Louisiana is strawberry season, and strawberries from Hammond are the best.  Twelve full pint baskets and a whole layer of extras on top, I think these flats are the equivalent of about 14 pints that you buy in the store. 

I think I might have lost my mind just a moment when I decided to buy these this week.  Saturday evenings are always busy getting ready for church on Sunday, Sundays are busy with church and getting ready for the week ahead, Tuesday I had a lunch date with a friend who is moving away, Wednesdays are usually my church office day, and Thursday we are leaving on a little trip out state. 

So that leaves--Monday. To do something with all of these beautiful, ripe, luscious berries. I was planning pies and freezer jam, with maybe a little something extra thrown in there, as well.  Meanwhile, I gave one pint away, and we ate another pint. I made my plans, and it seemed doable.

Sunday night I washed jelly jars. 

First thing on the agenda Monday morning was a trip to the grocery store. That was actually my first mistake.  I should have stuck with my morning routine and cleaned and straightened the house first, but I thought I'd get to that later. (Note to self: "Later" never gets here).

Then I thought I'd pre-bake a couple of pie crusts. Umm, something obviously went wrong. (Somehow, in my hurry, I didn't press the edges tight enough, or prick the sides.) But not one to waste food, I decided it would have to do and pressed on.

I started getting berries prepared.  I think I washed and hulled 6-7 pints to start with. 

There were berries everywhere, not to mention the rest of the messes.

About this time, my folks arrived with packages of their wonderful homegrown beef they'd picked up from the meat processing plant, so I stopped and put away their generous gift, then went to their house to help them unload and put away the meat for the rest of the family.  My sister came by, so I stayed to visit for awhile, then my mom fixed us all some lunch, and next thing I knew it was mid afternoon and all I had to show for my day was a bunch of washed and hulled strawberries and a couple of ugly pie crusts. 

So I promptly went back to my house and made two of the ugliest strawberry pies I've ever laid eyes on.

Then I made a small batch of low-sugar freezer jam, and seven jars of what has turned out to be sweetened crushed strawberries, suitable for pouring over ice cream and not much else.  (Note to self: read the fine print that says that smaller batches work best, larger ones may not "set".)  (Either that or I needed to drain some of the juice off so there was less juice, more berries.)  I even tried pouring it all back in the bowl and stirring in some more pectin.  Not such luck. 

At the end of the day, I was tired, frustrated, had a still-messy house, and felt like I had wasted time, money, energy, resources, you name it. 

And had no supper to feed my family. And a still-dirty microwave.

We ate sandwiches.  And pie.

On the bright side, the pies tasted good, even if they weren't photogenic (and you know we bloggers love photogenic)

My husband even poured some "jam" over some ice cream later and declared it the best strawberry ice cream topping he's ever had. 

So this is what I cleaned today--my kitchen. Over and over again. 

As for myself--sometimes I need to plan better.  Sometimes I need to say "no", even to myself, even to something good (like a whole flat of strawberries on an already-busy week).  And sometimes, I just need to lighten up. 

And eat some strawberry syrup.

Until next time...

This post is linked to:

Spiritual Sundays

The Weekend Brew at My Freshley Brewed Life

Make My Home Sing Monday at Moms the Word

Monday Meet Up at Covered in Grace

Homemaking Party at Hope in Every Season

A Virtuous Woman Finds Contentment in What She Has

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness

Today is Day 26 of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge, and since most everyone takes the weekend off, or of posting about it on the weekends, anyway, we could choose from surface cleaning bathrooms, bedrooms, or doing floors again.

Since we just did the floors earlier this week, and I'm pretty much keeping the bedroom and bathroom clean with my daily routine, I didn't do too much today except just that--my daily routine. 

So, no pictures of "before" and "after", but a few thoughts.

I've had such a good time doing this challenge; not only has it motivated me to get (and keep!) my house cleaned up, I've enjoyed clicking over to Crystal's posts on Money Saving Mom and seeing not just what she's accomplished, but the other ladies who are participating, as well.  

