Joyful Abode

My pantry was starting to bug me more and more each day. Things were in front of things I needed, the open boxes of crackers were mixed with unopened boxes, bags and boxes of pasta were everywhere…

So do you want to know what I did?

I took everything out of the pantry, cleaned the shelves and swept the floor, and then put everything back in. Except for some foods I decided were too non-nutritious for us to actually eat, which we gave to my brother-in-law, who can handle it because he does triathlons and bikes everywhere.

I re-designated shelves and reorganized, but I didn’t actually buy any new organizing gadgets/boxes/shelves/baskets/widgets. It’s much better now, and I know exactly HOW MANY olives I have (olive-busting recipe to follow).

Sorry it’s blurry, but you can still tell how much better it is.

This is sort of part two to this post, “Getting Ready for a Guest, or How I Pulled a Guest Room Out of My Bum.”

Now that my dear friend Meagan is safely on her airplane, I can tell you about the other things I did to get ready for her stay.

But… I’m going to write it like I’m telling you what to do, because that’s how I roll. You know, I make a recipe for the first time or pull a craft idea out of my back pocket, and then I act like the authority on it and you all listen to me, and then I get a mini-power-trip off of that.

And I’m also going to ask you to forgive my pictures… my camera has been getting blurrier and blurrier and I’m not sure why. It’s not the lens being dirty, and it’s not the settings (because I know how to use them). So maybe the camera is just dying.

So, I present to you…

A list of things you should always do when you are playing hostess to an out-of-town guest

1. Ask your friend what foods she’d like to have around. Buy them. Have them around. Also, read your friend’s mind and buy some things you know she likes and strategically place them around the house in bowls. See: M&Ms.
   
2. If it’s possible, clear out a closet for your guest’s clothes. If not, at least provide some empty drawers. Make sure there’s a place for her to rest her suitcase, a place for her dirty clothes, some reading material, and a mirror. Always provide 2 towels for ladies (we like one for our hair too!) along with a hand towel and a washcloth.
   
3. Put clean pretty bedding on the bed. I tried to fluff out the wrinkles in the dryer, but since the comforter is new, it didn’t want to do that… Make sure there are lamps by the bed, for night-time reading.
   
4. Make sure you have an alarm clock, kleenex, and a trash can in the room. If you want, you can add fresh flowers, a live plant, and some candles.
5. A box of goodies never hurt anyone. Make sure to include things your guest might forget, like toothpaste and lotion, a razor, soap, anti-frizz hair gel (hehe) for humid climates, lip balm, and a pad of paper and pen. Other fun things to include are fancy soaps, a loofah, room spray, and season 5 of Scrubs. Seriously.
6. Hope that your friend likes Gerbera daisies as much as you do.
   
7. Also, freshen up the bathroom, put some flowers in there, stuff like that. And when your guest arrives, go with her to McGuires Irish Pub, drink margaritas, and relax, because no one likes a hyperactive-anxious hostess.

So, since we’ve lived here in Milton, we’ve only had overnight guests once, and they were guys who couldn’t care less about where they slept or the condition of the house.Because of the lack of guests, the room intended to be the “guest room” quickly degenerated into this:

This is the room in which we store my dress form, usually have my light box set up (but I had to take it down to use the table for the craft show last week), weights, yoga ball, the “goodwill pile” of things to donate, and so forth. It’s even more of a disaster area now because of the show last week… I just dumped everything in here afterward (stock, displays, etc). And then we chucked the ironing board with its mound of fabric on top in there last night because friends came over to play games.

So, the first thing I did was take care of the ironing.

I ironed and folded all of the fabric, then put it away.

Then I started to tackle the post-craft-show-chaos that was everywhere.  I managed to get the non-apron stock into two rubbermaid bins, and stacked them out of the way in the corner.

The Man found a “good enough” home for my card display rack, which is pretty cumbersome, in the closet that houses the air conditioning.

My non-stock show stuff found a place in my craft room closet, along with the box of bubble envelopes I just ordered.

It’s starting to look better, isn’t it?

My stationery display racks and mannequin family found their way into the guest room closet (which, sad to say, isn’t for guests to use since it stores our luggage and the guy’s golf stuff and things like that).

My dimantled light box…

was rearranged so it fit into its bin…

…and sent to the garage for storage.

My craft show tables also went to the garage. Because really, why not?

And the room was clear! After vacuuming, The new inflatable pillow-top queen-sized mattress was set out….

…inflated, sheeted, and new-fluffy-pillow-ed. I also put out some lamps so that my guest will be able to read in bed if she wants to, and a little crate to serve as a nightstand so she can put her books or whatever in there.

She has a wide selection of reading materials if she’s into children’s books.

