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Post by drsarah on Apr 27, 2021 15:12:58 GMT
Hi there! I have no idea whether anyone ever still hangs out here, but, if you do... hello and I do hope life is treating you as well as can currently be expected.I'm back because I feel like doing another of these long-term challenges, and this is still the best place I know for posting running-commentary threads on progress, which I find helpful. If no-one is still here, that's OK; I'll still read it. 
My plan this time is to set out to work my way through at least some of the tasks in the book '30 Days to a Clean and Organised House', by Katie Berry. (I'm realistic about this; it's highly likely that I'll never finish, and, if I do, it's likely to be years from now. But I'll be getting useful stuff done along the way, which is what counts.) I bought this book five years ago when it was on sale on Kindle, and I've enjoyed reading it every so often as a sort of glimpse into a fantasy world in which I'm the kind of person who actually does all those things, but I've never done more than try some of the very early tasks. It's a book mainly about cleaning and organising (although this inevitably involves some decluttering), and I've had so much decluttering and other stuff to do that I haven't really been able to make it a priority.
However, a) I've got an enormous amount of decluttering done in the intervening years, to the point where I'm now much more in a place where I can have a shot at this, and b) we're in the final stages of having a much-needed replacement of our kitchen cabinets and some of the worse-for-wear appliances, and having shiny new stuff is so lovely and the contrast with our messy old stuff is so great that it's inspired me to start on some cleaning missions.
I don't plan to follow the book word-for-word; I'll be skipping some missions either because I've already done them or because I really don't care (for example, Day 1's organising mission is the spice rack. I've had a look at our spice rack and can't find anything I want to throw out, so I'm keeping them. Might revisit that when we're putting all our boxed-up stuff back in the new kitchen, but, for now, I'm considering that one as done.) What I'll do is work through in order, bit by bit, on an as-and-when basis, and post whatever progress I make here.
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Post by drsarah on Apr 27, 2021 15:27:11 GMT
Soooo.... each day has a cleaning mission, an organising mission, and a maintenance mission so that the bits that have already been cleaned stay clean fairly easily.
Day 1
Cleaning mission: Daily Cleaning Routine (as listed in the book)
Organising mission: Spice rack (which, as I wrote in the last post, I'm skipping)
Maintenance mission: Laundry (as in, catch up with all of it if at all possible)
The Daily Cleaning Routine is of course supposed to be done daily, as the name suggests, and the cleaning missions are usually a lot more on the deep-clean level, but I think the idea is that a lot of people reading this book are going to be starting with the house in a real mess and so doing stuff like getting all the dirty clothes off the floor or cleaning the bathroom sink is going to take a long time on the first day, so this is meant to get all this stuff to maintenance level. That gets me off to a good start, because by this time most of this stuff either I already am doing it daily, or I or my husband or the cleaners are doing it regularly on a schedule that suits us even if it isn't daily. So I don't have much to add here; just some basic cleaning in the bathroom and tidying in the living room, and my exercise shorts to hang up properly, because I don't usually bother.
Laundry I'm also in a good rhythm with. Ironically, this might be the one week I'm behind because we've had to have the washing machine disconnected over yesterday/today due to the kitchen remodel, but I'm not counting that; I think I'll actually have enough time to catch up with stuff, but, if not, well then, I'll do what I can, since I know it's something on which I'm normally caught up. I tend to slip a bit on the 'putting away' stage, but not usually by more than a few days, and I've made sure I caught up on that. I definitely do get behind on the ironing, so I'll make that one of my goals for this day's list. I got some done on the weekend and some today, so that was a great dent in it.
So, my plan over the rest of today/tomorrow is to get as much washed of the stuff I'd normally get washed those days as possible once the washing machine is reconnected, focus on getting what I do get washed put away if possible, and catch up with the last of the ironing (three tops, one skirt of DD's, one pair of trousers). That seems doable barring unexpected crises, so it gives me a realistic goal to aim for.
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Post by drsarah on Apr 30, 2021 22:51:25 GMT
Phew... all done! Despite the fact that it took an unforeseen extra day to get the washing machine reconnected (insert glowing testimonial here about how my well-established laundry routine enabled me to take this setback completely in stride and catch up without too much difficulty, yadda, yadda), I'm caught up on all the laundry, the basic house cleaning, and the ironing. So, one down.
Meanwhile, the kitchen remodel is also all done, meaning we have lovely shiny new cabinets/oven/sink. So I'm looking forward to having a number of the early tasks already done as I go through them.