It's fun to see everyone's house from an "inside" perspective, to ask (or see someone else ask) questions like "How do you keep your counter tops cleaned off all the time?" and "Where do you keep your food?" as well as "What can I do to clean my oven safely?"  and "What do ya'll do about kids chores?"

It's been fun, and it's been refreshing, too, to see where other people struggle--or to glean ideas about organization from seeing how someone else does it.

It's also opened my eyes to some areas of mine that I've been overlooking--now that the surfaces are staying pretty well cleaned, I'm noticing the detailed, deeper cleaning that I've neglected for so long.  And then there's nothing like taking and editing pictures to make you say "Is that what those curtains really look like?  What was I thinking?"

It's also easy to see those who have a big, nice kitchen, or who have all of the storage space that you don't have, or all of the latest gadgets, or a home that's beautifully decorated when yours is sort of--not. 

I have to tell you ladies, I live in a older house, built in 1962.  (I say it's too old to be new, but not old enough to be interesting.) I have a small kitchen--the room is big, but the kitchen itself is small, if that makes sense, with very limited counter space.  I have a tiny little living room, and only one bathroom. We made some cosmetic changes when we moved in sixteen years ago, but not much as been touched since. 

I guess the point I'm trying to make is--I like my little home, but it's not my dream house.  There are a lot of things I'd change about it if I could, some of which may happen in the future, some, probably not. 

But I'm so much happier with it when it's clean, and not so cluttered, and organized.  I still have some areas to work on, that's for sure.  But I look around, and I see the overall orderliness that's spreading, slowly but surely, and I smile.

And I remember that it's paid for, and I smile again. 

And I look at those curtains, and I think--you're time is coming! 

"But godliness with contentment is great gain...and having food and raiment let us be therewith content." 

1 Timothy 6: 6 & 8

I have so much more than just food and clothing--I want to find that proper balance between being inspired to make improvements, while being content with what I have. 

Sounds like the quality of a Virtuous Woman to me.

Until next time...

This post is linked to:

Spirtual Sundays

Heart Reflected

Making Your Home Sing Monday at Moms the Word

Monday's Musings at What Joy is Mine

A Virtuous Woman Cooks and Cleans

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness

Today's task on the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge at Money Saving Mom was to surface or deep clean the kitchen and/or living room.

Since I've been doing the challenge, my house is staying so clean, I pretty much surface clean the kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bathroom every day.  I still have some hidden areas--closets, cabinets, etc, that need to be tackled, not to mention my biggie--the junk room spare bedroom. That's a project that's coming soon, but now is not the time in my schedule to tackle it yet. 

So today, I did my regular morning routine, (quick cleaning the bathroom, bedroom, living room, and kitchen) as well as washing and drying a load of clothes, doing some grocery shopping,and cooking a good dinner for my family. 

As this is posted, dinner is over, the kitchen is cleaned again, all but a bowl of leftovers that's cooling on the counter before I put it away--and, I had time to do a post on my food blog, Secrets of a Southern Kitchen, for roasted root vegetables.


Check it out if you have time!

Until next time...

A Virtuous Woman Cleans the Floors--and Loves Her Wonderful Husband

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness
• The heart of her husband trusts safely in her...(and hers in his)

I started this post yesterday ('Tuesday) but had some computer issues and didn't get this posted, but in the end, it turned into a whole different kind of post.  First, read the original:

Here we are at Day 23 of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge from Money Saving Mom. Today's task is to vacuum and/or sweep all of the floors in the house, or if that was too overwhelming, to do just the main traffic areas. 

Sounds simple, right?  Wrong.

It's not enough that, to honest with you, I hate intensely dislike doing floors. But my vacuum cleaner sucks!  As in, it doesn't suck.

