Just Me!

So Mister is off to NYC to hang out/pick up his little sister who will be spending a few days with us. (She has class on Saturday, but not Friday or all next week.) With Mister gone this means several things: One, I keep forgetting to eat and I'm too cheap to go out with just myself. Two, I need to clean the ENTIRE house as it's a complete and utter hole, as my mother would say. Well, and three, I need to study for the two tests that I have tomorrow, but who cares about that? Not me! :-P

Now one of the things that super majorly needed cleaning was our bathroom. Lordy, I wouldn't allow a homeless man to see the inside of that bathroom, it was that dirty. Add to this the fact that Mister trimmed his beard over the sink this morning after I left and I know this without him telling me (read: he left his beard all over the sink). That, and I never actually clean the tub (disgusting I know), and it was getting pretty bad and there was mildew on my curtain! That was a clear sign that I need to attack that.

I know that there are cleaners that can use that massive amount of white vinegar that I have, so I looked into it a bit, and most of them seemed to involve either straight vinegar, or vinegar, water and an essential oil. As my bathroom needs it that badly, I just used straight vinegar in a rinsed out spray bottle. I sprayed vinegar on the shower curtains, let it sit for 5-10 minutes and rinsed with hot water. On the one curtain that was all it needed (although I should probably take a sponge to both of them as they feel a bit slimey... ick). On the other, there were a few spots and the entire hem still needed some work. I discovered that the problem with the hem was there was a factory fold an inch from the bottom that I hadn't noticed when I first put the curtain up. So I unfolded it and sprayed. Rinsed with hot water again et voilà, it's beautiful. (We have clear plastic curtains to let the light in, so it's quite obvious when they're dirty.)

Tackling the bottom of the tub was a different story. What I wound up doing (and it worked beautifully) was this: spraying the tub with vinegar. Using a wet sponge, apply baking soda and scrub a bit. In the worst spots, it didn't even require any scrubbing. It just wiped off. The color of that rinse... ick. But hot water makes it all go away and now it's beautiful as well!

One of the few nice things about Mister being away is I can blast Gloria Estefan while cleaning. :-P A surprising side effect of that is wondering if the keyboard solo is actually my (fairly energetic) ring tone!

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Update: I've also now made 1 quart, 1 jelly jar and half of a jelly jar of applesauce. Super productive on the non-studying front!

Kitchen Thoughts

While I was away in NJ with family this past weekend, Mister cleaned the entire kitchen. Needless to say, this is not just a little bit exciting and rather novel. However, as I walked in to look at his fine work, I realized that (having moved my stereo) the room looked incredibly empty and bare.

I need something along that wall shown above. This is a rental, so tiles or that lovely detailed metal sheeting is out of the question. Trivets? Decorative cutting boards? Mugs? I have no idea.

N.B. Also, looking at that picture again, you can see both of my little ducks! The ducky tea strainer from my sis, and the rounded belly of my ducky tea kettle from my mom. :-P

House Cleaning

Mister and I are not what one might call experts in keeping house. We're both fairly ADD, lazy, and after all, it's our own mess! But we've been eating out (or ordering pizza) for average one meal a day for a week or two. This is Not Acceptable to either of us.

Yesterday, Mister pinpointed that the kitchen being a mess was part of the problem, and cleaning it would solve many things (not the least giving us a clean kitchen). So with a will, he set to work.

Myself, feeling very discouraged by the kitchen, decided that it was time for me to tackle the Pile 'o Laundry, both clean and dirty, that was our bedroom. After four hours of work, we emerged victorious with a nearly clean kitchen and a nearly neat bedroom. It being 1am, we figured it was bedtime -- so we read until 4am. :-P

This morning, I woke up feeling like I wanted to do something. Heavens forbid that I work on the project of massive amounts of work, so I decided to tackle the pile of fruit that was growing sadder and sadder by the day.

The pear was a complete loss. Rotted clear through.

But the bananas became banana bread. The apples are becoming applesauce. The clementines are becoming marmalade. I consider this productive! It's amazing what a clean kitchen makes you want to do!

