Speed Cleaning the Fridge

Wouldn’t you love to open your refrigerator and see it shining and clean…and ready to fill with goodies for the holidays? If there was ever a time of year when a clean fridge was essential, the holidays is that time! We want to be able to say, “Sure, I’d love to have your help!”  How many times have you said, “No, thanks, I’m just fine.” , just because you didn’t want your guests to see the state of your refrigerator?

 

Well, not this year! This week, is Zone 2, if you are following the Flylady plan and that means working in the kitchen. I have talked a lot about that HERE and HERE.  I spent several days last week de-cluttering and boxing up my kitchen gadgetry and linens for a garage sale with my daughter-in-law.

While doing that, I naturally, ended up getting my cabinets in order. Last month, I de-cluttered the upper cabinets and this week, it was the lower ones--you know, the ones with appliances, mixing bowls, and Tupperware. Sadly, I didn’t get to the water bottles! I just flat ran out of time. But with Ebeth’s inspiration, I got enough junk out to make $50.00! She made a lot more, but hey, that’s still money in the bank and less clutter in my kitchen!

But what I most wanted to get done this week was to clean the refrigerator.  Every month, right before we do our monthly grocery shopping, I do a pretty major cleaning but not as thorough as I did this month. There will be a lot of baking, candy making, and cooking going on this month so I wanted everything to be as sanitary and roomy as possible.

Since I also started the South Beach Diet this week, (Gotta love those RECIPES!!), I needed a very clean vegetable bin and lots of room for fresh vegetables. I soaked those bins to get every last little bit of dried up unmentionable bits out of every crack and crevice. What were all those dried up bits? Ah..I’m not going to tell you! Didn’t I say they were ‘unmentionable?’. 

What dies in the kitchen…stays in the kitchen.

That’s my secret! Tee-hee! Let us pull a polite curtain over the remains of last month’s dinners shall we?

Really girls, It’s not as bad a job as it seems. If you are dreading the thought of tackling the whole fridge, at least commit to one bin. Once you get that one vege or fruit bin empty and it’s all clean and shiny (just use warm soapy water) you may have enough courage do clean the whole fridge!  That’s how I got started. I just wanted a clean vegetable bin..but one thing does often lead to another…and now the whole fridge is lovely—just in time for the holidays!

If your refrigerator is already in good shape but just needs some touching up, here is a good method from Jeff Campbell of Clean in a Minute: Speed Cleaning.

How to Speed Clean a Refrigerator

1. Take out a few things from the top shelf. Scoot everything to the left side of the shelf.
2. Spray and wipe this shelf with 409 and wipe clean with paper towels.
3. Remove and discard old food as you work. 
4. Scoot everything to the right side and clean the left side of the shelf.
5. Now move half of the second shelf to the empty space of the top one.
6. Repeat the left to right side scoot, spraying and wiping as you go. Work your way down to the vege and fruit bins.
7. When you get to the fruit bin, empty the fruit and veges from the top drawer into the bottom.
8. Clean that bin and replace.
9. Then shift the fresh food to the top drawer and replace and sort.
10. For the side drawers in the door, remove about half the condiments from the first shelf and set them in an open space inside the fridge, now scoot your stuff left to right.

  

My door drawers are empty enough, that I can scoot every thing in the drawer over enough to clean the surface without removing anything. This is called “de-cluttered”. :o) You want this!

Organizing and Maintaining Your Refrigerator

Now, how do you keep a fridge clean?  Once a week, you just have to put everything back where it belongs. Or better yet, how about once a day? When you see condiments in the wrong place, put them back. If someone puts leftovers on the dairy shelf, then move them back to the spot designated for leftovers.  If you don’t have any organizational plan for  your fridge, today might be a good time to start! :o)

I have my refrigerator organized, in a general way, like this.

• Beverages
• Dairy Products 
• Lunchmeats
• Leftovers and Extra Fresh Veges (things that could spoil if not used quickly
• Fruit Bin
• Vege Bin

And in the side drawers or shelves

• Butter and Eggs
• Tiny condiments and Misc.
• Sauces and Recipe Ingredients
• Lunch Condiments
• Salad Condiments

In my photo, you can see that I need to do some rearranging—again. This is called NORMAL life.  Order requires maintenance. It doesn’t happen by itself. So when you first start to try to keep some order in the fridge, be sure to label the shelves! This will help everyone get used to your new system!

I hope today’s post will help you get brave and get the fridge clean and shiny! I want your refrigerator to make you smile!

