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Wow - I have really been depressed because there are all sorts of things I need to be posting here and I haven't. Failure to keep LJ current should totally be on some depression check list.
I just went to Big Lots and got a bunch of winterizing plastic sheeting-type things for my windows. It isn't yet time to do all this but a co-worker told me I should go ahead and get all this stuff as they sell out in December. So I am ready. I think.
Do I need weatherstriping? What is weatherstripping? Is it one "p" or two?
I am so ready for winter. I'm already hunkered down and chilled. I think partly because the vid I am working on is really really cold. And I'm almost finished. Like really really close to being done and I haven't wigged out on some strange vid meta-like post on LJ about the experience and I haven't lost interest and I think I can just let this one go and WTF? I think I am growing as a person.
OH!! And Lum said it last night and I am totally holding her to this - but she is ready to collab on something and I am totally ready to do this and so we better be doing this. Which means I have to finish this vid because there is something else I need to be doing! YAY!
I've discovered that if I have a clean or cleanish home, I am happier and feel calmer overall. Since I am distractable and lazy and too poor to hire a housekeeper - the task of keeping up with my dishes and a dog with a tendency to shed his body weight in hair weekly sometimes seems daunting.
I have recently discovered some tips - which I will share with you now - on how to get me to clean and maintain a home that will not get Sid taken away by the Puppy Welfare Society:
1. Stop Struggling with Technology. If the vacuum stops running after 10 minutes and continuously loses its belt and is generally being a pest and bane on your existence? Get rid of it and buy another one. I don't care if it will still work if you do this and that and then hop on one foot. Get rid of it.
It is very hard for me to part with items if they even marginally are still capable of performing. I feel sorry for them. If vacuuming is a struggle and takes 3 hours to do 2 rooms? Not worth it (especially considering I have hard wood floors and ONE big rug). The vacuum will forgive you - in fact? It wants to retire. Pretend the vacuum is you and the big sucking sound you hear is your current job. Put it out of its misery and experience a moment of vicarious freedom
2. Buy fun gadgets. And by gadgets - I mean a mop. YES - a REAL LIVE MOP. Oh - and buy a bucket. You will never get over how often you will use a bucket if you actually own one.
But to me it felt frivolous to have a broom and a mop and a swiffer (or whatever it is that you use - swiffer-like-cleaning-type-thing) and a vacuum. But, I have most of Buffy on tape. It doesn't feel frivolous to also buy the DVDs. Same thing here - we are talking analog to digital floor care.
See - the vacuum is great for grabbing all the excess dog hair drifts that start in corners and soon will find their way tumbleweeding across the lonesome floor without regular intervention. Even better than the vacuum was the powerful handheld with a wand thingy I got on sale at Meiers. I can walk around without a huge thing in tow and zap up all the dog hair in corners and under things. It is fantastic.
Now the broom is also pretty nifty. I've mainly used them in the past for having other people take down spider webs. Turns out? They can quickly help you clear a floor of general rubble. Who knew?
Once you have a pile of general rubble hit it with the hand-held attachment on the vacuum. Suddenly, that mess no longer exists. You have defied space and time. You are like full of magical powers. Now all you have to decide is if you are a good witch or a bad witch. Ideally you can debate this as you put your broom away. If you hop on and pretend to ride it and no one is there to see you? It never happened.
::whistles tune from "Bewitched"::
Now the floors are clear and all you have to do is, you know, clean them. The swiffer-type-thing works fantastically on the hardwood floors and has the fun spray nozzle and then it swivels all over the place. Helpful hint: embrace your inner Gene Kelly. Issue commands like "Glow floor, GLOW!" and marvel at the shiny.
For the kitchen? If you are anything like me you will need a mop and a bucket. If you really want to get into character, I suppose you could just get a bucket and one of those scrubby type things and pretend to be Cordelia at the Hyperion cleaning the floors. I'm not actually sure how that works, though. I mean I see it all the time on TV, but I've never actually figured out why they were working the floors into a lather. Are they going to rinse? How will this end? I only know the beginning of this cleaning ritual - not the end. I grew up in house with wall-to-wall - it IS NOT MY FAULT.
