From Inmates to Playdates

Posts Tagged ‘Cleaning’

It’s been two weeks since I’ve done a “What I Learned This Week” post. That means, that for the past two weeks, I’ve been jotting down notes and trying to remember all the things I’ve learned. Hopefully something I’ve learned, will be a help to one (or all eight of you!).

1. Google, as it turns out, is a verb according to Merriam Webster. Who knew?

2. The real Gunslinger Monster Truck, has a red, orange and yellow paint job. The Gunslinger Monster truck that is sold on the Monster Jam web-site, for some idiotic reason, is simply red. A difference that will be noticeable immediately to a four and seven year old.

3. Once you Google ‘Monster Jam’ and the ‘Gunslinger’ and discover that your four year old is in fact, correct in his assessment of The Gunslinger and its paint scheme, you will be livid because after all, you were doing Santa’s work and The Gunslinger was not available within a 40-mile radius of your home.

4. When you are making a new soup recipe, you should not attempt to swarp clean out a cabinet because if you do, you may end up scorching the soup (ahem!)

5. If you four year old has eye surgery with stitches that disintegrate, it is completely normal for the stitches to come out by way of the nose into a tissue. (Sick, but true.)

6. Regardless of what you are told, the last stitch might hang out in the eye for two months.

7. While the Longaberger hamper looks much nicer with a lid, it will not hold as much as the mound of clothing that can pile up on the hamper without the lid. In other words, if the mound of clothes will bug the snot out of you, you will need to 1) wash clothes more often, or 2) purchase another hamper.

8. If you set a plastic grocery bag on a hot glass stove top, you should know that it will take you just under an hour, a can of WD 40 and a razor blade to remove the melted bag from the stove top.

9. If you spend the better part of three days swarping and you drop a very large box of junk at the Goodwill, it is probably a good idea to let the gentleman unloading the box know that the box contains quite a few glass items, otherwise, he may hurl the box into a bin and you will know without a doubt that not one single glass piece in the box survived.

10. Mirena = Aggravation.

11. When purchasing Hot Chocolate from the Biscuit place down the road from the McResidence, one should wait a full thirty-nine minutes before attempting to drink it or else you will scald your tongue.

12. I learned how make a custom ring-tone on my beloved iPhone from iTunes. (Not a free service, of course!) You can only create a ring-tone (as far as I know) from a song that you purchased on the iTunes.

13. I also learned that you can now purchase something called an answer tune which is a custom ring that your callers will hear instead of the normal ring.

14. While looking for some old-school extravaganza on iTunes, I searched for Love Bites and Pour Some Sugar On Me by Def Leppard. My search resulted in various groups singing Def Leppard’s hits, but no actual Def Leppard. A visit to my friend Google, (which by the way do you remember is a verb?) explained that Def Leppard (along with countless other groups) will not allow their songs to be sold on the iTunes.

Dang. So much for that.

15. I found a really cool camera APP for the iPhone called Camera Plus. I also learned that its probably a good idea to get comfortable with the APP before taking a picture of your son making a foul shot.

16. I’ve learned that the older I get, the less I like the cold and the snow and the wind.

Told you the list was long.

Head over to Musings Of A Housewife for more things people learned this week!

I have been thinking all day about what I would write about for this week’s edition of  Works For Me Wednesday!

Then, after we arrived home from The Chipmunk Movie, The Inflatable Jumping Place, Dinner and the Grocery Store, I started swarping. And by swarping, I mean I took everything out of one cabinet and started moving stuff willy nilly into another cabinet. That led to cleaning out another cabinet and that resulted in my cleaning out another cabinet.

After an hour of moving, changing, eliminating and combining, I decided that organization really works for me! Not only do my cabinets look better, they also make me feel better! Funny how that works.

I guess the first lesson that works for me would be to blog first, then swarp.

Otherwise, you’ll be firing up the laptop at 11:03 pm EST wishing you hadn’t spent so long feeding the OCD monster organizing your kitchen cabinets.

