Cleaning and Confiding

So, I posted that about an hour ago and went into my garage to do my five minutes. I've been working on the garage ever since. It's been alternately lovely and disgusting. I've found all sorts of nice, stylish clothes that fit me, which is a super huge bonus, and some music books and background tapes too. I've found old gift kits of makeup, checks I never cashed (sigh- from like, ten years ago, so I can't cash them now), receipts from a place I rented in the nineties, the sweats my younger siblings used to wear (hello, spiderman pajamas), and a shoebox full of unopened tampons. I also found a large dead rat in my red and green comforter, desiccated and dry with age. I've found notes and greeting cards and I found the program from the Gay Prom I attended in 1998 in San Jose.

In addition to all that, I found an electric wok, a turtlewax gift box, two microwaves, a computer, and all sorts of awful, torn, stained clothes that no one would ever want to wear.

But the thing that touches me, that strums my heart strings, is seeing a dress that my grandmother gave me. My grandmother wore house dresses, you see- sleeveless, shapeless dresses that fall straight from shoulder to ankle. They came in many different patterns, and when she cleaned out her closet, she gave some to me. Back then, in the eighties, they were oversized on me, and I wore them around the house all the damn time. I wore them until their linings were rags and the hems were torn, and I only stopped wearing them when I could no longer pour myself into them.

I found one of those dresses today. My grandmother is long gone, and this house dress, an admittedly hideous dark purple and green thing, was my favorite. It was her gift to me, and I really loved it; it became in its own right a momento of my childhood. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it; my children couldn't wear it because it's too ragged, and I certainly will never fit into it, and it wouldn't be a good part of a rag rug or a donation box. But it doesn't get thrown away. Today I've ruthlessly thrown away three garbage bags full of old things. This stays. Mine.

There are rooms in my house that are set up in such a way that they have a purpose: My music room is my studio, the living room is where we, uh, live, my kitchen is the place where I cook the food, the bedroom is where we sleep, the bathrooms are where we bathe, and the laundry room is where I launder the clothing. Regardless of their state of tidiness, these rooms typically function. There are other rooms that don't function yet.

I have a guest bedroom with a futon and a loft bed that doesn't yet function as a guest bedroom because it's become a catch-all for crap. In order to make it function, I need to put clean pillows, sheets, and blankets on the beds and clear away the clutter.

I have an indoor garage that functions as a mess. It has carpeting and lots of mirrors. It also contains a couch. If I can clear up the mess on the floor, I can put in a card table, set up a microwave, put some shelves in there, and make it a hang-out room.

My closets are messy. If I can figure out a function for each closet (linen, clothing, wrapping paper storage, backpacking and hiking gear) then I can organize them and make them look nice.

So, what's nice is that I've gotten the house to a decent level of surface-level tidiness. The bad news is that now it's time to actually get rid of stuff and sort stuff and organize stuff, which takes some time. It's really daunting. I'd rather watch episodes of the Colbert Report on youtube. So I think I'll put five minutes a day into the garage until I've achieved that hang-out room. Five minutes a day I can do. Grar.

My backpacking trip was awesome. I hiked over all different kinds of terrain in the Sierras- rocky granite and sandstone passes, mud-sucking meadows, bogs, high forested dusty pathways, and cow pastures. It was beautiful and exhausting. I can't wait to go again. =)

( Wanna see a picture? I'm the one in the doofy red bandana and coral colored shorts. )

I made pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins today. I also washed my sweetie's car, vacuumed the kitchen floor, wiped down the counter, washed out the coffee pot, loaded the dishwasher, swept up the leaves from the front yard, and moved all the dead plants to the back yard. I'm doing pretty well. =)

I'm off to go backpacking for a few days. Wish me luck!

Having recently gained a lot of weight, having spam tell me that I could gain up to three inches immediately kind of pisses me off.

Do you like cleaning your house? Wikipedia tells me that in the great houses of yesteryear the housekeeper could be a person of power in the domestic arena. We too can be women or men of considerable power. Cleaning a house is like solving a giant puzzle. It involves rituals of great mystery. It is also an epic journey to the time when the garage is spotless, the closets are organized, and the rust under the rim of the toilet is totally removed.