::takes a moment::
But we are in the kitchen now and there are bigger fish to fry. Although, actually, I wouldn't recommend it, frying fish. See - the oil gets everywhere and then your whole house smells like fish and there is a Captain D's just down the street. Logically it just doesn't make sense, but you are an adult and it is your kitchen. I am just trying to help.
What was I talking about? Oh, right - kitchen. Okay - see this is the scene of all my big cleaning downfalls - the kitchen. I tend to get really narrowly focused and think that as long as I do the dishes and put food away the kitchen is clean.
Apparently, not as my mother tried to point out to me by showing me that cabinets and counters and even the fridge can become rather disgusting, even with extremely limited use. My mother was also aghast that I did not have any bleach in the house and when I just looked at her cause, really, what am I gonna do with bleach? I was actually worried about her heart right then. She just muttered something about having failed me as a mother and I was trying to make her feel better by showing her where I bought three boxes of Baking Soda after![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heres_luck said it was good to clean with. "See, Mom - look! Baking soda!" except I didn't really know what to do with the baking soda other than to walk around the kitchen and introduce it to the appliances. "Mr. Toaster, I'd like you to meet Baking Soda. Yeah, we are hoping Baking Soda will be cleaning for us. Possibly soon."
::baking soda just sits there::
"Yeeeeep. Any day now."
So, yeah - the kitchen is not my forte. Did I spell that right? For-tay. The kitchen is just not my bag. But I finally figured out a way to motivate me to make it sparkle. Now - this works for me, it might not work for you - but you possibly could try it and see.
First of all - you get some of those rubber/latex gloves that you are supposed to use to wash dishes. Then you get yourself a really big sponge. Then, and this is the trick that brings it all together, you pretend that you have to wipe down everything in the kitchen that might have your fingerprints on it and you have to do it all before Fraser wakes up.
My kitchen now sparkles. The entire thing. Even the toaster.
I just went to Big Lots and got a bunch of winterizing plastic sheeting-type things for my windows. It isn't yet time to do all this but a co-worker told me I should go ahead and get all this stuff as they sell out in December. So I am ready. I think.
Do I need weatherstriping? What is weatherstripping? Is it one "p" or two?
I am so ready for winter. I'm already hunkered down and chilled. I think partly because the vid I am working on is really really cold. And I'm almost finished. Like really really close to being done and I haven't wigged out on some strange vid meta-like post on LJ about the experience and I haven't lost interest and I think I can just let this one go and WTF? I think I am growing as a person.
OH!! And Lum said it last night and I am totally holding her to this - but she is ready to collab on something and I am totally ready to do this and so we better be doing this. Which means I have to finish this vid because there is something else I need to be doing! YAY!
I've discovered that if I have a clean or cleanish home, I am happier and feel calmer overall. Since I am distractable and lazy and too poor to hire a housekeeper - the task of keeping up with my dishes and a dog with a tendency to shed his body weight in hair weekly sometimes seems daunting.
I have recently discovered some tips - which I will share with you now - on how to get me to clean and maintain a home that will not get Sid taken away by the Puppy Welfare Society:
1. Stop Struggling with Technology. If the vacuum stops running after 10 minutes and continuously loses its belt and is generally being a pest and bane on your existence? Get rid of it and buy another one. I don't care if it will still work if you do this and that and then hop on one foot. Get rid of it.
It is very hard for me to part with items if they even marginally are still capable of performing. I feel sorry for them. If vacuuming is a struggle and takes 3 hours to do 2 rooms? Not worth it (especially considering I have hard wood floors and ONE big rug). The vacuum will forgive you - in fact? It wants to retire. Pretend the vacuum is you and the big sucking sound you hear is your current job. Put it out of its misery and experience a moment of vicarious freedom
2. Buy fun gadgets. And by gadgets - I mean a mop. YES - a REAL LIVE MOP. Oh - and buy a bucket. You will never get over how often you will use a bucket if you actually own one.
