It's Kinda Addictive

                                                                            

It's been gloomy and cold all day--it was actually snowing lightly when I took this picture--but it mattered not because I was in the pantry, continuing to wrestle order out of chaos.

                                                             

These two shelves have been annoying me for some time. Put one thing back and two fall off. Plus, there is some serious redundancy going on.  How many cans of lemon spray furniture wax does one need anyway?                                                    

With all these cleaning, polishing, waxing, deodorizing supplies, I don't know why we're not cleaner. Could be the dogs; could be my disinclination to clean every day. As the meme says: I dusted the house. The dust came back. Not falling for that again.

Still, it's a fine feeling to have room on the shelves--a lot of the extras went to the basement. And, having gotten the most challenging bit over with, I continued on to the No Man's Land between the refrigerator and the shelves--a narrow strip that was the repository for items that fell off the shelves and didn't get picked up, due to being out of easy reach. Also, odds and ends that missed the paper recycling bag. Done, thanks to my grabber!

Moving on, I tidied and edited two of the food shelves--discovering some ancient, pitted dates that are still edible, if a tad hard. The internet suggests covering them with boiling water for ten minutes.  Worth a try.

But this kind of cleaning (once every thirty or so years) really is addictive--and lots more fun than dusting.                                                     

Terra Ingognita

                                                                            

Terra incognita aka Under the Kitchen sink.

At last, after some happy piddling around with books and watercolors, I've returned to The Project: Cleaning and cleaning out everything. Two cupboards in the kitchen remained, and by the grace of Someone or Other and with the help of a grabber, I have removed the contents, cleaned the shelves, taken inventory, and garbaged/recycled twenty-leven rather nasty old sponges, seven toothbrushes (great for cleaning small spaces but I don't need but one,) African violet fertilizer (it's been probably thirty years since I had any of these,) a brush for cleaning baby bottles, cheap florists' vases, ceramic orchid pots, pretty bottles, soap dishes, and some unidentifiable grunge. 

                                                  

Also a glass RC Cola bottle. This puzzled me but, after talking with John, we decided it had probably come from one of our barns, and it had probably been used by previous owner of the farm for dosing a calf--shoving medicine down its throat. (We have always used the heavy sparkling wine bottles.)

                                                       

So here's the finished product-- much nicer and cleaner and at least I know what's there--for a while.

The second cupboard was a breeze--cookware, bowls, slow cookers (getting rid of the small one,) casseroles, and baking tins. Out they came, back in they went, washed (when needed) and reorganized. Oh, it feels good!

On to the pantry--a shelf at a time . . .maybe tomorrow . . .

                                                         

Like the Cat Ate the Grindstone

                                           

 Little by little, that is. I'm slowly making my way through the kitchen, taking stuff out of cabinets, making decisions, washing, recycling, tossing.

I've been at it every day, with lots of sit-down breaks. I've discovered where all the canning rings and lids go to rust. And more spices than a bazaar might have. Sake cups and Chinese soup spoons? Got 'em. Thermometer left from when I made cheese--back when we had a milk cow, and I could play with five gallons of milk at a time.

                                                        

 A sippy cup. The Peter Rabbit plate that Ethan and Justin and Josie all used . . .I'm being strong and giving it to a thrift store . . .maybe.                                           

The herb and spices cabinet was a real pain to deal with.  But I threw out some that were well past their expiration date and got a great reminder of some seasonings I haven't used recently--tandoori masala, piri piri, harissa, berbere, za'atar, muchi curry powder . . .

But, oh the pleasure when things are clean and organized!

One more upper shelf to go! 

I'm writing this while I take a back break. I kinda hesitated to bore you with more of my cleaning saga, but the thing that keeps track of visitors to my posts told me that my post about Marie Kondo and Death Cleaning was incredibly popular--even more than Josie. (I won't tell her that.)

Oddly enough, this cleaning's become a bit addictive. Doing it in small, manageable bursts is the key.  Tomorrow it's onward to the lower cabinets and pots and pans. Maybe even under the sink where I suspect a swamp creature lurks.

William Morris, Marie Kondo, and Swedish Death Cleaning

                                                

William Morris famously said, "Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

                                                            

That would be a good guideline but it's not working for me, as I inch through the kitchen and the numerous tchotchkes therein. I have plenty of time to think about this as I wash each item. Do I need three sugar and cream sets? When was the last time we used those rice bowls?

                                                     

This ashtray, for example, was a souvenir from a visit to a restaurant near Milan. Back when John had an outdoor power equipment store, BCS, one of his suppliers, took us and other dealers on a tour in northern Italy. The tavern was famous for serving all sorts of game and we worked our way through meaty course after meaty course. I would have sold my soul for a salad, but none was forthcoming. But it was a memorable evening. So how to throw out this silly thing?

                                                        

Or this chipped rice bowl, which I bought in the late Fifties at a newly opened import store? Back on the shelf with it.

                                                    

Neither beautiful nor useful is the old doorknob, discovered in one of our fields. But it's a reminder of folks who lived here before us, the inhabitants of a house that burned back in the Fifties . . .                                                       

                                                

My mother's teapot. My father sent it from Burma during WWII. I think it's Chinese--and a rather special type of pottery. It always made excellent tea--though as it's so small, I rarely use it. Still . . .