Ya'll remember me telling you about how I broke our vacuum cleaner trying to get all of the hair off the carpet on my side of the bedroom? The hair got wrapped around the beater bar, and the next thing I knew, I smelled smoke.  I thought at the time that the belt had burned through and broken--why, because I broke a belt on a vacuum cleaner once before, doing something similar.  I'm not sure how exactly, but I did manage to take that one apart and replace the belt. This time, though, it wasn't something simple like the belt, apparently I burned the motor up that drives the belt, or stripped the gear drive that moves it or something way beyond me being able to fix it. My husband is a genius with vacuums, though, so he assured me that he could fix it if we could get the parts.  And believe it our not, we found an almost exact replica that our church was throwing away after getting a replacement, which we snagged to scavenge for parts.  But since my husband has been working practically non-stop the last few weeks, he hasn't had time to take the two broken vacuums and make one good one out of it.

Well, fast forward to today.  I was planning to use our back-up vacuum. Yes, we have a back-up, another scrounged one.  When we lived in a corporate apartment in Georgia, it 'belonged 'to our apartment, but started to have problems, so it was replaced with a new one at the housekeeper's request.  (Yes, I had a housekeeper for a few years! Twice a month, like clockwork.)  The old one was slated for the dumpster, but we asked if we could have it, and after receiving permission, my husband took it apart and cleaned it good, and it works worked as good as new.

So, as I was saying, I took our back-up vacuum to the bedroom, and I decided to start on my husband's side of the bed, which was the easiest. First I had to figure out how to turn it on, since the switch was in the "wrong" place, but I managed to turn it on and run it back and forth, but nothing was being picked up, even the simplest of fuzz.  So I adjusted the height.  Still nothing.  Pulled out the attachment wand, and it was barely sucking.  The canister had some dirt in it, not enough to fill it, but I thought, well, maybe if I empty the canister.  So I carried the canister to the kitchen to empty into the trash. 

Now, I know bagless vacuums are the newest thing and all, but it's never as easy as it looks on the commercials.  If it has any actually dirt in at all, dumping it raises a dust storm around the trashcan, I don't care how careful you are, and this one was no exception.

Noting carefully the instructions on the side, which say that the filter at the top should be cleaned every time the canister is emptied, I took the top of the canister and off and gently tapped it on the side of the trashcan as instructed.  Not much came out, and it did seem really clogged, so I tapped it just a little harder.  I promise, I barely tapped it.  It just happened to fly out of my hand and bounced on the kitchen floor.  At which point it disgorged itself of dust, all over the kitchen floor.

So what did I do?  I left it there and went back and tried to vacuum.  This time, the attachment hose sucked very well, but the bottom part still didn't.  I debated crawling around the floor using the attachment hose to vacuum with, but I decided to wait until my husband gets home to see if he can figure out what's wrong with it.  I'm hoping it's an easy fix, like a plastic bag sucked up inside and stopping it up.  (That's what was wrong with it last time).

So what did I do? I left it there and went back and tried to vacuum. This time, the attachment hose sucked very well, but the bottom part still didn't. I debated crawling around the floor using the attachment hose to vacuum with, but I decided to wait until my husband gets home to see if he can figure out what's wrong with it. I'm hoping it's an easy fix, like a plastic bag sucked up inside and stopping it up. (That's what was wrong with it last time).

So, I swept the floors in the rest of the house, and gave up on vacuuming for now. This is including the dust from the vacuum cleaner filter.

And now, for the REST of the story.

As soon as my husband made it in from work, as I was regaling him with my story of the vacuum, he went straight to the bedroom to take a look. 

Sure enough, the beater bar had something wrapped around it, and the belt was broken.  And it wasn't my fault this time, I hadn't used the vacuum since the last time I broke the other one. At any rate, it was an easy fix, for, I assumed, the weekend. 

But it just so happens that my clever husband had bought new belts for both vacuum cleaners, along with new filters for the main, #1 one that we're scavenging parts for.  He knew they both needed a bit of an overhaul, and he was preparing for it, he just hadn't had the time to get it yet. 

In a matter of minutes, he had the back-up apart, fixed, and back up and running. 

By this point in my day, I was ready to just put it off for tomorrow (today), but, get this, ladies--my sweet husband, who had been working all day, and had come in and fixed the broken vacuum, said, "Let me get a bite to eat first, and I'll do it.  And if you want to, we can go ahead and move the bed and clean under it, like you mentioned last week ."

And he did. 