What cleaning job are you going to do today to help get you ready for the holidays?

It’s Monday-- Let’s put on our aprons and bless our homes!

Happy Homemaking...

Get Your Bathroom Sparkling Clean!

Sometimes I honestly think that the need for a sparkling clean bathroom is genetically predisposed towards the female gender. What do you think? How many of us cringe at just the thought of using a roadside bathroom while traveling, yet my husband assures me that the men’s bathroom is FAR worse! Horrors!

My daughter and her four teenage brothers shared one small bathroom for years. (She’s still sharing it with two teen brothers now.) She always took it upon herself to clean it, as their attempts to do so rarely lived up to her standards. How could I blame her? She was the only one who seemed to notice the dirt! So she is permanently assigned to that room and she feels much happier with the arrangement.

My father used to regularly entertain me with an unremitting litany of despair as the deacon in charge of  facilities at his church. He had the fun task of cleaning the boys’ bathroom at the Episcopal church school he was responsible for. He often asked me,

“What do little boys DO in the bathroom?”  

(Since I had four boys of my own, he assumed I was an expert on the subject.) He swore that he found evidence of messes far higher on the wall than most small chaps could ever reach and he could never figure it out.  Ha! He raised a family of girls, so no wonder he was in the dark!

I’ve heard from a certain male relative, whose name shall remain anonymous to protect the innocent, that he and his brothers once held a competition to see who could hit the highest.  End of that mystery…  I will never forget the day that I read Don Aslett’s wonderful tip for keeping the toilet clean when little boys are involved…  Turn off the water supply to the toilet, dry the inside, paint a red dot with fingernail polish and let it dry. Your troubles will soon be over. Boy we he ever right. Thank you Don!

I remember quite well attempting to clean our bathroom when all four of MY boys were little. It seemed a hopeless cause. No matter how well I cleaned, it seemed that I could not get rid of the smell!  But one of my first and favorite vintage homemaking books, How to Keep House by Mary Davis Gillies, assured me that if there was odor..than there were germs…somewhere! My job was to search and destroy.

She said that many times, young homemakers try to hide smells with scented candles and air fresheners but that the best way to make a house smell good..is simply to clean it.  Diapers, urine, spoiled food, pet accidents that haven’t been thoroughly disinfected, and even vase water all cause odors caused by germs. If you don’t remove the culprits, and thoroughly clean the area, you will have bad smells in the house that no amount of air freshener can remove.

When I began to regularly clean the WALLS beside the toilet and behind the toilet and even higher (Yipes!), the smell was gone. It was not enough to clean the toilet or even the surrounding floor.  Years later, we found that the men’s bathroom in the school where we hold church once a week was beginning to smell very badly.  As a deacon chairman’s wife, I felt it my God-ordained ‘duty’ to ferret out the cause.  Of course, you know where I started…walls..plain and simple.  (I guess the custodian couldn’t figure it out either-Ha!) Voila! No more odor!

Here is Mrs. Davies instructions for…

How to Clean a Bathroom

Feel free to ignore anything that seems excessive, but here were her instructions from 1948.

1. Using a disinfectant and brush, clean toilet bowl. Wash the top, bottom, and hinges of the seat, clean tank, metal fittings, and base. put a few drops of disinfectant in bowl; a pine scented type is pleasant.  (I use Pine Sol.)

2. Polish all metal faucets and parts. Dry to prevent water spots. (Use windex or alcohol and water.)

3. Scrub sink, tub, and shower with comet or baking soda.  I use soap afterwards if scrubbing with soda. Wipe off strainers with a paper towel.  Flush with hot water. My favorite products are Showers and Stuff or The Works. Try lime-away for very hard water, but don’t use on stainless steel.  Be careful if you have unusual metals involved.  Use a pumice stone for the worst build up.

4. Wipe off windows, mirror, and light fixtures. (Again, windex or alcohol and water are great for this job.)

5. Wash down tile or marble walls with soap and water or all purpose spray. Use a soft brush on painted and wall papered walls. Dust frames and backs of pictures.

6. Scrub floors; wipe off bathroom scales. (I spray floors with 409 and wipe with paper towels or you could use a mixture of a tablespoon of Borax, a few drops of Dawn dish detergent, 2 T. vinegar to a spray bottle of water.  This is just basic all purpose cleaner. You can use it in the kitchen too!) Jeff Campbell of Spring Cleaning by The Clean Team suggests using paper towels and just spray and wiping the floors. I’ve done this for years. Most bathroom floors aren’t that big!

