McSpring Cleaning

Quote of the week:

S: "I think I'm going to purge a ton this week"
M: "Ummm...what?"
S: "Not like puke my guts out, but cleaning stuff."
M: "Oh, I was gonna say..."

I lovelovelovelovelove Spring cleaning.  My house may not always have the cat tumbleweeds vacuumed, or table tops dusted (or any laundry ever put away), but when it comes to Spring cleaning I go nuts.  I love going through a space and pulling everything out, then starting the organization from scratch. 

My first conquest this Spring.....underneath the kitchen sink.  This has been a pit for every kitchen cleaner I think we need (even though we have 13 others that are half full) or any random kitchen esque item that I don't know where to put.  Here's the mess I was dealing with:

Yeah...somebody call Hoarders, because I definitely have a bit of a problem.  See that blue tote/caddy...on the right side...in the back...sort of being smothered my cleaning products?  Yeah, that was supposed to be my cleaning supply organizer.  And there is an empty box and an old bottle of soap in it.

First step was to pull everything out....and then I was left with this almost usable space:

And you probably noticed this...unless you aren't wearing your bi-focals:

Ughh, purge me.  So once that was wiped down, I was onto step 2, which was organizing all the crap I had put aside.  I divided it into three piles.

1) Keep and put back under the sink
2) Keep, but put where it belongs (aka not under the sink)
3) Toss that crap out

The top right is Keep and put back under the sink.  The left is keep, but put where it belongs, and the bottom is for el trasho.  Almost all of the trash pile is empty bottles...I am lucky enough to have a man in my life who can never put food back into the fridge, but will always put empty containers back into cabinets.

And yes, in the put somewhere else pile, that is lighter fluid and a small gas tank for a grill.  So safe.  At least I had a fire extinguisher under too, right?  Oh and dog poop bags...one always needs those in the kitchen.

I brought the put somewhere else pile out to the garage, the trash pile to an unguessable place, and then organized the keep pile.  I found a cute white tote at Target for about $6, which I put it all into.

Much better, huh?  And if you're wondering about the upside down mason jar...well It's holding our loose kitchen sink pipe in place.  Yeah, I'll get to that at some point.

I'm hoping to work on the two bathroom sinks this weekend...and hopefully drop off a bunch of Goodwill donations we've had sitting around for months. 

Start any Spring cleaning yet?

~S~

Behind closed doors

I don't know about you guys, but I LOVE looking in other people's medicine cabinets, linen closets, kitchen cupboards, and refrigerators to see how they organize it all and what kind of products or food they have.  LOVE IT.  So, if I have ever been to your house, it's very safe for you to assume that I snooped in one if not all of the above mentioned places...probably more than once.  And definitely will again.

So, when another blog I like to read, Young House Love, recently showed the inside of their fridge, I decided to copy suit and show you guys around our kitchen cabinets and fridge.  And speaking of fridge...we have a new one!  Not brand new from the store, and not new to Matt, but new to our kitchen.  Confused?  Well, it's the in-laws old fridge, which they very graciously unloaded onto us when they got a sparkling new one.  Our old fridge came with the house and is probably at least 10-15 years old, which is no big deal, but the freezer has always had a problem with leaking water and creating giant icebergs of ice all over the inside.  And the freezer never really stayed as cold as we would have like it to.  Which made my paranoid brain all crazy with contaminated fear of the frozen meat not freezing enough to be safe to eat.  Ahhhh!

Anyway, Friday night Matt went off to Hillsboro and picked up the fridge, then came home and drove his truck into the backyard (so awesome to see a truck in the backyard, seriously.) and we unloaded the newish fridge into the kitchen, and brought the old one out to the garage (to hopefully be sold on craigslist).

Ok, so I never actually got a picture of the black hole fridge in the kitchen, mainly because it just looked like a giant black blob in all pictures, but check out the stove/microwave area, and then picture a fridge looking about the same way:

Here's the fridge space, minus said fridge (view from the sink):

And the view from the stairs (going up, to the right of the photo above):

Matt kept saying how big the kitchen seemed without the fridge in there, which it did, but alas we need a fridge.  Here's the new (to us) fridge all plugged in and cleaned up!