Earlier in the day, I spent 73 minutes on the phone with Doctor’s offices and Insurance people in an attempt to sort out bills, claims, EOBs and receipts. I just about lost my sanity, my temper, and my cool. I generally like to take care of those things as soon as they come in, but apparently I’ve been so very busy the past month that I have forsaken my insurance duties. If I had any sense at all however, I would not have waited a total of four weeks because seriously, one can only take so many prompts before she slowly loses her ever-lovin mind, throws her hands up and says I’m done! Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful that we have insurance and I’m thankful that we still have a secondary insurance thanks to McDaddy’s six-month sentence deployment, but my lands there are so many friggin’ hoops.

[On a totally unrelated note, because my thoughts are as scattered as my kitchen cabinets, the stupid phone systems that require you to punch in a bunch of numbers, verify your legal name and offer up your first born before allowing you to talk to a living, breathing person DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE WORK FOR ME! And why in the heck, must you verify the information a second time once the live person answers the phone. Now, if they had an option that said, Press one to speak to someone who speaks plain English, I'd be all over that!]

As I said, Organziation works for me!

Head over to We Are THAT Family for hundreds of other things that might work for you!

I seriously considered telling you about 13 things I want for Christmas, but coming up with thirteen things I’d like to have seems like a lot of work at this hour. My time would be better spent placing the gold beads (garland) on my Christmas tree so that it would be complete. I am kicking around the idea of attempting it solo because McDaddy is not here. While it may seem like an easy job for one person, perhaps I should let you know that our tree is 9 feet tall which means I would have to stand on a bar stool which means that danger is imminent because, well, I am clumsy enough without climbing onto a bar-stool and attempting to balance myself without falling off or tipping the stool.

However.

I have a condition called Iwantitdonerightnow, so it looks like I’ll be throwing caution to the wind and climbing on that bar-stool here directly.

Wish me luck!

But for now, may I present 13 things I could live without, in no particular order except the order they fly out of my head.

1. Olives – I don’t get it. They stink, they taste bad and they are expensive. That’s a triple whammy in my book.

2. Gnomes – Again, I don’t get it (them!) They are ugly and useless. The very fact that gnomes made this list, makes me shake my head wondering what made me even think of gnomes.

3. My Phone Ringing Before 9:00 am -  If you are not dead or bleeding, or calling about someone who is dead or bleeding, you should not be calling the McResidence under any circumstance. Period. Thank you, and Amen!

4. GEICO commercials featuring those stupid cave-men -Who came up with this marketing campaign? Whomever they are, they should be fired immediately. The caveman thing is the dumbest commercial campaign EVER!

5. LOL- I triple hate the whole LOL thing. You will never, and I repeat never, see my name associated with any LOL or OMG or TTYL or LMBO. They are showing up more and more on The Facebook. I do use these from time to time, or even this but never a three or four letter combo. 

6. ICY ROADS- I am a scaredy cat when it comes to icy roads. I have no confidence and I live on a big, freakin, hill, so, icy roads + me = danger!

7. CAPPUCCINO – I know I’m going to rile some feathers with this one.. Why anyone would spend $6.00 on a ridiculously high calorie hot beverage is beyond me. I like a good (cheap) cup of hot chocolate from time to time, but those expensive, over-priced (not the same thing!) high calorie hot drinks do nothing for me. I even tried a (very expensive) cup of hot chocolate at Starbucks one time. It was the worst cup of hot chocolate I ever drank and after two sips I tossed it in a garbage can. Big. Waste. Of. Money.

8. SPRITE and 7-UP - I don’t remember ever hating these lemony-lime drinks, but now that I’m an adult, I’d just as soon drink water than try to force this crap down my throat. If its a day or so flat, it’s ten times worse. Complete nastiness!

9. DUST – Sweet mercy, where does it all come from? The very second I dust the TV and its stand, particles land right back on the silly thing. The attempt almost seems useless.I don’t mind cleaning. I really don’t. I do mind dusting.

10.  HACKERS- With all of my heart, I firmly believe there is a special place reserved in a really hot place for those individuals who get their kicks from hacking into other people’s computer accounts. It’s no secret that I am as nosey as the next gal, however! However, those who hack into Facebook accounts, bank accounts, e-mail accounts, and any other account out there need to be banned from the internet for life. Even someone as nosey as me knows that there are limits.