Cleaning a house involves solving multiple puzzles. How best to stack the tupperware? To arrange the furniture? To clean the tall places without a step ladder? How best to dissolve the grease, wash the dishes, and make a space clean enough for a baby to eat off of without hurting the environment? Confronted by these puzzles, you must begin a search for explanations in chemistry, physics, and aesthetics. Cleaning the house has always been a chore, but it can be more of an area of research. Of geekery. Of humming, happy "a-hah!" moments. Too, once the puzzles have been solved, the housework may be a large mountain of work, but at least you know how to fix it.

Of course, keeping a house clean isn't just about solving the puzzles. It's also about maintaining the clean once you know how to do everything. I like to think of the brief things that ought to be done daily as a part of the cleaning routine as rituals. A ritual isn't a chore. It's a soulful expression, a manifestation of love, a tradition that has nuanced associations with time, place, family, and independence- as well as getting things right. One of my good friends washes the dishes in such a relaxed and languorous way that you want to watch her and sip wine. You expect roses to bloom and men to serenade her. Any cleaning ritual, done patiently and with forethought can be just as seductive. Plus, when you're the only one in the neighborhood who knows that soaking a cotton ball in vanilla extract and setting in on the counter is a great way to freshen the air, you obtain an air of cleverness and experience. The neighbors begin to admire you.

All the puzzles and rituals in the world don't change the fact that getting a house clean isn't an epic journey.

My house isn't all the way clean. There are two closets you may never see. My garage is a horrid mess. But my kitchen sparkles. My hallway bathroom shines like a pearl. The bottom of my bird's cage is utterly, blindingly clean. I'm sure that your house isn't perfect either (and really, who wants to be saddled with perfection?). The point is that the journey keeps going. Even once you hit "every room is clean and organized", you'll still have to keep up with the rituals and the puzzle solving. Life continues. Maybe it's that you get to keep solving those problems and engaging in those rituals though. I'm sure they teach you something different every time.

The puzzles you solve when you're cleaning your house can produce in you feelings of triumph and victory. The rituals that you conduct to maintain your house can be pleasant and homey. The journey is worth it; it's part of growing as a person and a home maker. I wish you all the luck in the world as you clean your home, and I'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, tips, and arguments.

Let me know how you're doing.

...that my tupperware is organized. Hot diggity.

So, so, so, as I was organizing my tupperware, I found all the hotpads that I crocheted years ago to place under hot pans. They've been missing forever. Plus, I found two pot holders- one big huge one with fishes on it, which will be awesome, and a blue/green one that matches a pot holder I've been using. Now I can have matching pot holders!

Today I'm going hiking with a gal pal up the Pleasanton Ridge. It's going to be awesome; she's bringing her dogs. Therefore, my to-do list is comparatively small, but at least I'll move forward a bit instead of backsliding.


Morning Routine.

( The morning routine is broken down into four parts: )

Organize tupperware, per Kelly at Flylady.net.

Declutter, fifteen minutes. Which room? I'm thinking living room- game desk.

( Evening Routine. )

Basic Muffin Recipe

1 cup flour (whole wheat or bleached)
1 tbsp baking powder
3 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk
6 tbsp applesauce


Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Mix the first 4 ingredients together in a small bowl. Mix the last 3 ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir the two together with as few strokes of the spoon as possible. Fill the muffin cups 3/4 of the way full and bake for 20 minutes (makes twelve large muffins).

As a variation, add a cup of chopped fruit or vegetables to the batter along with one tablespoon of a complementary spice.

ETA: OMG. The mother-in-law-lite is in Michigan. The mother-in-law-lite will not be here tonight. Thunk.
ETA: I refuse to clean out the fridge.
ETA: I am victorious.
ETA: Did I mention that I also dabbled at scrubbing the rust out of the hallway bathroom toilet and that I re-scrubbed the hallway bathroom?


The mother-in-law-lite is coming! The mother-in-law-lite is coming! The mother-in-law-lite is coming!

I will not hate myself for not completing everything. This list from about.com's section on how to intensely clean your kitchen.

