Trash It

This was the first thing that came to mind when I think about purging things. But I think a lot of people have a big problem with that, it’s very tough to get rid of things that have even a little bit of sentimental value. I asked Mom about a coffee cup which was sort of an ‘award’ one year for hockey… what do I do with it? She said.. "get rid of it". I guess she’s right, I mean – it doesn’t hold a lot of value for me personally, it’s just a cup. But there are a LOT of items like that around the house which you really have to learn how to get rid of I think since they will just continue to accumulate dust.

Clutter

Then of course there’s the stuff that gets put in a spot which you kind of forget about and never think of again until you specifically look at it. For example when Liz and I were searching for ways to lose weight and we searched all kinds of diet pill reviews and systems and came up with Isagenix. Well, it cost a pretty penny at the time, and we used it a little bit (it was basically a body cleansing system). Anyhow, we didn’t like it much and the items left over from it stayed above my fridge for the better part of 2 years taking up valuable kitchen storage. The other day, we finally got rid of that and put some items up there that we don’t use often.. but still find we need from time to time (waffle maker I think).

Sell It

This is my personal favorite, let’s sell some stuff for cold, hard, cash! Kijiji and UsedPei are absolutely wonderful “free” web sites which can help you sell your stuff! Take advantage!! Go one room at a time and just determine what’s worth selling, what’s not worth selling and donate or throw away the rest!

Develop A System

This is what I like doing, as I don’t have a lot of time – I like to find ways to make it easy to do the things mentioned above. Ironically I was just reading an article the other day which focused on the “Full In – Full Out” method.

This is restaurant terminology for "always have both hands full." When going to the kitchen, have plates cleared from your tables, and when going to the dining room, have plates of food to run out. The same theory applies to housework. If I’m going to the basement to get food out of the freezer, I take pots that need to go in the cellar. If I’m checking the mail, I take out a bag of trash or recycling. Once "full in, full out," gets in your head, it’s remarkable how things get put away.

I tend to do this all the time when putting things upstairs/downstairs since I live in a split entry home – I don’t want to go up and down those stairs any more than I have to (and I know Liz doesn’t either!) so we try to make sure to have a quick look around when we’re going in either direction to make sure there’s not something we can carry now since we’re going downstairs anyhow.

I’ve also just discovered (via that article linked above) with FlyLady.net which sounds interesting – I just signed up and my first task (which I’ll do tonight) is to shine my sink… (it has instructions on how to do this too if I didn’t already know..).. this could be interesting.

Start boiling some water.. added (in this case it was a soup mix) ingredients.. and then go downstairs or get distracted.. 20 minutes later (conservatively).. SHIT!! I smell something!!

Here is the outcome after a brief scrubbing and leaving it outside overnight.

Who's the idiot who let the pot boil dry?? Oh wait.. me.

Ok, so I screwed up.. but since these are great Paderno pots.. I wanted to put in a good effort into cleaning them. Off to the Internet I go!

The first thing I looked up, the article told me to  leave it for a few hours soaking in baking soda.. I can tell you that this did absolutely nothing. Perhaps I did it wrong, but it simply said to leave some baking soda in there, add some water.. and leave it to soak.. yeah.. it did nothing.

So I tried method two which seemed to be popular, which was to add water, and some detergent.. and get it to boil and then simmer for like 10 minutes.. then turn off the water completely.. This sounded easy enough (barring I didn’t forget about it again!!). Anyhow, I tried this.

Simmering Water With Detergent

You know.. this actually was the most useful tip of all the ones I think.. the pot easily went from:

Before Detergent Boil

To This:

After Detergent Boil

Which is definitely a step in the right direction.. I actually scraped out the caked on food with a spoon.. easy enough, I suppose I could have used something else, but it did the trick.

The next step I noticed everywhere was to leave it soaking in Vinegar overnight.. this worked out well since it was getting late and I wanted to go to bed anyhow!

Vinegar And Water Overnight - No, The Heat Isn't On!

So when I woke up this morning, I emptied out the vinegar in the pot.. and gave it a quick scrub with some water and a scouring pad…

Nice And Clean Again!

And as you can see, the pot is nice and clean again. There is, however, still a very slight brownish tinge to the bottom of the pot which you can’t really see in this picture, however I believe this will come out the first time I run it through a dishwasher.. I will keep you informed.

In the meantime, it’s time to go invest in a kitchen timer..

A few years ago, my older roommate and I had a really good system in which every Saturday.. we’d have what we called “the power hour” and we’d spend one hour of cleaning usually every Saturday. He’d usually take the downstairs, and I’d do the upstairs. It worked out really well for us honestly.. I mean.. what’s an hour right?

Well, it seems that it’s a LOT, cuz we had to go and actually get someone else to do it for awhile! But not anymore! For the last few weeks we’ve been saving the$50 every two weeks (yes.. that’s $1300 a year!) and cleaning ourselves. Liz does an unreal job upstairs while I do the vacuuming and all kinds of other little things that sometimes get neglected.

Of course I was sitting here the day before the clean-fest, and I started thinking about how I’d like to be organize this.. and Liz does too, so we came up with a checklist for each room. What a great idea! Even when I’m hungover I could follow a list, eh? This way things don’t get missed.

Another great idea in which we are going to implement is to have certain cleaning duties done every few weeks, months, once a year, etc. Things like ‘dust the fans’ which doesn’t need to be done every week, or ‘clean the fridge’, etc..etc. Things that don’t need to be done every week, but should be done on a fairly regular basis. Again, things that are on a list, tend to be things that get done, so I’m all for that.

Another benefits of firing the maid is of course the $50 we’re saving. With that money.. we’re going out to eat! A sort of  ”congratulations to you” type of deal. Also, I’m not sure how much cleaning any of you do out there.. but you put on quite a sweat when you clean! This is a good workout dammit!

So that’s our idea that we’re trying to implement. Obviously some weeks it gets delayed a bit, and some weeks we may do bare minimum.. but honestly, hiring a maid is kind of stupid when you have two very well abled bodies (three in our house) that have some time on the weekends to do it. Hell, just get up.. make a pot of coffee.. and before anything else.. do the cleaning.. then shower and enjoy, well.. a beer or two