7. Replace towels.

8. Empty and replace wastebasket.

9. Clean and replace rug or carpet. (I wash them weekly.)

Now…light a nice smelling candle or burn a scented oil. The bathroom will not only LOOK clean and SMELL clean..but it really will be Sparkling Clean!

Click HERE to Print the List.

This week, those of you who follow Flylady’s monthly decluttering routine, like I do, will be decluttering the bathroom, so I thought this list of cleaning tasks would be helpful. I plan to thoroughly clean my bathroom this week..and work on decluttering 15 minutes a day.

If you’d like to get in on the fun and join us on our weekly cleaning adventures,
just drop by FlyLady’s website.

Happy Homemaking!

Why I Love Hotel Rooms: Cleanliness, Order, Beauty, Symmetry..and of course maids!

Do you ever find yourself wishing you lived in a four star hotel room? I have always been fascinated with them! I'm writing right now from the comfort and luxury of a beautifully made bed in my PJ's at a hotel only 30 minutes from home! 

Tim is working at a stylish desk while listening to his favorite classical music on Pandora. (Online radio service.) So he's in heaven too!

We went to see Inception last night and didn't get back until very late, so we slept late, skipped breakfast and are now enjoying the peace and quiet of being 'away' from normal life just for a bit. Tim still has to work but we will take off at four to go play pool at Main Event. (One of our favorite date night activities.)

Being at this modest, but pretty hotel, with its bright, modern, green, white, and orange decor is so pleasant! It's so very like being a little girl at Grandma's house again. Staying at her house was almost the same as staying in a luxurious hotel. :o) I'm sure I fell in love with homemaking because of her and her amazing way of keeping house. 

She was the most stunning housekeeper and homemaker I ever knew. And what made it so special was that she loved everyone in her life and enjoyed having guests to pamper. It was why she did such a good job. She kept her home beautifully so she could use it to bless her family.

Her lovely home exuded order. It was beautifully and tastefully decorated. (Alright..I admit, she didn't have toddlers running around all week!) Her house was sparkling clean. I only vaguely remember her vacuuming but I know she vacuumed every day. The drapes, couches  and paintings along with little quilted covers for the coffee tables were all so so pretty. 

I remember that she made the most wonderful breakfasts and would always ask us if would we like eggs and bacon or oatmeal (and hers was the best I've ever tasted!).(I don't recommend made to order breakfasts every day of course. :o)   We always had juice in quaint little glasses and ate on the most beautifully arranged table I've ever seen. She had a whole dresser devoted to 'linens'. Setting the table was an art form with Grandma!  Everything in the kitchen was bright yellow orange and green (a lot like my hotel room but with more yellow!) It seemed that she brought the sunshine right into the kitchen.

We often went somewhere exciting for the day and  when we returned home, she cook a delicious dinner. It seemed that she always made our favorite dishes. And her desserts were just to die for!  I have so many pictures in my mind of her at the stove dressed in stylish clothes with a crisp clean apron tied around her waist. 

When it was bedtime, we would all watch the Lawrence Welk Show in her beautiful pale green and blue livingroom and then, when it was over, she would say (cheerfully), "Time for a bath and bed girls!" Her bathroom smelled like a powder puff and she had the most luscious bath mat--deep pale blue shag. Even her tiny laundry hamper was so pretty..white wicker with little brass stand and feet. It was NEVER overfilled.

She did laundry every day. I think she only did a couple of loads a day and she always folded the clothes on top of the deep freezer straight from the dryer. She didn't have a 'folding table' so she had made a quilted pad to lay on top of the dryer whenever she folded her clothes. It was the prettiest yellow and orange daisies with white trim.

When we had all been bathed and dried in her fluffy white towels she would let us put powder from her powder bowl with a big fluffy puff. Do you remember those? They had a ribbon strap that went across the back of your hand. I loved the smell of that powder!

Then, it was off to bed...a perfect little guest bedroom with clean fresh white sheets, comfy quilts, thermal cotton blankets, and fluffy pillows. She had our favorite books, The Bobbsey Twins, on the bottom shelf where we could get to them and read a little by a small bedside lamp before we went to bed.

All through the night, I would hear the clock chiming the hour and half hour (Westminister chimes) and know that all was well. And in the morning...we would wake yet again to the smell of bacon..and a cheery greeting.

I loved my grandmother for a million reasons, but that she gave me the vision for what a difference a wonderful woman can make when she gives her focus to making a beautiful home for those she loves, I love her most of all.