Show stealing dog vs cat fight going on at this time too

So, as you can see from the above picture...all of the other kitchen appliances are black (stove, microwave, and dishwasher), so the newish fridge definitely does not match at all, but we figure unmatching appliances for a couple months is muuuch better than a leaking freezer.  And it also gives us a chance to try out the side by side style of the fridge/freezer, vs our old freezer on top-fridge on bottom style.  So far I'm liking it ok, I like not having to bend over to look in the fridge, but the inside feels a lot smaller, with the fridge space being about half as wide. So it's a good trial run for this style (since we plan on getting a new fridge this winter).   Here's the inside shot, for you nosey types ( I love nosey types):

As you can see, we aren't extreme freezer users, but it's good piece of mind to know it will all stay frozen now.

As you can also see, we are extreme condiment users.  And speaking of extreme condiments, here is what the counter tops looked like, after the old fridge was emptied out:

Yeee gods.  We ended up throwing out about 1.5 garbage bags full of expired condiments, left overs, and old food I had forgotten we even had.  Case in point, there were three different bottles of bloody mary mix in the fridge, all opened and all expired.

And just for the heck of it, here's the inside of our other cabinets, starting with the food cabinet, which is the upper cabinet, to the right of the stove/microwave:

And yes I'm psycho about all the labels facing front and everything being straight.  Like my owl toothpick holder?!  Mamma Deb gave the to me after I mentioned I am nuts about owl stuff lately. :)

Here's the corner cabinet, to the right of the one above, which hold our plates/dishes:

We received the black dishes as a wedding present (Momma Deb again) and I love them (but they chip really easily), and hope to transition over to white dishes at some point...I'm thinking I'll add a little bit at a time (hence the white bowls).

Here is the third and last upper cabinet, to the right of the kitchen sink, which houses our glasses/mugs/glass ware...And yes I have two Dunder Mifflin coffee mugs:

We also have three drawers in the kitchen, and here they are....I think you can figure out what each one is used for:

Top:



Middle:

And bottom:

There are also two bottom corner cabinets, but they are a disgrace right now and need to be organized, so you're little butts will have to wait on those.

But what do you think of the new-ish fridge?  Do you like having a side by side or are you a freezer on the bottom or freezer on the top person?  Do you like condiments a little too much like we do? :)

~S~





Spray it, don't say it

This is what our kitchen sink sprayer looked like....

Ummm, gross, no?  It actually has better water pressure than the kitchen faucet and with the water turned on all the way, it sprays all over the kitchen.  But, it's very ugly.  So, I picked up this shiny new little number at Home Depot a couple weekends ago...for only $6.79 too.

Looking at the instructions (only 3 steps!) I figured, nice.  This will be an easy 3 minute project.  Yeah, not so much.

Getting the old spraying disconnected from the hose was as simple is twisting the top from the bottom.

Then I had to pull this little "C" shaped piece of metal off of the white plastic part, so the black connecter pice could be slipped off.  This was about a 5 on a 1-10 annoying ratio.  It was on there really tight, but with using a needle nosed pliers, it came off after a couple pulls. (By the way...I am very easily annoyed).

Once the "C" was off, the black piece slipped right off.   The next step was to put the silver piece (identical to the black piece I just pulled off) over the hose, then put the "C" back into place....well the first time I did this I did it in the wrong order, so the silver piece wouldn't fit on, with the "C" already on.  I actually had to call Matt up to get the "C" back onto the hose...he wasn't too happy with me when I realized he had to take it right off and and put it back on again......And then I had him put it on in the wrong spot.....so he had to take it off and put it back on again, again. ( I think he was about a 57 at this point).

BUT, as soon as everything was in its correct place, I just had to twist the new sprayer onto the hose...and spray!  I practiced with it for a couple minutes, just to test it out.  What do you think?

Sick....I should have wiped down the sink ledge before taking this picture : /  But look at that sprayer sparkle!  Here's the group shot.

{I lost the silver cover that went over the big water spout piece...How do you loose that?}

~S~