11.  BLOGGER COMMENT BOXES WITHOUT THE NAME/URL OPTION- Okay, if your blog is hosted by Blogger, I have a question. When I try to leave a comment on a blogger blog without the name/url option, I get an error message telling me to please sign in to Google or something I can’t remember right off. I’ve signed (logged?) in to Google about three trillion times and it never ever remembers me. I get the same stupid message which I wish I could remember because I’ve been wanting to make this plea for a long time! So, my question (and you thought I’d never get to the question) is why do some of you opt not to allow the name/url option? (And yes, I am totally going on the search right now for a comment box like the one I speak of!)

Okay, I found one. It says Choose an Identity. GOOGLE ACCOUNT and has a place for a user account and password. It also has an option for Open ID. Only once you click on Open ID, there is no Open ID option. 

When presented with this screen, I have no idea what to do. 

If you are still reading, bless your soul, because I know its possible you might not be understanding any of this Number 11. 

Comments are hard to come by and I think bloggers should make it easy peasy for readers to leave comments. When I see that option, I just mumble something and go on my merry way!

Have you ever noticed that the further I get into my list, the lenghthier the commentary?

12. DIAL UP INTERNET SERVICE - Thankfully, we are blessed with The DSL here at the McResidence, however, there are still those who must deal with the ridiculousness of the Dial Up. It is beyond me how we can put a man on the moon or how we can offer shoes buy one get one free but we can’t find a way to provide DSL to every neighborhood in America.

Now, I recognize that I know very little about the infrastructure of the internet, however, (man, there are lots of howevers tonight!) I know that someone somewhere has the means and the money to make this happen.

13. ENERGY SAVING LIGHTBULBS- I’m just full of myself today.. don’t ya think?  I know there are a few of you out there who will not agree with me on this. Remember about ten (very long) paragraphs ago when I mentioned that I am a “wantitdonerightnow” kind of girl. That means that when I flip a switch, I expect the light to come on full force immediately. Not three minutes from now.

My word. I’m aggravated just thinking about these thirteen things.

Enjoy your Thursday, y’all!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday!

It definitely isn’t me who spends every evening after the kids are in bed relaxing in her big, blue, bloggy chair blogging her heart out, while McDaddy sits five feet away on the couch pecking away at his laptop probably on Jeepinwv.com.

It certainly wasn’t me who stared at four baskets of laundry sitting around our living room for days. Because I am a dutiful housewife who puts laundry away immediately because nobody wants to look at laundry for days on end.

It also wasn’t me who cleaned. off. the. stupid. kitchen. island. four. stinkin. days. in. a. row. Seriously, why in the heck can’t McDaddy and I keep it cleaned off? On any given day, there are at least two piles of stuff needing tending to and two other piles that have come out of nowhere. There’s really no sense in it, yet, it happens every other day.

It was not me who put a quarter-inch paper cut in her finger while putting up a bulletin board, just after dropping the stapler on my toe.

Who knew bulletin boards could be so dangerous…

It wasn’t me who forgot to take her blood pressure medicine for five days until a massive headache invaded my brain to remind me of it.

It also wasn’t me who dressed my family for a church directory picture in matching shirts and sweaters AND SHORTS because everyone knows a church directory picture is shot from the waist up. Because of that, it wasn’t me who was kicking herself in the tail because hello? YOU COULD SEE THEIR KNEES IN THE PICTURE!

Seriously.

Wasn’t me.

And finally, it wasn’t me who cried during Dancing With The Stars as the dancers paid tribute to Patrick Swayze and danced the final scene from Dirty Dancing. Nope. Not me. No way.

Visit MckMama’s place for more Not Me! Monday posts.

I’m sure that title just screams, “I can’t wait to read this post!”

Hopefully you’ll stick around despite the not-so-creative-title. It’s all I could come up with at this late, exhausting hour.

And speaking of cleaning, I sure hope you’ll excuse the mess. From Inmates To Playdates is being overhauled, so you may encounter some error messages or caution tape. Hopefully my people will get things back to normal pretty quickly.

