July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 21, 2013

My uncle gave me a wicker chest for Christmas a few years ago.  I like it--not only because it's a storage basket, which I love, but also it was a wonderful gift.  Upon it sat my candy bucket.  I used to work in the food industry, dealing specifically with candy.  I got a lot of samples of candy.  Plus, it was kinda my duty to buy some candy when special promotions would come out.  So, yes, candy.  There's no shortage of it in my house, as evidenced by my waistline.  And pretty much that whole area of my living room/kitchen was kinda a mess.  Don't believe me?

Yep.  And what's more, that doesn't even show what's under or IN the chest.  Alas, I didn't take pictures of that.  But I did take a picture of the after!

Doesn't that look much neater?  I threw away some candy I knew I'd never eat--either a kind that didn't appeal to me as much as I thought it would, was smashed, or was older and of questionable flavor.  The candy fits in the bucket again--although just barely, and some of the bigger packages are still hanging around out of the bucket.

What's interesting is that I had no idea what was in the chest.  It had probably been years since I'd gone in there.  Now I can tell you: some quilting batting, and some sheer blue fabric from my "drapes" in my living room in my apartment seven years ago...  That was in there before, along with a lot of papers, some magazines articles, as well as some magazines themselves.  And some clipboards.  The best part is that I found a calendar from 2005.  I now know for certain that my iBook was purchased in 2005.  That means the old thing is nearly 9 years old.  While it's too old for software updates these days, the thing is still chugging along.

This project didn't look like much, but besides going through an initial look at the papers--some things got recycled right away, the others put aside for further perusal--I also did some more detailed cleaning.  There was dirt in the cloth-lined chest.  I don't know where that came from (maybe a plant was on top of it at some point?  I don't recall that situation, but I have a notoriously poor memory), but I felt the need to vacuum that out.  I also had spilled some lime juice on the floor a while back and finally got around to scrubbing that up.  Plus a swept up a lot of crumbs under the chest.  I'm not sure what that's about, because I didn't recognize what it could be, but there were ants hanging out, and I'd prefer not to have ants in my house.  So there was vacuuming, scrubbing, and sweeping going on, besides sorting candy and papers.

As much as I'd love to focus on other rooms of my house--like my sewing room, because I'm dying to sew again--the next few days will be focused on the public rooms of the house.  I have company comping for lunch one day later this week.  As that's the case, I need to make sure it's appropriately clean--and de-furred!