Maybe I need to go with Ms. Kondo's advice--Does it spark joy? -- for the memorabilia.

As for Swedish Death Cleaning--getting rid of every extraneous thing your heirs wouldn't value--no way! That would leave me with a mostly empty house. I'm trying to reduce the clutter--and have culled our books pretty thoroughly. But for now, anyway, these tchotchkes, dust free at the moment, stay. 

                                                          

 

The Dust of Ages in a Country Kitchen

                                                                              

Visitors to our house almost always love our funky kitchen, its baskets and pots hanging from the ceiling beams, the wood stove and cast-iron cookware, the Blue Willow items, and the profusion of things. Things under things, things on top of things, things hanging on the wall, things in the window. 

But the bad thing about all these things is that they are serious collectors of grease and dust.

It began with the window by the sink. Having just scoured the sink, I thought I should wash the window. Of course, that involved taking down ninety-'leven odds and ends--3 hippos, 3 rhinos and a little triceratops, as well as assorted prisms and jars and bottles--all of which were greasy and dusty. And that was the first day.

Once all that was done, I looked at the woodstove--another catchall.

                                                  

The stove itself was in need of a good wipe down--once I took the clutter from it. Greasy, dusty clutter, it goes without saying. And behind and under the stove was amazingly awful--withered bits of veg that had missed the compost bucket, lids to long departed pots, a mouse mummy were a few of the challenges I faced.  And that was the second day. (I'm slow because I have to go sit down whenever my back complains and it complains a lot.)

                                                     

On the third day I tackled the wood box, wherein was wood for the (rarely used) woodstove and assorted baskets and bits of woodware.  Everything out--including the logs which got dusted. At the bottom was a pile of newspapers dating to the late 90s and early 2000s. That's how bad it was. Embarrassing but true, (Note: all of these pictures are after cleaning.)

With a tiny bit of energy remaining, I tackled the mug storage and the wall beside it. Washed the blue and white stuff up top, as well as the things on the wall. Then I noticed how messy (and greasy and dusty) the hanging produce baskets were. And that the sheaf of recipe printouts in the top basket really needed to go elsewhere. 

 I really want to go through the whole kitchen this way--taking things out of cabinets, washing and re-arranging. At first, I thought it would be nice to have it done by Thanksgiving.  But realistically, maybe Christmas. And then there's the pantry . . .

And the rest of the house.                                     

                                                   

At Random

Two weeks without my usual routine of keeping Josie two or three days every week and time was weighing so heavily on my hands that yesterday I found myself cleaning baseboards and applying Liquid Gold to the wainscoting and furniture.

An unhappy side effect of this isolation thing is that we don't have friends over to dinner. And having folks over used to send us into a frenzy of cleaning and cooking. We counted on this impetus to keep the house in reasonable shape. Now, a perfunctory bit of vacuuming when the dog hair begins to float about and some equally perfunctory dusting have been the norm. With predictable results. Also there is an appalling amount of mildew, what with the wet weather we've been having. So it was time.

The thing about baseboards is they're way down there. My back will only put up with a limited amount of that kid of bending so I do my baseboard cleaning the same way I weed the garden--sit and scoot. 

It's very silly looking and the getting back up part isn't pretty. But the house is beginning to be cleaner--once you get started on an endeavor like this, the clean stuff just highlights what else needs attention.

Josie and her support staff are coming for Family Dinner Up tonight and starting Monday, we'll be back to what passes for normal--with me doing the voices for her animals and pretending to be another three-year-old playing in The Room. Pancakes and tea parties and a new fantasy figure from Aunt Fay--and for a day I can ignore those baseboards that haven't yet been cleaned.

 

Putting My House(es) In Order

Things always pile up when I leave, even for a few days. Bills to pay; dog hair to vacuum; house plants to water. Time to toss out some of the inadvertent experiments in biological warfare that were growing in the back of the refrigerator. Time to organize my receipts from travel in the hope that much of it is deductible; time to critique my students' latest assignments . . .

In my on-line house, it's time to post a new newsletter, time to complete a requested on-line interview for another blog, and, at long last, time to update my website -- about a year overdue.  

My previous web mistress found herself overwhelmed with other obligations so now I have a new web mistress and she's already hard at work,  sending me proposed looks for the various pages. It's going to be, I think, fresh looking and easier to read and navigate.

I hope to incorporate the DAY OF SMALL THINGS blog -- which was no more than a stop gap measure when I couldn't get in touch with my previous webmistress -- into the updated website. And I plan to add to the recipes and folklore pages on my website.

I'm also trying to figure out how (without spending big bucks) to do a good quality recording of me reading a bit of the new book (so Joan and Marilyn in New Zealand will get an idea of what Appalachian dialect sounds like.) Any ideas? Anyone?

And speaking of ideas, if any of you take a look at the website and have suggestions for additions or improvements, I'd love to hear them.  We may already be working on it -- or it may not have occured to us.

And when both my real and my virtual houses are in somewhat better order, I'll  be more able to focus on writing the next book . . .