My people? I crack myself up! 

Anywho.

I have always loved music.

As a teen-ager, I remember listening to the radio half the night waiting for my favorite song to play so that I could hit the record button on my JVC old-school cassette player that looked a lot like this one except the record button was orange.

Back in the 80’s, I had an amazing collection of  ”Julie’s Greatest Hits” compilation tapes and I could work that fast forward button like nobody’s business. Somewhere in the basement, those compilation tapes are hanging out wishing the iPod had never found its way to the world.

As you can imagine, I am a fan of the iPod.

Really, the compilation tapes are a lot like an iPod.

Except a lot more work.

A Song or ten that immediately come to mind from my compilation tapes are

• At The Moment – Billy Vera and The Beaters
• Every Breath You Take – The Police
• Pour Some Sugar On Me – Def Leppard
• Need You Tonight – INXS
• Is This Love – Whitesnake
• I’ll Always Love You – Taylor Dayne
• Love Bites – Def Leppard
• Father Figure – George Michael
• I Still Believe  – Brenda K. Starr
• A Groovy Kind Of Love – Phil Collins
• Always – Atlantic Starr
• Didn’t We Almost Have It All – Whitney Houston
• Lost In Emotion – Lisa Lisa and The Cult Jam
• My Perogative – Bobby Brown
• Straight Up – Paula Abdul
• The Living Years – Mike and The Mechanics

Just typing those songs made me smile.

Just as I smiled today as I cleaned my bathroom.

I started just after 8 AM swarping and scrubbing. An hour later, I decided I was bored out of my mind and half-crazy because the silence was more than I could handle. I grabbed my iPod, turned it on and rocked it out the rest of the morning while I cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen and swept and mopped all the floors.

I was like June Cleaver on crack.

Only I don’t wear pearls.

And, I don’t smoke crack.

So basically, I was nothing like June Cleaver. On crack. Or otherwise.

I actually enjoyed cleaning the rest of the house as I rocked out to a number of songs on the iPod. The song list happened to be on “S” so that’s where my list starts.

• Shoop – Salt-N-Pepper
• Shy Guy – Dianna King
• Someday – Mariah Carey
• Something About The Way You Look Tonight – Elton John
• Stayin’ Alive – Bee Gees
• Stomp – God’s Property
• Straight-Up – Paula Abdul
• Strong Tower – Kutless
• Thank You – Boyz To Men
• These Words – Natasha Bedingfield
• This Is How We Do It – Montel Jordan
• Trashy Women – Confederate Railroad
• Waterfalls – TLC
• All I Want To Do – Sugarland
• Black or White – Michael Jackson
• Bohemian Rhapsody – The Braids

We had ourselves a rockin’ good time. And my bathroom looks fabulous.

See.

The iPod and it’s music worked for me!!!

Check out other things that might work for you over at We Are THAT Family.

During our week-long camping extravaganza, I watched in horror as our laundry bag filled to capacity and then began to seep out the top of the black plastic trash -bag.

Seriously, there are four of us. And two of us happen to be under forty-eight inches tall.

Fearing an all-out revolt, I decided it was time to fight the evil forces of the laundry bag and its filthy contents.

During a trip to the Mart of Walls, I found a product that I will be using for years to come in our camper. May I introduce you to Purex’s 3-in-1 Laundry sheets. I don’t think I ever recall seeing these in the laundry section before now, but its possible they’ve been out a long time because I don’t make it a point to shop the laundry aisle any more than necessary. I was looking for a travel size bottle of laundry detergent because as I said we were camping. I didn’t want to purchase a big, honkin’ bottle of detergent because I didn’t want it to spill all over our camper in transit.

My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree when I saw these boogers. They seemed perfect for storing in a camper throughout camping season.

They were a bit pricey, but once you figure in the price of detergent, softener and dryer sheets, I would bet it’s pretty-much equal.

Still skeptical of such a do-it-all product, I rounded up enough quarters to do two loads of laundry in the camp ground laundry room (which was no small chore let me just tell you) and made my way back to our camper to retrieve the bag of laundry so that I could try these suckers out.