We moved the mattress and foundation, and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned under the bed.  We had to stop and clean the filter three times before we finished, or should I say, before he finished, because he did most of it. 

I had griped and grumbled to myself about having "all of these vacuums and none of them work", and about the frayed old broom I had to sweep with, and even about the dustpan with the too-tall lip that's hard to sweep the dirt onto without making a mess. And he did all of that, after a full day of work, without complaining.  Or sighing. 

It reminded me of the time of the time when we were dating, when I was trying to finish my weekend cleaning in the tiny little bachelor-girl house I was renting, so we could spend the day together, and he got down on his hands and knees and helped me scrub the kitchen floor.  That's when I knew he was a keeper.

Did I tell you that Monday evening when I was telling him that I'd cleaned four rooms that day for the challenge, he asked me how long it took--he was concerned that I wasn't allowing enough time for myself to do the things I wanted to do.  Another reason to keep him around for another twenty-nine years. 

He's put up with a lot of less-than-virtuous qualities in me in the last few months, mostly without complaining.  He's spoken to me about it a few time with concern, because he knows I haven't been myself and he was worried about me.  And he's so proud of me for what I've accomplished the last few weeks, as I've pulled out of the physical, mental, and spiritual slump that I found myself in. 

Ladies, I know the Proverbs 31 verses speak of "the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her," but in this case, I think it's the other way around. My heart can safely trust in him.


I hope you have one just like mine.

Until next time...

This post is linked to:
Matrimonial Monday at Exceptionalistic
Titus 2sday at The Time Warp Wife
A Wise Woman Builds Her Home

A Virtuous Woman Cleans Her Vehicle

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness

It's Day 19 of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge, and today's task is to clean the entryway, sweep the garage, or clean your car. I don't have an entryway, my husband recently power washed the carport, so I was left to clean my car, which is actually a truck. 

Yes, I'm a true country girl, I drive an extended cab pick-up truck.  With a camper on it, yet! 

If you knew me in real life, you'd know that I was never a pick-up truck kind of gal--my first brand new car was a Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, which I drove for a long time, which was followed by another brand new--what else--Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, which I drove, I think, sixteen years.  I finally graduated to a small SUV, and when it was on it's last legs, one of the many times it was in the shop in those last few months, I had to borrow my daddy's truck to get back and forth to work.  And fell in love.  With a truck. So my next vehicle was an extended cab pick-up truck. A few months later, when I decided to quit my job and follow my husband on the road with his job--to Alaska, no less--I added a camper shell so we could transport our clothes and personal items with us, closed up our house, and hit the road--first to Alaska, then to Colorado, and later to Georgia. It has a lot of miles on it, to put it mildly. 

Now that we're back living at home, I still drive it.  Sometimes with these gas prices, I wish I had something a little smaller, but it's paid for and runs well, so if it's not broke I'm not fixing it. 

But back to today's challenge.  Cleaning my truck is something that's been long overdue.  I like it clean, but sometimes (a lot!) I let it go way too long between cleanings.  

The first thing was cleaning out the trash.  I took a big black garbage bag out with me, and by the time I cleaned the back floorboard, under the front seats, and then flipped up the back seat--I had almost half a bag of trash--everything from at least a dozen (if not more) empty water and soft-drink bottles, to a couple of crumpled up fast food bags, to the cover of a road atlas that I no longer have, and some tourist brochures from a trip we took when we lived in Colorado--five years ago. Granted, some of these things had worked their way under the back seat, where they weren't visible, but still.  And that was just the trash.

I also had a garment bag with some dress clothes of my son's that we'd taken to see if they could be altered, (they couldn't), a library book, and another book that I don't have the faintest recollection of ever buying, much less owning/reading, a couple of crushed half-empty Kleenex boxes, some colored chalk, CDs of various ownership, an umbrella, a sun visor, and--a feather--picked up somewhere along the way.

Once I cleaned out everything that didn't belong, I took a microfiber cloth, dampened one end, and proceeded to wipe down the dash, the steering column, etc. 