Our world would be such a different place, if more women aspired to be the 'queens' of their homes and their hubby's and families' hearts, as Grandma Wood did.  And I think hotels are wonderful, because in many ways, they recreate that feeling of home..and being cared for. Don't you?

Is there a homemaker from your life that you have always admired? I'd love to hear about her!

Which would you rather clean--a beautiful home or a messy one? The choice is yours!

Visit Mark Joyner for more of his
personal development brain puzzle cartoons.

As I was cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes the other day,

I marveled again at the fact that I was always going to be doing these activities, but the environment that I chose to do them in 

was up to me. 

If I got the house clean and KEPT it that way, I would still have to do all the things listed above and would probably spend X amount of time doing them all, but I would enjoy getting to work in a lovely environment.  On the other hand, if I let the house fall apart, before doing all those activities, I would spend the same amount of time doing the same activities but all in a messy home which would be MUCH less rewarding. Many of us do the latter and don't get near the enjoyment out of our homemaking activities that we could.  We end up feeling like failures at our 'chosen' professions! Why would anyone want to live like that? And no wonder if we don't feel motivated since there is no clean orderly home when we are done working as a reward for all our efforts.

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The most astonishing thing I ever read about homemaking, was that ...

The key to a beautiful and orderly home is maintenance.

I had honestly NEVER thought about it! In the early years of married life, the way I cleaned house was to wait until I couldn't stand it any more and then go on an all out cleaning marathon.  I often wondered why no one 'dropped by' on the day my house was clean. Yipes!  Until I read Denise Schofield's book, Confessions of an Organized Housewife, I never once thought of KEEPING the house clean. I thought everyone let their house fall apart before cleaning it.

I think I had the same perspective that the authors of Sidetracked Home Excutives did. I kept thinking the 'house fairy' was going to drop by and pick everything up for me. I can't tell you how much I wished I could just snap my fingers like Mary Poppins and everything would go back to it's proper place. :o) I wanted to sew, quilt, cross-stitch, and write music--not clean and wash clothes!

Denise said that maintenance was just a necessary fact of life. As she put it, "after all your hair needs combing every few hours, and your stomach gets hungry regularly too. Nothing maintains itself!" That is especially true for housekeeping.  The key to eliminating 'growing' work is to DO IT DAILY!  Things like laundry, dishes, and clutter have to be handled on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.

It was a revolutionary idea to me. To KEEP things clean instead of always rescuing them from a state of chaos made so much sense. It required developing a habit of maintaining order rather than allowing things to fall apart.  It was HARD!

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I discovered that I didn't like the discipline of putting things away when I was through with a project...

or washing dishes right after a meal and washing clothes as soon as I had enough to make a load.  I enjoyed the relaxing and luxurious feeling of leaving things out. But I didn't enjoy the hassle and time required to get it all back in order.  If the plain truth be told,

I definitely didn't like living in chaos!

So I worked very hard to develop the habit of cleaning up after myself and making the kids do the same thing.

And guess what? I discovered that I  LOVED living and working in a beautiful home! It took me a good solid week to get everything in a fairly orderly state the first time, but keeping it in order had the hidden reward of living 'all day long' in a beautiful home. I felt so special...even pampered. The kids seemed amazed and even told me "I love our house now, Mommy!".  And Tim, my dear hubby, was the most appreciative of all. I think he thought he had died and gone to heaven!

I discovered that it was so nice to not live in a state of crisis!

I could have company without scrambling or getting stressed out. I was much more likely to tell the kids that they could have their friends over. When the family got the flu, we could handle the crisis with so much more ease. And when we had to make an unexpected trip, it was so easy to get ready!  It was hard to be disciplined  on a daily basis, but the rest of life was incredibly easier to handle. There were always clean clothes, towels, food in the fridge, and a semblance of order to outweigh the stresses of daily life.

This was the vision I had of a Happy Homemaker when I first started my career....dressed in my 1950's dress with pearls around my neck and happily pushing a vacuum across a floor that didn't look terribly dirty. :o)  

If you think about, if Wal-mart didn't clean their stores until they were dirty, no one would shop there! And really, the same goes for hotels.

Why should we work in a less pleasant environment than your average maid in a high class hotel? I decided that I deserved better and so did my family.

I like being a 'classy' homemaker. I vowed to clean, cook, do laundry, and teach my children in a beautiful orderly home, instead of a messy one. It's worth all the effort I can muster to function ahead of the game instead of living life 'behind the 8 ball'!

