Category Archives: cleaning

Before and After

Chair Table – Before
Chair Table – After – One View
Chair Table – After – 2nd View

I am definitely in the running for ‘worst-housekeeper-on-the-planet’ and I’ll continue to show you – embarrassing though it is – examples. I’m not ‘dirty,’ but I tend to do a lot of stuff at once, like reading several books at the same time, and the ‘stuff’ piles up.

Most of the things on my chair table actually belonged elsewhere and had gravitated to the table over a period of time. I’ve also won championship stars for ‘IGNORING’ and ‘PROCRASTINATION,’ two things that aid and abet my ‘worst housekeeper’ title.

Every once in a while the chaos finally gets on my nerves and I decide something is my project for the day. Right now I’m amazed at how much SPACE I have on my table. Monster Cat even looked at me in amazement when she walked around on it last night, big-eyed, obviously wondering where everything went.

SO – today I bask in the glow of having a pristine table beside my chair in the living room, and will choose from a myriad of other candidates for my cleaning out-cleaning off-re-organizing efforts.

SO MANY CHOICES – SO LITTLE TIME OR ENERGY… :0)

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Filed under cleaning, Housekeeping - Maintenance, I'm a slob

The ‘Dandelion’ is Gone

Swanson’s Nursery

The above is much like my hair looked before I went for ‘healing’ at Tangles, the beauty salon owned and run by Michael Remillard in Greenwood Arkansas. 479-357-9305. My husband and I have been going to him for MANY years and would be lost without him.

He can’t do anything about the rest of me, but my hair now looks like a plan was involved, and I’ll be able to wash and blow it dry daily in a matter of a few minutes.

A woman’s home is an ego thing, much like a teenage or young man’s car when he’s dating. The guy spends hours vacuuming, washing and waxing his car, even cleaning the wheels before he picks up his date. His car is an extension of HIM – the best he can afford at the time, and he spends most of his time on that, and only secondarily on himself. The teenage or young girl spends hours getting ready for her date, washing and buffing every part of her, agonizing over what to wear, etc.

When a woman has a home, it reflects HER. Not only how it is decorated, but its cleanliness. If someone is coming, she either schedules it AFTER the cleaning people have done their thing, or dashes around like a mad thing, vacuuming, polishing, fluffing pillows, dusting, straightening things, scrubbing bathrooms.

I have finished vacuuming the tiled areas of the first floor (utility room, 2 half baths, the dining area, the kitchen, and the pantry, plus the carpeted living room. I’m resting a bit and then will finish the office and the foyer, and then move the vacuum to the 2nd floor. I don’t mind if my house isn’t ready for “House Beautiful” to come in and photograph when the pest control guy comes, but I really don’t want a hairball to grab him by the leg as he tries to move through a room, or for him to be grossed out by anything.

Once the vacuuming is done, anything more will be gravy. He’ll be able to do his job without flying hairballs and my ego will remain intact. :0)

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Filed under Attitude, cleaning

Rethinking Cleaning

medium.com

I’ve admitted to you that I’m a slob. I can make really great excuses for why my house is a mess, but I know that gets old, even if I get more and more creative…

I ordered a book called, “The Lost Art of House Cleaning – How to Clean using only 3 products for only $20 per year!” The book is by Jan M. Dougherty. I received it yesterday and read about 3/4 of it. I’ll finish the first read today.

So far, I like her “PATH” idea, where you move only in one direction, (top to bottom, back to front, left to right – depending on your ‘handedness,”) making sure whatever you’re doing is clean before moving to the next part, dividing the room into ‘slices,’ so there are stopping points where you can rest or stop and continue at another time. I also like the idea of not trying to reorganize stuff as you clean. I’ve found how distracting and time-consuming that is, making you exhausted before you get to the real cleaning. I’m going order and gather some supplies and then will try this. I’ll report back to you. Even if I don’t follow every suggestion, several of her ideas make sense, so my work will be more efficient and my house will be cleaner.

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Filed under cleaning