59. Guest Room

My mother-in-law is coming tonight. She's staying, which she usually doesn't do, mostly (I think) due to our cats. But I need to leave the house at 7 tomorrow for canoe training and water rescue certification, so it makes sense for her to come tonight and just start the day in the morning. This meant I actually had to clean the guest room, which is my Dorian Gray Memorial Room, frankly. It falls apart so the rest of the house can appear clean. These days it has been covered in my dining room--all the stuff from the walls, the cabinet, and so on. Plus it is also my sewing/craft room and therefore creeps towards chaos at every moment.

To top that all, the cats love this room. They love sleeping on the bed and leaving giant mats of fur. The older two are fond of barfing on the rug. So I had to dig the place out, change the sheets and blankets, and vacuum the heck out of it.

But now it is done. Still cluttered and definitely my sewing area, but the bed is clean and made, the two dressers (Leo's and a blanket chest) are tidy, the table with my sewing is explainable instead of shameful.

Time for the rest of the house to promptly fall apart.

51. Nature's Miracle

Ok.

I have elderly cats: Hickory and Bleys are each 15 years old. And Hickory, I think, has started to get lazy about where she should or shouldn't urinate. She's fond of the dining room.

I'd been using a couple of different sprays to get rid of the cat urine smell, but every time I walked in the house, I was hit with it again. I tried a variety of natural remedies and chemical remedies and nothing was working. Plus, with Daisy a bit sensitive to chemicals in general, I didn't want to get too toxic. I was debating just tossing the rug, the huge room-sized area rug, and starting over, but I was tired even considering dragging it out to the alley.

So I went to the pet store and Nature's Miracle was recommended. It's supposedly some sort of enzyme thing that kills the odor on a cat-level as well as a human one, to keep the cats from returning to the same spot. I was happy to give it a try. I went home and sprayed the 3 areas that I thought were probably to blame.

The next day, I still smelled the urine. But the label said to wait until it was completely dry.

The next day, today, I still smelled it when I got home from church.

Then I got home from the barbecue this evening. And nothing. Nothing at all. No cover-up smell, no urine. Gone.

Well then.

24. Spring Cleaning: Closet

This week's goal? Clean out my closet and dresser drawers.

For every day, I wear one thing: black and denim. Jeans in the winter, capris in the summer. I throw a sweater on over a black t-shirt in the fall and spring. I rarely break out a sweatshirt or turtleneck. Everything on top is black and everything on bottom is denim blue.

Yes, I will dress up for a wedding or party. And there are a few items I keep because I use them when I need them--like the blue t-shirt to volunteer for Sophia's Irish dance school's feis (competition). I also have some bike pants that I wear under capris when I bike at the extremes of weather.

But this doesn't explain the the pair of green corduroy pants I will never wear again. Or the yellow, spring yellow, capris. Don't get me started on the weird collection of dress shirts in my closet. What?

I'm saving them because I'm lazy. It's not a case of "I'll get skinny and wear them" because THEY FIT NOW. Time to go.

After that, it's Mike's turn. He has t-shirts dating back to the late 80s, complete with the holes you would expect of that sort of vintage. Bleah.

9. Spring Cleaning

I have elderly cats. More than that, I have annoying cats. For 14 years, we had no problems that were not quickly solved. No cat pee. Nope. Nada.

The past year this has changed for the worse. I blame Hickory, our black cat. I think she's taking advantage of the situation (Bleys is getting older, we figured he was the culprit--but in the end, I think it's her).

I spend a lot of time cleaning cat pee. We got rid of the living room rug, my very favorite rug, because I simply couldn't get one area clean enough that they stopped being interested. It was hopeless. Now we have two annoying cheap rugs in the living room but OF COURSE they're not peeing on them. Not that I'm complaining.

But they're turning into Bad Cats--leave a jacket on the ground? Fair game. Sophia leaves open some knitting in a box? Boom.

It's time to haul it all out and start again. I can see the advantage to my parents' moving schedule. I've lived here 13 years and it shows.

More to come. Scrub a dub.

