I was very proud of myself for starting and I got all the upper cabinets clean and shiny. It took 2 hours and I was tired from getting up and down the step-stool, so I planned to start the lower cupboards the next day.
You may have noticed that it is a week later, since I began my plan. The lower kitchen cabinets remain neglected as I write this. Why this sudden halt? A combination of things happened. The first one was my lack of sleep and feeling fatigued. The second was the fact that spring was over – a winter storm warning loomed up and things got chilly and rainy. I don’t know about anyone else, but when gloomy cold weather is going on the spring feeling leaves me. I expect it to return when later this week things warm up again.
Next week I will have to do something labor intensive to keep me sane while I wait for Memorial weekend to come, so spring cleaning will be that thing. I hope.
I am excited this year to get into the Spring Cleaning! Why? Because when I am 3-weeks from my 2nd vaccine, I will have family visit. I don’t know about you, but after no guests for over a year, my guest rooms do not have any room for anything else, especially guests.
The left one is a sewing and craft storage room, that must be organized to make more sense to me – that one will take a a lot of time.
The Room on the Left
The room on the right is completely covered with empty boxes. I save the good sturdy boxes in case I need to send packages. Okay, so I have hoarder tendencies. Another thing to blame on the ‘lobotomy.’
The Room on the Right
I will spend this afternoon preparing for the domestic chores that need doing and plan one thing to spring clean. The “one thing” is not a complete room or big job like cleaning the carpet. An in-depth cleaning of a room means, ceiling to floor, so that room gets broken up into a whole week, with something done each day. I know this is the most efficient way to do it. I have yet to actually do this, but I know it makes the most sense.
Seriously. I am going to do my best to keep this plan, unlike last spring (I did nothing when the COVID lockdown happened), and the year before, I attempted to do the kitchen in one day and after that fiasco, I never resumed spring cleaning the other rooms. To me, Spring Cleaning is the cleaning that is not done on a normal basis. When I was a young, single mom, I could take apart my kitchen, scrub, and put it back together – on my own time. I did not have to use the kitchen if I did not want to. My apartment was in a large town, so I had plenty of options for take-out. No complaints from my daughter either. What four year old doesn’t like junk food?
But I digress. The Kitchen is the room with the most need. Bruce did his part by vacuuming on top of the cabinets, (a.k.a. knocking the dust bunnies up there down to where I can reach them.) It will take me all day to wash the solid oak cupboards and drawer faces with warm Murphy’s Oil Soap & water – to get the dust build up off there and nourish the wood. I (and they also) will feel so much better.
I will let you know if I have success implementing my theory…
Now that I have more shelves, cupboards, and filing cabinets, the boxes in the back of closets and stacked in the bedrooms can now be unloaded and put away.
I’m on Left & sister on Right
Not as easy as it sounds, I find.
A lot of family history in photo albums and scrapbooks are in those boxes. Of course, I knew that. What I did not know, what mom never told me about, were the pieces of US history, also stashed away – in the form of newspapers and magazines. For decades this history followed us through three big moves, in storage twice, and finally rests in my possession. To pass on to my granddaughters, and their children, so they can actually read and view the history they will learn about in school.
I realize that these treasures will not mean so much to them, now. Some of this happened more than two generations ago, long before they were born. They are smart and healthy and into the things that little girls are into. History will be way up there, along with Social Studies (or whatever they call it now), on their ‘boringest* stuff ‘ list.
Then they will be grown, old enough to appreciate keepsakes from the past. What I save now will be relics, I suppose. They already look like relics – wrinkled and yellowed. Like those of us who were alive when it happened…
There were headlines in huge type “EARTHQUAKE!” for both of the devastating quakes in 1979 and 1989 – in the San Francisco Bay Area. Photos of the Cyprus section of I-880 collapsed and destroyed.
I found a plastic bag of newspapers, with front-page headlines reading “JFK ASSASSINATED!”, and other headlines just as shocking, reporting that horrible week in Dallas.
I saved the week of the September 11th, 2001 newspapers. [For non-US readers: When Al Qaeda’s suicide pilots destroyed the World Trade Center Towers and defiled the Pentagon]
As important as world History is, I feel that it’s just as important to learn about your family history. Hopefully through letters, diaries, stories told, scrapbooks and photo albums and not from newspaper headlines!
Aren’t we, as parents and grandparents, obligated to pass down the family ‘stories’? If not us, then who? Future generations depend on us saving newspapers and family significant things.
Save articles & momentous items in a desk drawer, paper bag, or hat box. When the mood strikes you, they will be ready to slap into a photo album or scrapbook. 😉
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* boringest: adverb. Term used for describing extremely boring activities or events. Taken from: The Dictionary of Words That Should Be
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