A Little Bit of Elbow Grease

My baby brother is hoping to moving in with us in about a month and a half. He has this amazing opportunity through school to pick a company to work for as part of his curriculum. The best part about the internship type program is he gets paid and they teach him in a real life setting what he could be learning in a classroom. I am so excited that his school offers this type of setting as I think it is going to be an amazing experience for him. His professors want the students to pick a company to work for on a few criteria, one of which is having a place to stay. I am so ecstatic that my baby bro decided that he wants to come live with us.

It is going to be really fun having him around. I went off to college when he was starting high school. Even though I came back for as many football games and wrestling meets as I could, most of my involvement with his high school years was through phone calls. The great thing about this is that we are still very close. We talk on the phone a lot. Or at least we play phone tag. I always enjoy when he comes to visit. He is always such a great help; cooking on the grill for me while we wait for Jake to get home or playing with Kenzie so I can get something done. We have a tendency to get home from work and mowing is done or a light is fixed because he was there and it just needed done. It is great that he wants to help out even though he is on vacation. We appreciate it so very much and we always look forward to his visits.

I was looking around the tornado that is my house at the moment and had a little bit of a panic attack last night. Ok, a LOT of a panic attack. Normal picking up and cleaning aside, I am so not ready for another person to live in my house. It isn’t ready for it. Our house is company ready. We have an extra bedroom for everyone to stay in. But for a few days…a week tops. Not almost 4 months! I mean the room he is going to be living in is our extra bedroom. Extra meaning everything: my sewing room, my storage room for all of my really nice house decorations, where our luggage lives, extra coats and hunting stuff, wrapping paper, my candles. EVERYTHING! I decided right then and there, I need to get my butt in gear NOW!

Looking around at the tornado, I decided we are going to start in one place, completely organize and situate the room and over the next few weeks get the house ready. I decided to start in an easier room: the main bathroom. Kenzie is excited to share her toy duckie room with her Uncle Micah. She jumped right in helping me clean. I figured that as I started moving stuff around, I would have to do a little cleaning beyond the normal weekly job to make it look a little better. Boy, was I wrong. 3 hours later, the bathroom is only halfway done. I am so disgusted and kindof embarrassed with how much grime there really is. I need to rephrase not kindof to a lot of embarrassed. There was such thick buildup around the rim of the drain I had to use a screwdriver to scrape it all off. There was so much dust on the top of the cabinet I could pick it up as a sheet. How does a light switch turn gray? Really?…absolutely gross!

Jake was teasing me. He said you are cleaning for a college student to come live with us? Micah doesn’t care. I told him that I care and now I am so grossed out that the whole house is under inspection. But more than that, I want Micah to feel at home. He’s been living on his own and I want him to feel at home with us. I know the boy eats terribly so that is one of my missions, is to put some good food in the kid. But, more than that, Micah is going to cause us to change our habits. We have been so busy that our goal of keeping a somewhat more organized house completely went out the window. We have fallen so far behind again with all the craziness. I am hoping that having Micah with us will keep us a little more disciplined and help us change our habits for good.

I did do detailed cleaning last year about this time. The rest of the year has been cleaning what needs done. So, it is time to go back in each room and scrub them until they shine again. Have you done your spring cleaning? No, I mean come on, why would you want to? Well, I am going to give you a little incentive… a little check list to run through. Hopefully this will keep me motivated to keep going because I know all of you are going to be chomping at the bit for the next checklist of things to clean.

List One:

1. Clean out all cabinets for empty bottles, stuff that you don’t use or need and organize what is left in them (I gained 2 shelves and a whole section under the sink for Micah to use…happy dance was had by both me and the Monkey May!)
2. Scrub the floor of the cabinet under the sink…It is amazing how water residue appears there around the pipes!
3. Scrub the cabinet fronts and polish with wood conditioner
4. Clean the light switch
5. Clean the light fixtures
6. Shine the mirror
7. Clean on top of any cabinets and in the corners at the top of the ceiling
8. Scrub the countertop and the grout of the tile
9. Scrub the sink…I filled mine up with bleach and let it sit for an hour and then used a scrubber and comet to get mine to shine. If you have water like ours, it takes quite a lot of sweat! I even have a little screwdriver that I use to get the buildup around the drain and sink faucet to come off.

That is what got accomplished last night. We have a pretty big list to go tonight. The motivation has started and I have that working for me to get some more things done off the list. My fun and exciting evening plans are to finish that bathroom, re-organize the linen close and cross the laundry room off the list. I’ll be armed with sweat ready to pour, elbow pads on, a Monkey May with her dust rag, a baby sitting on the stool overseeing the progress and my screwdriver in hand. Jealous aren’t you?