(There will be pics, but as I'm still in the process of making these, I'll post later.)

Plans and Minutiae

First order of business: shake this bad cold that I picked up last week. Did it happen before my two days off so that I could recover? Nope! Happened in the evening of my last day off, so that I could be nice and sick (and incomprehensible due to laryngitis) while at either of my two sales jobs. "(*cough hack) (*in a croak) Would you like to (*cough hack) try some lotion?"

Yeah. Loads of fun.

Items to get accomplished: clean the house. It was beautiful until we had a week of houseguests. And the LL gets really fidgity when thinking about the desolation our apartment MUST be in, and would like to know when it will be clean for the R.E. agent to show it. If the LL had actually TALKED to us about this, instead of slipping a note, I would have given the standard answer for showing a lived-in apartment: 24 hours notice before ALL showings. Period. No exceptions. It will always be clean, it will always be ready, and we will always be out of the way.

EDIT: Left a note for LL stating exactly that. Only without the "if you'd actually talked to us" bit. :-P And slightly less bitchy.

I really don't think I have any other specific plans to get accomplished other than what will fall under the umbrella of "cleaning the house". Kitchen, living room, and put laundry away.

Although, as an aside, it WAS really nice to see that my family had the same reaction to my LL's ridiculous rules and regulations: they wanted to flout them. And since they were normally noise restrictions, flout them LOUDLY. :-P

Slightly Productive

So I wound up having a discussion with Mister yesterday about how to make a day not feel like a waste. Inevitably, I feel like Sundays are wasted, every week. We wake up late (circa 11, or 12), lounge around, get around to getting food at 2, and then I have to be at work by 4:30. Do you notice how little actual day there is?

When stating how I'm so sick of feeling like it was a wasted day, Mister started talking about the importance of having a day of rest. I was like, "but I don't want Sunday to be a day of rest!" After a little more non-committal "day of rest" talk, Mister mentions that perhaps HE wants Sundays to be a day of rest for HIM, as he works during the week.

Oh. Well, now why didn't you say that in the first place?

So we're going to work out some plans to give me stuff to do during the week. Yay!

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In regards specifically to Sunday's productivity, I did get one important thing done: I gave three boxes of clothes to Goodwill. That required going through ALL of my clothes (I probably have the equivalent of 5 boxes of clothes left), sorting, boxing, and carting away. In addition to this great achievement, I got rid of a book.

Got rid of a book? Blasphemy you say. Let's just say that it needed to be done. One person reading this will understand that statement -- but I can't be any clearer on the internet.

Anyways... here's hoping that my productivity kicks up.

Furniture Rearranging

Mister and I (ok, mostly Mister) have rearranged and modified his apartment to make it more liveable. Not in the least was the sorting through of boxes -- that have been in the corner since June 2009. Yep.

Here is what needs to be done still:



This is the pile of stuff that will not stay in here. Boxes are to go to M, electronics to the recycling center at Mister's work, and Goodwill items to Goodwill.



There are more books than shelving in this apartment -- hence the pile of homeless books. This needs to be remedied. (Please ignore that pizza plate behind the curtain...)



The stuff on the couch is what was deemed important from the massive amount of boxes that we went through -- it now just needs to also find homes.

But look at what we've done! You've already seen the large pile of stuff to LEAVE the apartment -- that is particularly impressive in my book (I'm a hoarder).



The dining area look particularly darling and usable. This is a change from how it's been in the past.



The old TV stand has been repurposed to house alcohol underneath and dishes on top. (The TV is next to the computer, on the desk now). As the alcohol is now out of the kitchen, that means that pots and pans now have a home. As the dishes now have a home, they no longer have to sit either in the dishwasher or on top of the table. With the speaker next to the (former) TV stand, the silver chest also has a home that is not the top of the table. Yay for things having a proper place!



And last but not least, the Dictionary Stand that Mister inherited has a home and looks cute. Before, it just looked like another addition to the clutter. Yay for decluttering!

And now, to tackle the bedroom! (dun dun duuuuuuuuuun)