Day 2
Cleaning task: fridge Organising task: beneath the kitchen sink Maintenance task: Daily Cleaning Routine with emphasis on bedrooms
Fridge: The book has a detailed description of the ideal uber-clean that involves taking every single thing out in order to scrub the interior thoroughly in one go, pulling it out from behind the wall to vacuum behind it, and probably miniaturising yourself to crawl along the cables and scrub each individual electron with a tiny toothbrush. For practical reasons I won't be doing this (I mean, not even the first two bits which the book actually does advise doing). What I'll do is:
- Get rid of anything we're not going to use
- Move other stuff around so I can take each individual shelf out for cleaning without having a whole fridge of food to worry about in one go.
I really want to get as much as possible of this done tomorrow, since I have a window of opportunity where at the moment there's less stuff in the fridge than normal because of there being hardly anything in the way of leftovers in there; this will last until my husband gets back from the supermarket shortly after lunch. So I'll see how much I can get done in the morning.
Beneath the kitchen sink: More than half done already thanks to the remodel; I already threw out anything too old or mucky when I cleared everything out from there. Now the new cupboard is there, all I have to do is give it a wipe out to get rid of the dust from having it installed, and put the new stuff back in.
Bedroom maintenance: The book advises:
- Dust the top of dressers and nightstands
- Change the sheets
- Give the floor a good wall-to-wall vacuuming
Since I already do the sheets every Tuesday and the vacuuming every Sunday, all that leaves from this bit is the dusting.
So, one huge task and two that should be reasonably quick. Let's see how much I can do tomorrow!
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Post by drsarah on May 1, 2021 18:38:14 GMT
Day 2 update:
Fridge: Man, that was one dirty fridge. I did a lot of scrubbing, and I've now cleaned all of the inside, which is the main bit I wanted to get done today before it started filling up with food again. (I got all of it except the inside of the door done before my husband got back from the shops, and then I managed to do that part before putting away the food that belonged on those shelves.)
Cupboard under the sink: Dusted this out, so it's ready for the stuff to go back in.
Bedroom: Dusted as planned.
So, tasks remaining for Day 2:
- Clean outside of fridge
- Clean inside the door jamb, where there's still accumulated gunk (I know this sounds overly fussy, but it's quite noticeable and I want to get the whole thing done)
- Put stuff back into the cupboard under the sink (it's just the laundry stuff, so really should be pretty quick)
Will try to get those done tomorrow.
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Post by drsarah on May 20, 2021 17:36:44 GMT
Phew! Yes, I'm still here; yes, I got Day 2 finished the day after my last post as hoped; and yes, I've still been working bit by bit at the list, just not posting. I finished Day 3 yesterday.
Day 3 (for the record)
Cleaning task: freezer Organisation task: junk drawer Maintenance task: bathrooms (clean toilet bowl and outside of toilet, clean bath/shower, vacuum/mop the floor, empty bin, wash dirty towels)
I got the freezer done the same day as the fridge; they're part of the same unit, so it was simple enough to get it done while I had a bowl of soapy water there anyway, just took extra time. In this case I didn't do the whole caboodle of cleaning off every shelf individually, as taking all the frozen food out even for short times would just have been too complicated. Plus, quite frankly, we've got enough stuff in there that I can't properly see the shelves or drawers, so I don't care that much. I cleaned the outside, the inside of the door and the shelves attached there, and the bottom of the inside of the freezer, just in front of the bottom drawer, where a whole load of gunk had been building up. It now looks much better.
We do not - despite the book glibly stating that every kitchen has a junk drawer - actually have a junk drawer. Not a household one, anyway. I do have one in my study desk, but I cleared that out last year, or maybe the year before (lost track). I could legit have skipped this one, but what we do do instead of having a junk drawer is put random things down on the edges of bookshelves, mainly the big dining room bookshelf and the one in the upstairs hall. So I decided to do some decluttering and dusting of those for my task. I didn't try to get them completely decluttered, because there's random junk on there for which I don't know the best place without discussing it with my husband, but I did aim to get everything for which there was an obvious alternative place (such as, say, the bin) moved to that place, and the shelves/the random junk still on them dusted. This turned into also shifting the pile of stuff for the recycling bin that had been building up in front of the upstairs hall bookshelf because we'd been dropping stuff there to take down to the recycling bin and then not taking it (and, to be fair, I think my husband would be growling "What's this 'we' business, Paleface?" if he knew I'd written that).
Anyway, over the past few weeks I've been doing that bit by bit. I also got the bathroom jobs done (well, for the record the bin emptying and towel washing I do weekly already, so the other bathroom jobs). Both have brought about noticeable improvement in their respective areas, so I'm ready to move on to the next task.