But to me it felt frivolous to have a broom and a mop and a swiffer (or whatever it is that you use - swiffer-like-cleaning-type-thing) and a vacuum. But, I have most of Buffy on tape. It doesn't feel frivolous to also buy the DVDs. Same thing here - we are talking analog to digital floor care.
See - the vacuum is great for grabbing all the excess dog hair drifts that start in corners and soon will find their way tumbleweeding across the lonesome floor without regular intervention. Even better than the vacuum was the powerful handheld with a wand thingy I got on sale at Meiers. I can walk around without a huge thing in tow and zap up all the dog hair in corners and under things. It is fantastic.
Now the broom is also pretty nifty. I've mainly used them in the past for having other people take down spider webs. Turns out? They can quickly help you clear a floor of general rubble. Who knew?
Once you have a pile of general rubble hit it with the hand-held attachment on the vacuum. Suddenly, that mess no longer exists. You have defied space and time. You are like full of magical powers. Now all you have to decide is if you are a good witch or a bad witch. Ideally you can debate this as you put your broom away. If you hop on and pretend to ride it and no one is there to see you? It never happened.
::whistles tune from "Bewitched"::
Now the floors are clear and all you have to do is, you know, clean them. The swiffer-type-thing works fantastically on the hardwood floors and has the fun spray nozzle and then it swivels all over the place. Helpful hint: embrace your inner Gene Kelly. Issue commands like "Glow floor, GLOW!" and marvel at the shiny.
For the kitchen? If you are anything like me you will need a mop and a bucket. If you really want to get into character, I suppose you could just get a bucket and one of those scrubby type things and pretend to be Cordelia at the Hyperion cleaning the floors. I'm not actually sure how that works, though. I mean I see it all the time on TV, but I've never actually figured out why they were working the floors into a lather. Are they going to rinse? How will this end? I only know the beginning of this cleaning ritual - not the end. I grew up in house with wall-to-wall - it IS NOT MY FAULT.
::takes a moment::
But we are in the kitchen now and there are bigger fish to fry. Although, actually, I wouldn't recommend it, frying fish. See - the oil gets everywhere and then your whole house smells like fish and there is a Captain D's just down the street. Logically it just doesn't make sense, but you are an adult and it is your kitchen. I am just trying to help.
What was I talking about? Oh, right - kitchen. Okay - see this is the scene of all my big cleaning downfalls - the kitchen. I tend to get really narrowly focused and think that as long as I do the dishes and put food away the kitchen is clean.
Apparently, not as my mother tried to point out to me by showing me that cabinets and counters and even the fridge can become rather disgusting, even with extremely limited use. My mother was also aghast that I did not have any bleach in the house and when I just looked at her cause, really, what am I gonna do with bleach? I was actually worried about her heart right then. She just muttered something about having failed me as a mother and I was trying to make her feel better by showing her where I bought three boxes of Baking Soda after
heres_luck said it was good to clean with. "See, Mom - look! Baking soda!" except I didn't really know what to do with the baking soda other than to walk around the kitchen and introduce it to the appliances. "Mr. Toaster, I'd like you to meet Baking Soda. Yeah, we are hoping Baking Soda will be cleaning for us. Possibly soon." ::baking soda just sits there::
"Yeeeeep. Any day now."
So, yeah - the kitchen is not my forte. Did I spell that right? For-tay. The kitchen is just not my bag. But I finally figured out a way to motivate me to make it sparkle. Now - this works for me, it might not work for you - but you possibly could try it and see.
First of all - you get some of those rubber/latex gloves that you are supposed to use to wash dishes. Then you get yourself a really big sponge. Then, and this is the trick that brings it all together, you pretend that you have to wipe down everything in the kitchen that might have your fingerprints on it and you have to do it all before Fraser wakes up.
My kitchen now sparkles. The entire thing. Even the toaster.