And she can put her clothes away in the dresser (except for the one occupied drawer).

YAY!!! I can’t wait until Meagan gets here.

He does such a good job of it!

If I’m vacuuming, I just move the vacuum around furniture in swirly ways. I’ll move chairs, but not much else. In open areas, I’ll do short little zigzaggy lines because I don’t want to walk backward and forward all the time.

If he’s vacuuming, he moves every piece of furniture (except for way heavier stuff) OUT OF THE ROOM. Dining table, chairs, and barstools go into our kitchen. The coffee table goes into the entryway. The guitar and my little trunk go on the couch. Then, he goes back and forth making perfectly parallel vacuuming lines, all the way across the room. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.

The other day when we had friends over, one of my girlfriends said, “Oh, you vacuumed. You didn’t have to vacuum.” I told her the guy did it, and her response was, “Oh, and he does the lines!!!” The guy seemed pretty proud of himself when she praised his vacuuming skills (though now he’s pretending not to remember).

I took a video of him vacuuming (it’s so awesome), but I’m not sure how to upload it and embed it here. I don’t want to use youtube or something where people not reading my blog can see it (I dunno, that just seems odd to me). Any tips?

The days are getting longer, and your SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) or winter blues should be lifting now. But you can lift your spirits even faster with a few simple jobs around the house.

1. Clean your windows to let the sun shine in unobstructed. When the man and I cleaned all of our windows, we did it together. He did the outsides while I cleaned the insides. We made faces at each other through the windows, and the job was finished much faster that if one of us had done it alone.
2. Next, clean your mirrors, so the light that comes in will bounce around without smudges or fingerprints slowing it down.
3. Now, when the sun isn’t shining, how do you get your light? Probably not candles… is it something that could be dusty or dirty? Getting where I’m going with this? Ok, wipe down your lightbulbs and glass/plastic light fixtures.
4. If you have cloth lampshades, it’s easy to dust them. Some people like to use vacuum attachments, but a much easier, faster, and more effective way to clean them is by rolling a sticky lint roller over them a few times. If you’ve never tried the lint-roller-on-the-lampshade tip, you can thank me later.

With all of that extra light floating around your house, you’ll probably notice other things that need dusting. Go for it! Get a head start on that Spring cleaning.

There are some cleaning tasks we always seem to keep up with, no matter how busy we get. Things like swishing the toilet or dusting a relatively clear flat surface only take a second, and because we notice they need to be done, we do them.

When was the last time you thought about cleaning your stove hood filter though? Yeah… me too. (Especially considering I’ve been renting for the last year and a half.) What about the floors and walls in your pantry? Have you washed your curtains lately?

Because these things need to be done, but only periodically, they are easy to overlook. That’s why I was so (strangely) excited when I found RealSimple’s “Elements of Cleaning.” (PDF) It’s in the style of a periodic table, because the items on it need to be done periodically. Each period of time is represented by a different color, and has two columns of household tasks that should be done during that time.

I printed mine out on card stock and plan to laminate it and put it on my refrigerator. Then, I’ll be able to use a vis-a-vis marker (wet-erase) to check off when I’ve done the things on the chart. For the longer periods of time (like refrigerator interiors need to be cleaned every 3-6 months, or drapes should be professionally cleaned every year or two) I can mark the date on it too.

How do you keep track of your periodic cleaning tasks?

If you didn’t have a good way to do it before, hopefully this will help!

Yesterday was the guy’s birthday. After dinner, he started bustling around in the kitchen.

Me: Don’t clean up! I’ll do it.
Him: No, I have to. I can’t get out of practice, because then tomorrow will be weird.

Hehe!!! I’m so lucky.
(I still did clean up most of it, though I stopped when my fingers got prune-y because I can’t stand to touch anything when my fingers are wrinkled like that… it feels too gross.)

Check out: How to get your man to wash dishes.

Someone commented on this picture a while ago (picture taken in SC) that I needed to write instructions for how to get men to wash dishes.

Well I can’t give instructions, but I can say that it is NICE… and research in other countries (Australia and Japan were the ones I read about) shows that for every hour men spend helping with housework type things (not just mowing the lawn, guys), the rate of divorce goes down significantly. Of course, this is a correlation, not necessarily causal.

So, I was going to tell Topher this, but I only got to, “For every hour men spend helping with housework,” before he interrupted me with an excited, “more sex?”
Which is funny because the research showed that the fertility rate (children per couple) went up with every hour men helped too. Again, that’s a correlation. Still interesting though.

I just asked him if it would be ok to tell that little story on here, and he said it was fine, but added that probably the real reason the correlating fertility rate was higher is that guys who are more likely to help out are the family-oriented ones. I got a smart one, didn’t I?