( The List )

You Tell Me:

Alright, you housekeeping women and men of science. I've been reading up on green housekeeping. My knowledge of chemistry is sorely lacking, and I'm not normally of a scientific bent, but I have some questions.

Sarah Aguirre over at about.com's housekeeping section tells me of some household stuff that I can use as cleaning solutions, and I'd like to know more about them.

Why is

-baking soda a considered a good scrubber-outer and deodorizer?
-lemon juice considered a good grease cutter, soap scum destroyer, and hard water deposit remover?
-diluted white vinegar considered a good bathroom and kitchen cleaner?

Most of all, is using those things really more environmentally friendly than using Windex, Comet, and (giddyup) 409? If so, why, exactly?

I was puttering around on about.com and learning about baking soda as a cleaning ingredient when I read that if you put a bowl of water with a couple of spoonfuls of baking soda in the microwave and heat it for a few minutes, it steams up the microwave and makes it easier to clean.

"Hot diggity," I thought, and I commenced. It worked well enough- the steam made the gunk on the walls of the microwave easier to remove, but it wasn't a miracle, and the baking soda left a film when it dried. No problem. I wiped it down later.

So that experiment? Relatively easy and successful. Women and men of science: Do you think that the baking soda actually helped, or was it all steam action?

So then I looked down at my stove. My poor, poor stove. A crusty, blackened mess, it seemed resigned to it's tarnished fate.

"I wonder if I can remove all that black stuff with my leftover hot water and baking soda mixture?" I thought. No dice. I scrubbed and scrubbed, and all the benefit came from the scrubbing and the water, and that benefit wasn't spectacular.

"I wonder if this is a good time for white vinegar?" I thought. I rinsed off my stove top and poured on some vinegar, replaced the vinegar in the cupboard, and scrubbed a bit. Huh. Not really working great. "I'll let it stand in pools, I thought, and then I'll scrub it. It might need some time to do its work."

So I went to the cupboard, grabbed a bottle, and promptly poured sun-dried tomato olive oil on my stove. Not the vinegar. I was dismayed. "Well," I thought after a minute. "I might as well combine the oil with the vinegar and see what happens." So I added some vinegar to the oil and started scrubbing.

Well, damn. It worked pretty well. The oil was emollient, so it helped to carry the vinegar around over the surfaces of the stove. The sun-dried tomato olive oil smelled good*. I cleaned up the entirety of the silvery surfaces of my stove this way, including the under the burner recesses of rust and crusted black stuff. When I was done, I rinsed it with soap and water. My stove is silver, not black! Women and men of science- do you believe the vinegar helped, or was it mostly the olive oil helping my rag to glide around?

It took a long time to do, and it's not perfect. I still need help with rust that is rust and not black stuff. Women and men of science- do you have any natural stuff to recommend for the removal of rust? I've half a mind to try using Diet Coke on it. Diet Coke ain't natural and is possibly toxic, but at least it's refreshing and delicious.

ETA: In my Intarweb travels, I found the following webpage that talks about interesting uses for Coca Cola. Hooray for anecdotal sharing of information: http://members.tripod.com/~Barefoot_Lass/cola.html

*Even now, I find myself unconsciously smelling my fingers because they smell tasty.

You will need:

-A jar or half a jar of something tomato-y, such as salsa or spaghetti sauce or a few diced tomatoes.

-A few cups of something vegetable-y, such as frozen mixed, canned mixed, or fresh mixed. Avoid starchy vegetables such as potatoes. They alter the texture of the soup.

-A stir-in of something brothy, such as broth from a can or boullion cubes.

-A few handfuls of something beany- either cooked beans or canned beans. Don't use whole dried beans, although bean flakes are fine.



Place the above four ingredients together in a pot (if you're wise, a large pot), and barely cover them with water. This works well without any seasoning, but feel free to add garlic or rosemary. Cover the lot of it with a lid, and turn the heat to low. Let it simmer for at least an hour, stirring every few minutes. If you can, simmer it for a few hours, adding water as you need to. The flavors mingle together wonderfully.

Feeds as many as you want.