When the wash cycle was complete, I was shocked at how good the laundry smelled. I had no idea there were three different scents and sadly, the sheets are still tucked away in our camper, so I have no idea which scent I happened to pick up at the Mart of Walls but it smelled really good (and so did our closet in the camper after the sheets sat on the shelf over-night.)

I was thrilled with the product and thankfully doing those two loads of laundry made a big difference because instead of doing seven loads once we returned home, I only had to do five loads.

Sweet mercy, I didn’t think it would ever end.

Unfortunately, Purex has yet to come up with a way for their product to fold the laundry as well.

Purex 3 in 1 detergent sheets worked for me!

Visit We Are THAT family for other Works For Me Wednesday Posts.

It is 11:35pm. The boys are asleep and I am stretched out in my big, blue, bloggy chair swiping tears.

I feel like a marathon runner who has just made the last turn.

The finish line is in sight.

Some days, I have sprinted.

Some days, I have walked.

Some days, I felt like quitting.

It’s been a long race.

Today, was a very good day. Today was a straight-up sprint.

Since rolling out of bed this morning, I have not stopped.

The floors have been swept and mopped. The bedroom has been dusted. The bathroom is sparkling. The hall closet has been cleaned out. Our walk-in closet is organized. The kitchen cabinets are straight. The little green bench in my room is clear (cue the violins). The laundry is done. The living room has been dusted. McDaddy’s office has been partially remodeled. The van has been cleaned out (yessir, I’m serious about this!) The garage has been swept out. The tool benches have been wiped with windex (I know, I know!) The heap (ahem!) I mean JEEP is out of storage and thanks to my daddy and his friend, the front of our house has new vinyl siding.

I could go on and on.

I’ve been busier than a raccoon in a trash pile doing my best to pass the time.

As I put away laundry this evening, tears rolled down my face.

It is so hard for me to imagine that I made it through this thing.

If you had asked me back in January, I would have told you that I had no idea how in the heck I would make it to the end. Seriously. I! had! no! idea!

What I can tell you is that I did not go it alone! Not one day of it.

First and foremost I am thankful for God’s sovereignty.

There were many nights that I knelt down beside my bed and cried out to God.

Dramatic? maybe. But so very true.

God is faithful.

And I am thankful.

Lots of prayers have went up on behalf of my family. I know that because countless friends, family members and blog readers have told me so. McDaddy and I appreciate you all so much.

Your kind words. Your prayers. Your thoughts. Your cards. Your calls. Your gifts. Your prayers.

We appreciate each and every one.

As we run the last 21 hours of our six-month deployment race, I want to say from the bottom of my heart that I we are thankful.

My heart is rejoicing and I feel like a high-school girl getting ready to go out with that guy that she’s had her eye on for months.

Or like a nervous bride standing at the back door of the church preparing to walk down the aisle and pledge her love.

I am a wife who has missed her best friend. Her hero. Her husband.

I am in the home stretch and I will cross the finish line with a thankful, grateful, overflowing heart.

Today, we will finish the race.

I had a little trouble deciding whether to write about the great sales at Kohls this week, the fabulosity of the Snickers Ice Cream Bar or my new friend and mop, the Swiffer Wet Jet.

I’ve spent the last hour mopping my kitchen, my foyer and my bathroom. I have been a cleaning machine trying to get this place in order for McDaddy’s homecoming in a few days.

Until today, I hated to mop.

The whole soaking, mopping, rinsing, wringing, repeating thing is boring.

The Swiffer Wet Jet is a wonderful friend to have around when you have dirty floors. I bought the mop today and had the gadget together in less than five minutes. Sadly, I had no idea it needed batteries until my six-year-old said, “Hum, maybe the battery needs to be charged!”

A bottle of cleaner slips into a holder on the handle and the quick press of a button delivers a squirt of cleaner in front of your mop. The even better news is that the cleaner is wiped up with the disposable pad on the bottom of the mop, so there is no need to wait twenty or so minutes for your floors to dry.

I love this little thing!