So basically, you have to get a guy who WANTS to help by washing dishes, vacuuming, or doing laundry. And then? I think you’re good to go.

We’ve been settling in to our new house here in sunny Florida, after *insert long story* finally getting all of our things from South Carolina. We’re mostly unpacked, and we have been using our new pots for some yummy home-cooked dinners.

The first night we were here, we went to Wal-Mart and got cereal, which we ate for dinner on our living room floor. The first full day though, I worked hard to get the kitchen stuff unpacked, washed, and put away, and I made some very tender baked chicken and fresh green beans. The husband remarked, “It’s so nice that after only 2 days here, we can have a real dinner out of our kitchen.” It sure is, babe.

We’ve also made hamburgers and chicken and dumplings (so good). Tonight, I made a variation on a pasta dish I watched Rachael Ray make on her show. The “sauce” is basically made of cooked, mashed cauliflower; garlic; and sauteed onions and garlic… all boiled down in chicken broth and some starchy pasta water. Toss the pasta in it, then top with steamed carrots and zucchini and some cheese.

So the kitchen is up and running.

I still need a table to use for crafts and sewing, before I can start working on any more aprons. I’m trying to find one on freecycle or craigslist before jumping into buying a new one. We just bought a new computer desk and a ton of little stuff, and it adds up pretty quickly.

Let me tell you though… Dyson Animal? Totally worth it. Vacuuming is so disgusting now because you can see all the crap that this thing sucks out. It’s sort of like those Biore strips for your nose, where you can see all the nasty stuff that came out of your pores, and it’s revolting, but you just. can’t. stop. staring.

I’m gonna go spend time with my husband now! We missed our after-dinner walk tonight because we had a pretty late dinner and it was dark when we finished.

I’m going to try to get back on the Joyful Abode posting routine. Encourage me by telling me how much you missed me, kay?! And tell a friend about Joyful Abode!

And pssst… new aprons up soon (I took pictures of them yesterday).

My fiance tried to scrub my drip pans (those metal thingies under the stove burners on an electric stove) clean a while ago, but he gave up. The stuff was just too baked-on.

Girls like to “think smarter, not harder.” Have you ever seen the shirt that says, “Of course I don’t look busy. I did it right the first time.” Yeah.

So… I got to thinking there MUST be a way to get rid of the gunk easily. My fiance proved that soaking it in soapy water didn’t work, nor did scrubbing with a plastic brillo-pad type thing. I had an idea. Follow along to see if it worked.

Step 1: Remove the drip pans. First you will need to remove the burners by lifting…

and pulling straight out (sideways) to unplug them.

Gross, huh?

Step two: Marvel at the grossness. This is also a good time to clean the surface of your stove.

Step three: Put the drip pans in the sink and spray each one with a lot of WD-40. Then leave the room, so you won’t get that lightheaded feeling. Unless that’s what you’re going for.

Step four: Do some laundry, browse around on Joyful Abode, and generally forget about the drip pans in your sink.

Step five: Try to cook dinner, but realize your stove is disassembled and there are WD-40-soaked drip pans in your sink. Scrub vigorously. Make sure you get all of the WD-40 off, so you don’t explode when you replace the drip pans and turn on your stove. Stand in awe of the joy of WD-40, which by the way is not a lubricant, but a solvent.

Step six: Really, make sure you get all the WD-40 off.

Step seven. Ooh, ahh.

Step eight: Put the drip pans back on the stove, and plug the burners back in.

I bet you can’t wait to clean your drip pans now. Right?

Bug bites, thorns, skinned knees… it’s easy to get blood on your clothes.

And it’s easy to get it out too. I don’t know what is in this magical product, but Carbona has a blood/protein remover that works wonders and completely removes blood from fabrics. All you do is apply a bit of the solution, undiluted, to the fabric, and rub. Sometimes it takes another couple drops of the solution, and more rubbing, but it has never failed me.

My little sister also said that if you bleed on something, you can spit on it and your spit can remove your own (or a close relative’s) blood… I haven’t tried it, but maybe the next time I’m out bleeding on my clothes in public without my Carbona stuff, I will give it a test.

I know this sounds like a commercial, but the love I feel for this Carbona product (and really, their whole line of specialized stain removers) is true and pure.

I currently live in an apartment. It’s a very nice apartment, with an open floor plan and a large kitchen, BUT it did not come with a washer and dryer in-unit. It has connections, but a year ago, I thought, “Hey, I’ll only be here for a year and I don’t want to move a big heavy washer-dryer when I leave.”

Oh, how I wish I had just sucked it up and bought those majestic cleaning machines of love.

I have been using the complex’s laundry room all year. Before I went over there for the first time, I went to the bank and got $30 in quarters. I was prepared!

