Cleaning adventures

[catsittingstill]

 Ugh.

I had a whole great post written out and then something came up and I quit out of the browser without saving and now it is gone.  Bleagh.

Short version: the couch pins worked and are much nicer than the dowel I was using before.  No more does the couch lie in wait for an unwary knee.  

Much cleaning is happening; today I cleaned out the laundry room shelves so that I could move everything OFF the shelf that was about to fall off the wall because the people who put it up had no faint idea what they were doing and screwed into the drywall instead of the stud.  Once I had that shelf clear I had Kip hold it while I undid the three measly screws that were holding it to the wall.  Couldn’t figure out why the last screw wasn’t screwing out until I realized that screw had been completely stripped; one whole side of the shelf was being held by nothing but friction and good intentions.  

There is much more light in the laundry room sink area now.  If I get really ambitious I might buy some spackle and fix the screw holes in the drywall, but I dunno; there is plenty to do.

The closet in the guest room is full of stuff, and dust, and I vacuumed as best I could (I have mislaid the little round brush that goes on the end of the vacuum cleaner hose; I have 2 on order but they won’t show till tomorrow.)  I also pulled out the sheep wool duster to good effect.  We had three big cardboard boxes and a milk crate of old VHS tapes, and Kip went through them and discarded everything we already have DVD copies of, and reduced the bulk by half, which was very helpful.  The disappearance of the Bike E bag from the boiler room shelves meant I had quite a bit of real estate open up there, so the camping water bottles moved out of the guest room closet and into the boiler room, as did a hammock (Kip was thrilled to learn we possess one, so it is now his.)  There was another milk crate that mostly held extension cords (the good one is now in the wood shop, the flimsy one and the ethernet patch cords are now on the laundry room shelf allotted to such things.  I’m trying to open up enough space in the guest room closet that guests could actually use it for clothes storage.  So far so good.

I cleaned off the two junk counters, and cleaned out the drawers under one junk counter.  I said “thank you for the joy you brought into my life” to a lot of old Christmas and Birthday cards, and discarded them, and also found a number of blank cards Kip had bought in anticipation of future need and then forgotten about, which went into the standard spot for stationery supplies, to make them easier to remember.  A lot of bubble wrap found an entire empty drawer to live in until it is needed for shipping things, and a lot of once-used Christmas wrapping paper got discarded, though I saved a few special pieces and put them with the Christmas gift bag supplies.  We ended up with a whole empty shelf that became the art and crafts-that-are-not-woodworking supplies stash.

It’s not actually a lot cleaner—but it’s a lot more *organized* and I am convinced this will make the actual cleaning part easier.  And I did vacuum under the junk counter, and the closet floor (and boy was there a lot of dust there.)