The Big Clean

My husband and I have decided that after five years of living in this house, it might be a good idea to clean some of it. So we have undertaken a major home overhaul - no room is exempt, no unmarked bottle safe. Here is what we have accomplished thus far:

The Kitchen. Surprisingly, one of the easiest of all the rooms (I say, as someone who was barely involved in the cleaning of this particular room). This included dragging out every pot, every pan, every 3-year-old package of Ramen noodles - 18, to be exact - and then scrubbing the shelves down. I supervised most of this, coming in periodically to eat a snack and thus lessen the load for my husband...because that's the kind of nice wife I am. We also determined that we can no longer live with the faucet that's cracked and looks as though it was installed by a toddler. Therefore we made a trip to Lowe's and purchased a brand new and shiny stainless steel sink. I'll bet we'll be able to keep that clean for TWO WHOLE DAYS!

The Closet. Our bedroom has a walk-in closet that we have not been able to walk in to for a couple years. It is basically a clothing graveyard. There were shirts in there that we haven't seen since we moved in, a prehistoric towel, as well as two belts that neither of us recall purchasing and look as if they belonged to an 80's drag queen. In addition to the clothes, there was an entire plastic bin of books that was half-caved in due to crap being piled on top of it. Not that I have time to read anyway, but even if I did, I'm not sure why half of these books would have ever even made it to my possession. Who needs an entire book of doctor jokes? Not me. Six, SIX, entire boxes came out of that closet and went to Goodwill. Sadly, this accomplishment is lost due to the fact that we still cannot walk into our walk-in closet. Darn these old houses and their lack of storage...

The Basement. Don't even get me started! Half of our basement is "finished" (well, it has a ceiling, overhead lighting, and a pool table. We don't venture down there much except to scoop cat turds and do laundry, though...). Anyhow, we actually had an entire sofa buried underneath all of my art supplies. Whodathunk? And I finally decided to throw out the fake tree that I had purchased in hopes of making that room more "lively". Unfortunately, it did make it more lively - but not the way that I wanted. When I noticed entire colonies of spiders living amongst the leaves, I ran at lightening speed and used full force to pitch the tree as far into the yard as I could. Then I did the famous "GET IT OFF ME" dance for a few minutes before heading back downstairs to douse the corner with Windex and Febreeze (the only two chemical cleaners I possess), just to make sure that the invisible spider babies would not form some kind of vengeful army against me. My husband then vacuumed up a gazillion tiny pieces of cat litter and scrubbed the stairs.

The Sofa. We lifted up all of the sofa cushions to vacuum underneath. I found, in no particular order: three pens, a crayon, a hair tie, a pair of earrings I thought I had lost forever, an undistinguishable melted? piece of plastic, Goldfish crackers, a lonely Franken Berry, and only one measly penny. All that work, I would have hoped to have found at LEAST a quarter... Hmph.

The Bathroom. This one is still a work-in-progress. I started on it today during naptime, emptying out each of the four drawers in the vanity and wiping them down. When I went to return the items to their appropriate places, I made a couple shocking discoveries. 1) Each one of us would have to get some kind of life-threatening cut at least twice a day for the next four years to use up all of the BandAids and gauze pads we have accumulated. 2) We had a jar of Vicks VapoRub that expired in 1999. It still smelled potent, too. I'm not sure which one of those facts is worse...but either way, it lives in the trash can now. Also, we currently have seven brand new spare toothbrushes, five things of floss, as well as four samples of toothpaste and one of those flossers-on-a-stick. I swear we really aren't some dental hygiene freaks, we just have a dentist that leaves baskets of samples all around the office - it's like moths to a flame.

There is still work to be done, and I'd like to say that I feel really accomplished due to our three carloads of stuff that has now become Goodwill's problem, but I don't. We have SO MUCH STUFF that it's still overwhelming. But at least we can say that we tried, right?