8. I need a good mop

I have a beautiful kitchen floor. It is marmoleum, which is Forbo's reworking of the old-style linoleum. Many people use the word "linoleum" and mean any sort of sheet flooring, mostly vinyl products. But linoleum is a specific thing. It isn't vinyl. It is actually biodegradable. It is made of linseed oil and wood pulp, for the most part. When we replaced our kitchen floor, it was an excavation project--went through two layers of peel and stick vinyl (the very worst kitchen floor imaginable), a layer of plywood, a glued-down vinyl, another layer of underlayment of some kind, and below that, the original actual linoleum floor, this time sheet linoleum with a felt back, no worries about asbestos, a really pretty vintage mustard yellow and green checkerboard. I loved it, but my house had been a boarding house and badly abused--and this floor suffered greatly. So we used the original linoleum as the underlayment for the new click-together linoleum and I LOVE IT.

I love the feel under my feet, a bit of spring, so so smooth. We did a staggered chevron-esque pattern in a corn yellow and a nice subdued orange. The only problems I've ever had with it involve scratching on the yellow--but I have buffed them out with steel wool and then made sure my chairs had felt pads on the bottoms. No big thing. I have the refinishing fluid, too, under my sink, which I will eventually use to improve the shine on those buffed areas, but overall, this floor is my favorite thing.

I need a good mop. I had a sponge mop but hated it. Got a string mop but it was over-engineered and twisted against itself and that may be an improvement but I never felt like it was all it could be. Then I picked up a string mop without the new-fangledness...cheaply, and it worked fine until it got upended in the kitchen closet/bathroom and the cats decided it was close enough to the litter box to stand in as one in a pinch.

I got home from Florida and washed the floor on my hands and knees. It was very gratifying, and very clean afterward. Very. Maybe the cleanest it has ever been. But yeah. Don't want to do that too often. I was mopping the floor about 4 times a week, but I haven't washed it by hand in a week. It needs it, and so I'm gathering my rags up to go do it again here at naptime today, even though it's the spring thaw and the immediate result will be footprints from the backyard making me crazy. I need a good mop. Astrid suggested Home Depot for the industrial mop and bucket, which would be perfect...except I would then need a place to store the wringer bucket. Hmm. Any ideas?

1. Hobbies & Chores

Some of what I do around the house is in the category of chore: mopping the kitchen, vacuuming, folding laundry, doing dishes. But some is in the category of hobby: sewing, quilting, cooking, knitting, photography. Some items fall into both groups, like organizing and rehabbing tasks (painting is more of a hobby, but being the second man on a job that Jake is in charge of is definitely a chore--and yes, I'm using the same pseudonyms on this blog that I have in the past).

Today is the first full day we are home after our vacation to Florida. It is a day of chore.

1. Mop the kitchen floor. My mop is defunct, so this task was completed on my hands and knees with rags and a sink full of hot soapy water. I love my kitchen floor and do not mind this task, but I would hardly call it a hobby. Mental note: buy a new mop.

2. Laundry. Laundry is always a chore at my house because the washing machine and dryer are in the basement; one line is in the basement and one (not this season of course) is in the yard. The ironing board and iron and all those supplies are on the second floor. Laundry gets folded in the library (second floor with the computer) or on one of the beds. And laundry gets put away on the first, second, and third floors. It is an exhausting neverending task. The only household chore I truly despise. Truly.

3. Figure out what to cook for dinner. While cooking is a hobby I enjoy, we currently have no food in the house, having emptied it out pre-vacation. So today's dinner will be pantry-based. That's fine, although my pantry isn't as stocked as it will be this time next year (it's one of this year's goals). I think I can create a spaghetti & red sauce with mushrooms. And a peach cobbler made of frozen peaches from the CSA. Maybe a carrot slaw? Hmm.

4. Tidy. Tidy tidy tidy. Wander through the house picking things up and putting them away.

5. Mail sorting. Ugh. The phone table in my front hall? Not my best attempt at feng shui, let me tell you. Right now it's a random pile of important tax papers, an overdue sewer bill (my sewer bill is always overdue), school things, netflix envelopes, and who know what else. That's my next task, actually. Heading down there now while Billy naps on my bed under a corduroy blanket I made several years ago (hobby). No time for that today. Perhaps tomorrow.