Then we went to the car wash and vacuumed--it took two rounds of quarters to get it all--and then drove it through the automatic car wash--one with the attendant who scrubs the wheels and the bug guts off the front before you drive into the thingy. 

But now--no pictures, but I have a clean truck, sitting under my clean carport, next to my almost clean house.

What did you clean today?

Until next time...

To see other posts in this series, click on Clean in 30

A Virtuous Woman Cleans the Fridge and Pantry

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness

It's Day 18 of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge at Money Saving Mom and our task today is to clean out our refrigerators and/or organize our pantries. 

Well, I have to tell you, if I had read that "and/or" correctly, I would have had a lot less to show you, because I almost skipped this one, or at least part of it, for the same reason I skipped cleaning my bedroom the first time it came around on the challenge--because it needed it so badly!

The fridge is not too difficult, because it does get cleaned out from time to time, just in the course of cooking and using up things, and periodically right before trash pick up day I'll do a run through of leftovers that may have gotten away from me, or produce that's gone bad. 

That, plus the fact that I love my refrigerator--at just over a year-and-a-half old, it's the newest appliance we own, we paid cash for it, and it was exactly what we wanted--white, bottom freezer, ice maker in the freezer but no ice/water dispenser in the door.  I waited a loooooong time for it, too.

Here's the door before--one of the features I like that I didn't even know I was getting is that the upper door shelves are adjustable--you can slide them out and move them up or down or put the closing one on the bottom, or arrange any way you like. 

Refrigerator door, after.

Fridge interior, before.  Love these slide out shelves, too, they make for easier cleaning.

Fridge interior, after.

This is what I purged, including some bargain flavored cooking cream cheese that I messed around and let expire beyond redemption!

At this point, I almost quit,  I had purged, I had cleaned, I had re-organized, surely enough for one day.  I really planned to put the pantries off and do them on another day, but I was afraid that if I procrastinated on them, they'd never get done.  

So I gave myself a pep talk, and told myself to do one shelf--just one, then stop. Then come back at another time, and do just one more.  Thankfully, once I started, I realized it wasn't in quite as bad shape as I though--it mainly just needed straightening and organizing--which I did, one shelf right after the other!

Pantry one, before. 

Pantry one, after.

The canned goods are several deep, even in the "after".  I think I would love to have one of those can organizers that has everything laying on it's side, and you put the new cans in at the top and the oldest ones roll out the bottom. I'm just not sure if the apparatus itself would take up too much space.  So it's a "maybe someday" item.

I have to say, I was interested in the question a reader posed after Crystal's recent post about her pantry, about where she kept her food.  We live in the deep south, and houses here don't have basements--if we tried to dig one, we'd hit the water table and have a pond, instead!  And heat and humidity affect anything we store in the outside shed or garage, so we have to be careful there as well.  So my pantries stay pretty crammed most of the time!

This is my second pantry, before.  My husband revamped the broom closet at my request a couple of years ago, painting the inside and adding sturdy shelves, so that I could have a little more storage in the kitchen.

And this is after. 

And this is everything that I purged from all three--fridge, and both pantries. 

While I certainly don't want to take a risk with my family's health by feeding them bad food, I don't want to throw away food that's still good just because an arbitrary date stamp may be passed.  I'm old enough to remember when the only foods that had an expiration date was meat and dairy.  According to Stilltasty.com, most canned and packaged items are fine long after the manufacturer's "use by" or "best by" date if it's stored properly, especially if it's unopened.  Apply the sight, smell, and taste test, if necessary.  For cans, are they swollen or rusty--discard immediately.  Does an unopened jar still have a good seal?  Are packed items still in intact containers?  Look at the food itself--do you see signs of discoloration, mold or fungus, bugs?  Definitely discard. Smell it--does it smell "normal", not sour or "turned"?  ?And last but not least--taste a tiny bit--if it tastes "off", by all means throw it away. 

Like I said, I don't want to take a chance, so most of this will go straight into the trash, but there may be a couple of the packaged items that I may try to salvage. 

How did your cleaning go today? Did you have any outdated items?  Are you saving or throwing?

Until next time...

To see other posts in this series, click on Clean in 30