Side note: As a knock-on effect, I've expanded my nightly cleaning routine (place settings, kitchen counters, kitchen and bathroom sinks) to include the tank/lid/back rim of the downstairs toilet, and sometimes the upstairs sink and toilet, so those areas are staying much cleaner. Oh, and I added wiping down the dishwasher and washing machine back when we were having the kitchen redone (I cleaned them off anyway as everything else looked so sparkly new, and after that it was well worth the extra minute or two it takes every few days to keep them that way).
Anyway... let's see what Day 4 has in store! Oh, and I'll post this now so I don't get caught halfway through it; dinner's cooking.
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Post by drsarah on May 20, 2021 19:10:15 GMT
Day 4
Cleaning task: pantry Organising task: food storage container cupboard Maintenance task: laundry room (clean tops of washer/dryer, wash dryer filter, dust shelves, sweep floor)
Huh. Not too much to do here:
Pantry: basically done, since I've decluttered the cupboards in the past and of course the food went back into new, hence clean, cupboards and got sorted as it went. There were a couple of really grimy shelves on the unit at the back of the kitchen where the drinks are, so I moved enough stuff to clean the fronts of them where they're visible. We still have a bunch of tins to find space for as my husband has embargoed using the table at the back of the kitchen, but for the time being I think this one is OK.
Food storage containers: decluttered those a few years ago. There's a wee bit of rearranging needed from where they've been put into the cupboard after the kitchen remodel, and there are a couple at the back of the kitchen that I want to dust off and add to the cupboard, but not much to do there.
Laundry room: Don't have one. Washing machine's in the kitchen, dryer's in the garage. Wouldn't be a bad idea to wash the dryer filters, as they need it every so often.
So, this one should now just be some tweaking of the plastic container arrangement plus washing the dryer filters. Hoping I'll have time for this Saturday morning.
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Post by drsarah on May 27, 2021 17:05:49 GMT
OK, it took me a while to get round to washing the filters in a time when I wasn't drying stuff in the dryer. Anyway... done that and, more importantly, rearranged the Tupperware shelf so that a) the stuff I use most often is near the front and b) a couple of the extra-large boxes that were on the shelf at the back are now in this cupboard, thus leaving a bit more room on the shelf. Next...
Day 5
Cleaning task: Stove, oven and microwave Organising task: Glasses cupboard Maintenance task: Living room (dust artwork, lampshades, shelves and TV, polish glass surfaces and furniture, wipe down light switches/door frames/door jambs, vacuum the base of walls and the floor, empty the bin).
Got to get dinner now, so more detailed comments on this later.
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Post by drsarah on May 31, 2021 12:28:30 GMT
Right; back again with Day 5 complete! What I didn't have time to write before was that this is one of the days for which a lot of the stuff was already done.
Stove (or hob, as we call it over here) and oven: Both replaced a month ago in the Great Kitchen Remodel, and since we got the shiny new ones we've been careful about keeping them clean as we went along. There are currently a few burn spatters on the oven, as it's not possible to totally avoid them, but I feel happy in counting this one as done.
Microwave: Cleaned off the outside of it at the time of the Great Kitchen Remodel, as otherwise it would have stood out like the proverbial sore thumb in the shiny new kitchen.
Glasses cupboard: New in the GKR, and as we just went through packing up and then unpacking our glasses for the GKR I think we can take it there's none we currently want to get rid of.
Vacuuming the living room: husband does this every day.
Emptying the living room bin: I do this every week when I do the rest of the house bins.
Glass surfaces to polish: don't have any. I suppose I could polish the wooden bits of the furniture, but, really, who's bothered.
So all I had to do for this one was clean out the inside of the microwave (which I just did) and dust the living room (which I did yesterday). There were limits to how much I could realistically do for both, but I've improved things a lot; calling it done.
On to Day 6! Well, actually, not yet, because I have other stuff I want to do today, primarily chilling out and writing stuff I've been meaning to write. But I'll check what the jobs are and list them, to inspire me/let me brace myself.
Cleaning task: finish the kitchen Organising task: silverware drawer Maintenance task: laundry
Huh; less there than I was expecting, since - once again - a lot of this has already been done either in the GKR or in usual routines. Looks like the two main tasks I'll still need to do are 1. dust all the dusty bits in the corners of the back part of the kitchen, which wasn't involved in the GKR, and 2. clean the insides of the windows (we have a window cleaner who does the outsides). OK, that's pretty reasonable. Must remember to get feather duster heads, though.
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