Well, when I walked into the laundry room, I noticed something odd. Only one of the four washers takes quarters. The other three require a laundry card. Two of the four dryers take quarters, and two use the card. So I went to the leasing office to inquire about this phenomenon, and was informed that I must purchase a laundry card from them. The laundry card cost $5, but it has NO VALUE when you purchase it. You must then add value to the card at the machine in the laundry room.

No problem, right? Well, the machine doesn’t take quarters, only bills. And I never have cash on me. So I had to go to the bank again to withdraw $10 to add value to my card. Back in the laundry room… the machine doesn’t recognize the new bills. So, desperate to wash my clothes, I went into the street where I hustled strangers for an old $10 bill.

I ended up trading with an older Korean man… he gave me a 5 and four 1s for my 10. Win for him! And I got to do my laundry.

Now, that is only the first problem I came across. The second is that, except for the top-right one, the dryers usually don’t dry your clothes. They just make them warm. Warm and wet.

So it is often the case that I either have to run the cycle twice (2 hours!!) to dry my clothes to the point where I can touch them. And it is not uncommon for me to lay my damp clothing all over the carpeted floors of my bedroom and dining room overnight to dry. Ridiculous!

Then there’s the fact that I have to cart my laundry to the laundry room. This isn’t that big of a feat, but it does cause me to avoid beginning the process. Of course, I don’t only have to carry my laundry. I also have to bring the detergent, any pre-treating products, quarters, my laundry card, a couple dollar bills in case my laundry card is empty, and the access card to get into the room to begin with.

I also cannot start the laundry and then go run errands, because the one time I tried that, someone took my clothes out of the washer and placed them (wet) on the (not-so-clean) folding table, even though there were three other empty washing machines to choose from!

All of this combined leads to me putting off the chore of Laundry until I am wearing either fancy clothes or ridiculously out-of-season clothes (think sweaters in South Carolina in June).

As soon as I get to Florida, I am buying a washer and dryer if there is not one in my house already. It would be bliss to have a day of the week for towels, one for sheets, and a couple for clothes, to not have to worry about people taking my wet clothes out of the washer or the dryer just barely warming my clothes…

What washer/dryer do you have in your home, if you have one? Would you recommend it? How many days a week do you do laundry?

When my apartment is OUT OF CONTROL messy, I like to do a 15 minute marathon. Let me explain.

Flylady has a whole list  of things to do to save your house, 15 minutes at a time. I choose to do mine differently.

Basically, I set the timer for 15 minutes and go to town cleaning in one room. Then, when the timer goes off, I finish up the small task I was working on and move to another room, set the timer again, and start over. Does each room get the deep cleaning I ultimately want to give it? No. But it ends up WAY better than it started.

Today I’m doing my 15-minute marathon.  And to inspire you, I’m tracking what I did in each 15 minutes.

Kitchen:

• cleaned out the fridge (threw out food I’m never going to eat)
• emptied the dish dryer
• washed all of the dishes beside the sink, filled the dishwasher
• started the dishwasher
• wiped down all of the counters with 409

Is it perfectly clean? No. Did I get to swiffer the floor? No. But is it better? Much!

Bathroom:

• put everything away… including medicine from when I was sick about a month ago.
• Wipe down counters and edges of the tub with a wet washcloth just to get the dust off.
• Cleaned the mirrors
• Refilled the soap dispenser
• Threw away old razors
• Decluttered hair things
• Swished the toilet
• Lysol-wiped the toilet seat and counters

Hmm… I didn’t get to swiffer this room either. Maybe after I do 15 minutes in each room, I’ll do another 15 to take out trash and swiffer.

 Bedroom/Office area:

• Put dirty laundry in hamper
• Went through a stack of mail, threw out trash
• Filed bills and paystubs
• Decluttered purse contents
• Made bed nicely
• Put books away (they pile up on the nightstands… do yours?)

Whew, MUCH better! Maybe T (the man) will vacuum for me when he gets here.

Living room (Currently the craft area):

•  When through another stack of mail (how does it sneak in??), threw out trash
• Decluttered some more items, including fabric scraps and some things from teaching this year
• Put away a bunch of shoes
• Made a stack of papers to go through later… not usually a good plan, but it’s Kosher during a 15-minute marathon!
• Some other general tidying-up

It’s no where near “done”… but it’s a vast improvement.

It’s 2:30 and my stomach is growling, so I’m taking a lunch break!  The dining room is an extension of the craft area right now, so it can stay how it is…

After lunch, I’ll do a quick trash-can round-up and take out the trash, swiffer the kitchen and bathroom, and empty the dishwasher. The apartment feels SO much better.