This week, let's take on the challenge of  getting the house as orderly as we can, and then keeping it that way. See if you and your family enjoy working in an orderly and beautiful environment instead of a messy one. I think you will feel so much better about your work and your abilities as a homemaker. Yes, picking up and cleaning as you go, takes a little more time, but not a LOT more! And the results...are lovely!

Happy Homemaking!

FlyLady Tips: Getting That "Finished" Feeling: Weekly Schedule and Favorite Cleaners

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There are as many ways to schedule your home management chores as there are women to manage their homes! We all have such different lives.  But the important thing is to HAVE a weekly schedule.  Whether you use the FlyLady system and only clean 1 hour per week  (Home Blessing) on Monday and declutter and thoroughly clean one room per week or you do top to bottom house cleaning every Saturday, we all need a schedule.

My schedule is to clean on Mondays, do paperwork on Tuesdays, do to do list on Wednesdays, catch up the laundry and sew on Thursdays, and grocery shop and run errands on Fridays.  Saturday, we do yard work, and I may work on a really big project then. 

The main reason to have a schedule is so you feel like you are FINISHED. The old saying that a "Woman's work is never done.", I'm sure came from the fact that our work is so incredibly repetitive.  I really love the FlyLady system, but the one down side, is that in many ways I never feel finished. The upside is that you can spend less time per day cleaning. You may not have everything done every day...but Monday's work or Tuesday's work CAN be finished etc.

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My problem though, is that when I quit cleaning the old fashioned way--top to bottom on one day during the week, I quit giving my cleaning methods and results the focus they needed. In some ways, it felt like the house was always less than clean.

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I do so love the feeling of having the whole house sparkling clean! We had that feeling this week since we spent a good solid two days cleaning to get ready for hosting five boys overnight. We keep things picked up pretty good most of the time, but it seemed like I never quite got to the deep cleaning the way I needed to. There is nothing that says "I love you" to your hubby and kids like clean bathrooms, sheets, clothes, refrigerator, and furniture. Now that the kids are older, I think with all of us working, we can get the job done quicker.

The nice thing about cleaning once a week, is that once you get started, you tend to want to keep going. And you tend to do a better job, when you know that CLEANING is what you are doing that day.  To help me not end up spending the whole day at it though, I plan to focus on doing one job at a time in all the rooms of the house.

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My Weekly Homemaking Schedule

• Vacuum and Sweep: Dust using a vacuum cleaner. Dust high, low, and include couches. Use an extension cord! Work from high to low. We have wood laminate floors and the dust collects all over everything! It doesn't have carpet to catch in so it gathers in dust balls. I use the vacuum wand a lot!
• Clean Glass: Using windex or alcohol and water, spray and wipe all glass and mirrors. Use papertowels to dry.

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• Wash Wood and Cabinets: Start a bucket full of warm water with Murphy's Wood Oil Soap. I can use it on my laminate floors too. Give the table and chairs a good scrubbing. Mop floors, wipe down wood cabinets and doors. Polish afterwards. My favorite furniture polish is called Wood to Wood. 

It's expensive but worth every penny! It actually WORKS which is why I LOVE Don Aslett's products! My first bottle lasted YEARS!  I also bought their floor cleaner. I've never used it before, but everything else he sells is awesome so I'm sure this will be too.

• Clean Bathrooms and mop tile.  I use Don Aslett's products here too. He has two great products, Safety Foam for the toilet and Showers-n-stuff for the shower and sinks. I mop with Murphy's Wood Oil Soap because I hate the harsh smell of Pine Sol.

• Clean Fingerprints, appliances, doors and door knobs with 409 or Thieves ( I love this stuff!) and paper towels. Use alcohol to clean telephones, and  hair appliances.

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• Want to clean your windows? Do you know that Don Aslett, the King of Clean, suggests just using a teaspoon of Dawn liquid detergent to a gallon of hot water and a squeegee?  For those of you who like homemade cleaners..this is good news!

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I plan to wait until Laundry/Sewing day to change the sheets.  The fridge gets a good once over when I do my monthly shopping.  While I'm cleaning, I can set my stove to self clean.  If you have to do it the old fashioned way, be sure to use paper towels to wipe out the yuk rather than cleaning rags as you can just throw the mess away when you are done.

Well, I'm off to find my apron and roll up my sleeves...how about you? How could you plan your week so you could  have that 'finished' feeling?  


Happy Homemaking!