I will be mopping more often because it WORKS FOR ME!

Visit We Are THAT Family for more Works For Me Wednesday posts.

Before we left for our two-week vacation in New Hampshire, I thought it would be a good idea to wash my kitchen cabinets and counter tops off. I was armed with Clorox Kitchen cleaner, a magic eraser, and motivation. The latter always makes a job like that more thrilling.

As I was wiping, swiping and repeating, I noticed something peculiar in our snack basket.

The giant Hershey bar given to my boys at a recent Doctor visit had gnaw marks on it that were NOT the gnaw marks of a human.

Oh snap.

My mind started to race and I immediately dumped everything that was in the basket into the trash.

And then it dawned on me that a stinky, nasty mouse had been in one of my beloved Longaberger baskets.

Sweet mercy. It was all I could do to breathe.

I threw away most everything in my kitchen and refrigerator that day.

Then, I remembered that a mouse had been in my Longaberger snack basket and I went from grossed out to furious.

I might have murmured something like, “Oh no, he didn’t”  as if somehow I knew our pesky intruder was a male.

Doesn’t this rodent know I have a majorette rifle beside my bed?

A majorette rifle that I AM NOT afraid to use.

Even on a six-inch mouse.

Barbaric? Yes, maybe. But totally true.

Did I mention the mouse was in my Longaberger basket?

I continued on with my cleaning and silently thanked God that I had not seen the varmint with my own eyes.

Because I probably would have squealed so loud the thing would have a heart attack right in my kitchen.

Fast forward to last Sunday evening.

In preparation of having my carpets cleaned the following morning, I was clearing out all of the ’sitting around on the floor’ stuff and I noticed a hole in one of our bedroom walls just above the baseboard. It was a little larger than a dime.

Seriously, it was the size a little larger than a dime BUT, there was three little mouse droppings black something or other on the carpet just in front of the hole.

YOUHAVEGOTTOBEFREAKINKIDDINGME.

When McDaddy left for this six-month deployment, I formulated a plan in my head to protect my children in the event that an unwelcome visitor was found in my home without permission or an invitation. Basically the plan was 1) Grab majorette rifle, 2) Bust intruder upside the head as hard as I could, and 3) Scream like a crazy person.

I was sure it would work.

I could picture these rats this mouse and all of his buddies partying like rock stars at all hours of the night, IN MY HOME MIND YOU, while me and my sweet boys slept the night away in our beds. I thought about my fail-proof plan and then immediately called for my dad to COME OVER RIGHT AWAY AND SET TRAPS TO GET RID OF THIS RAT!

He came armed with two traps and just like that he had the suckers in place and ready for the trapping kill.

Remember, I do not play when it comes to rodents in my house.

After a lengthy conversation with my boys about how and why the mouse traps are needed and why they should not touch them no matter what, I was questioned about their friends Mickey Mouse and Jerry the Mouse.

As I type this, one of the traps is sitting on my kitchen counter JUST INCHES FROM one of my beloved Longaberger baskets and the other is just outside of the dime-size hole in the wall.

I tried to explain to my daddy, that I have first-hand knowlege that this intruder prefers chocolate (we’d probably get along great if he wasn’t a mouse!), so I’m not certain the cheese will do the trick. What I do know is that I will never again leave a giant-size hershey bar in the snack basket because the mice? They love some Hersheys.

And I will make for darn sure that the majorette rifle is beside of my bed for easy access, you know, for protection.

I’m hoping the mouse trap and the cheese will work for me!

Stay Tuned….

And be sure to visit We Are THAT family for more things that might work for you.

I hate to dust.

What I hate even more is moving the dust along instead of the dust actually clinging to my dust rag.

That’s why I love the Swiffer Duster.

I used the swiffer duster yesterday to clean the blades of my ceiling fan and when I was finished the swiffer thing was a nasty mess. But that meant the nasty mess was off of my ceiling fan. That also meant that the nasty mess was not falling in the middle of my bed because it was all trapped in this duster thing. I actually used two refills yesterday.

The swiffer duster works for me!

Head over to We Are THAT Family for more things that might work for you!