In the Category of Things I'm Glad I Did

I'm still writing a post-mortem of the holidays here. 

In preparation for the onslaught of guests in my house over the holidays, I had a lot of help from my young friends Amy and James.  James is a worker!  Some of the things that were done included painting the ceilings in two rooms, repainting the main bathroom, shampooing the living room and hallway carpets, washing the kitchen and bathroom floors, and lots of other little tasks that we don't think about in normal cleaning routines.

While James was shampooing the carpets, Amy and I were sitting at the kitchen table when I happened to think about the refrigerator crisper drawers.  While we chatted, I checked.  Ack!  They were bad!  Rotting fruits and vegetables had left a brown slime on the bottom of the drawers, so I got busy and cleaned them.  I'm glad I did!  The very first thing that happened when my Russian guests arrived in my house was that they needed a place to put their precious vegetables.  Out came the drawers.  In went the veggies.  I didn't have to be embarrassed!

Back over the Thanksgiving weekend, I'd had a toilet overflow which required throwing down towels, then washing the towels and bleaching the floor.  What I hadn't done, however, was move the wicker cabinet in that bathroom to clean under it.  I don't care how clean you keep your house, stuff gathers under furniture that is off the floor just a tad.  I would not have moved it before company, but when James repainted the bathroom, he moved it out and washed the floor.  What's so special about that is that sometime when my company was here for New Year's, the artificial plant that normally sits on top of the wicker cabinet got knocked behind it (not sure how), and someone pulled the cabinet out to retrieve it, unsuccessfully.  In other words, had the floor not been cleaned prior, the mess under the cabinet would have been obvious to all.  Glad that didn't happen!

One thing I did mess up on was ceiling fans.  Some of the ceiling fans are on all the time when the light switch is flipped.  Can't see the crud on the blades when they are moving.  My Russian guests shut off the fan in the garage room, and the filth on the blades was quite obvious.  Oops!  I got the fans in the kitchen and living room cleaned, but missed the most important one.  Oh well!

And one last thing:  I somewhat chided James for working so hard at shampooing the living room and hallway carpets, believing them to be too far gone to really help...but when he was finished, he had eliminated 99.9% of the stains on the rugs.  Hallelujah!  This is a case in which I'm glad I DIDN'T shut him down early.  Some of those stains had been there for a very long time!

Okay...maybe I'm done with the holiday stuff now.  Thanks for your patience!