Catching up is hard enough… (oh oh oh oh)

And if you catch that song reference in my title, man. I’ll be super impressed. And if you clicked that link I threw in there, you’re welcome. Enjoy that little earworm.

It has been a very productive couple of days. I mean, I know sleep is important, I know, I KNOW but I didn’t fully know.

Three days now I’ve gone to bed before midnight and swear to God, I’m a different person. I’ve made dinners this week without freaking out, I’ve accomplished a massive amount of chores that I typically avoid, I’ve even scheduled the baby for his 1-year vaccinations (yeah, yeah, he’s 18 months old now, but ugh whatever, MOVING.)

I’ve been posting some of my progress on my Cure assignments on ye olde instagram. Still trying to get caught up, but I am making some serious headway. If my housework accomplishments do not interest you, please feel free to browse on away now. I will not be offended. I know it’s not the most riveting material, but it’s where I am right now.

And for the rest of you- here we go!

Next up on the cure was assignment #3- Pantry Purge.

Our pantry is kind of in a shambles rn, but luckily it also isn’t super stuffed. I have not yet built my stores back up since the move, which makes it easy to clean out the area, but not so easy to just like look in there and be all, “oh, I can just pull all this stuff together and make x for dinner.”

So it wasn’t a real tough task, and it also helped me figure out some items for my next grocery list.

After that I moved on to assignment #4- Setting up an outbox. I already have a box full of giveaway stuff sitting in the corner of the front hallway (which, incidentally, is completely full and taking care of giving it away is actually on my to-do list), but I guess an “outbox” is supposed to be slightly different? It’s more like stuff purgatory. Things I’m unsure of can be thrown in there, and then after a week you’re supposed to make a decision on whether to keep or toss said things. I had an empty box lying around, so that was easy enough to do, but the entire entryway was full of junk and I had nowhere to put the box, so this assignment also prompted me to tidy the entryway, which was great.

Once I had the box in place, I was supposed to choose one item to put in it. I went for this little pelican. I’ve held on to this because it was a gift from my grandmother, but really? The object itself holds no sentimental value. I can get rid of it, and it doesn’t mean I’m getting rid of the memory of my grandmother. I have other things that mean much more to me, this little pelican is just a thing. So into the box it went. I fully intend for it to move on into the giveaway box in a week’s time.

On to the next assignment!

Assignment #5- One Drawer. Pick one drawer, any drawer, and clean it out.

The layout of our new kitchen does not lend itself to the creation of a junk drawer. Which on one hand, is good. Because I don’t have a junk drawer. I do, however have an entire dresser in my living room, and that’s slowly becoming a dresser full of junk.

Yeah. It’s got the potential to be a really, really bad situation.

So I went with one of the drawers in there. (The idea of the assignment, I think, is to show you how little time it takes to just do one single drawer, and so moving forward you prove to yourself that you can make a difference with just the time it takes to do a single drawer.) In any case, I tackled the one that we throw art supplies in.

At our house, there is a spot to store art supplies in just about every single room, so this is by no means an comprehensive look at what we’ve got to work with, but it’s nice to have right there by the dining room table, because almost every day me clearing the table for dinner involves me taking crayons/pens/markers/paper/coloring books/half-finished manuscripts/etc and throwing them someplace. Now I’ve got a nice, organized place for them to land.

Hopefully one day soon I will gather the courage to unpack the huge moving box labeled “Junk Drawers”. And yes, that is a plural drawers. It is a box full of the multiple junk drawers/cabinets in my old kitchen and it is a daunting task.

At this point yesterday we were starting to run into the afternoon and the return of my big kids, so I had to pack it in for the day. But after a mostly enjoyable evening (Goofing off! Being a nice person! Not hating everything!) and a pretty decent night’s sleep (in bed by 11:30 and the baby only woke up one time and actually slept in his own bed!) I was ready to dive in again this morning.

Assignment #6- Inside or Out. The idea was to choose either the INside of all cabinets and fridge and oven and whatever, or to clean the OUTsides of everything, including dealing with all surface clutter. This one I was a bit nervous about, because man, the kitchen. It’s a tough task, that. I can barely keep on top of the day-to-day, let alone a real actual deep clean. I’m an admittedly terrible housekeeper. BUT it was good to have somebody tell me look, do this, do it today, do it now. Clean the kitchen properly. And so I did. Took me nearly all day, but it looks friggin’ great in there now.

These little ones just assumed that me on my hands and knees= me playing horsey, that’s how rarely they see me doing any actual cleaning.

And so I put ’em to work. They did nearly as well as I would have done.

Also, I briefly considered trying to clean that inside part of the oven door where there are drips down like the interior of the door, I mean I considered it as far as finding a youtube video that shows you how to dismantle the door. But even that video, before showing you how to, suggests either artful dishtowel placement or even full stove replacement as valid solutions to deal with the aforementioned drips. Who I am I to question those methods?

Because yeah, this stove is likely original to the house (early 70s) and is not really worth that much effort. Someday it will stop working and we will replace it and I will no longer have to guess at any and all recipe temperatures and/or times. (But let’s be real here, my main technique for cooking things will always be “I don’t know, until it looks done?”)

After I’d wiped down all surfaces, it was time to désencombrer, which is a word I learned this week. And as you may have deduced from the photo below, it means declutter.

All this crap was pulled from just two spots. One, the shelves over the sink.And two, this little area that just seems magnetized for junk collecting.

They’re cleared and straightened for now, but those are definite trouble spots that I need to maintain on the regular.

Also- shame I’ll never crack the case of who it was that started writing on my wax warmer.

Kids are just tiny little graffiti artists.

I’m getting so close to being caught up. Hopefully by Monday I’ll be on track? Fingers crossed!

 

 

And if not, I suppose I can always fall back on trying to contribute to the group by making as many laser noises as humanly possible.

Oh, the late 90s. You were a simpler time.