Household Chores

The Garage was Calling!

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Life here has been busy. I am back to in-person teaching (that’s a series of posts I will probably never write!) Needless to say, I’m trying to stay afloat.

John, on the other hand, officially retired June 16th! He has been spending his time on his “Honey Do” list and rereading the Wagons West series of books by Dana Fuller Ross. I think he is on book 6 out of the 30ish books.

Some of the things completed on the Honey Do:

  • reapplying silicone around the toilets
  • installing the threshold between bathroom tile and hall/bedroom
  • installing trim along front edge of shower
  • reattaching fan cover in our bathroom to sit flush with ceiling
  • repainting our bedroom ceiling
  • replacing rollers in the sliding screen door
  • removing a huge bush from the back embankment
  • installing drip system for patio plants

We also decluttered a section of the garage shelves. Since we had a couple of boxes from my mom’s house, I needed to have a place to put them. It’s all the china pieces I don’t have in the house. I’m not sure how often I will need the coffee and tea pots as well as the many serving pieces and tiny coffee cups.

We decluttered 4 boxes of books, 3 camping chairs, and 10 medicine bottles!

MANY years ago we were going to have a vacation house with a library. Basically any book we ever bought we kept with the idea of putting them in a library. All these years later, our vacation home is on wheels and books are easily carried on a kindle/ipad/phone etc. Besides, I quit buying books about 6-7 years ago when I realized I needed to read the ones I had. I’m getting close to done!! These are the hardback copies that didn’t leave when we last decluttered books.

Decluttering the Freezer

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If you are like me, once something is put in the freezer I tend to forget it exists. Anyone want a popsicle that is 11 years after expiration?? Glad I was looking for something that sparked this decluttering!

And while I was doing that, I found these drink mixes in the outside frig and freezer – just a few years after expiration!

Weekend Chores!

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Hoping everyone is well and safe for this holiday weekend. We are both doing chores around the house – this will keep us away from others for the weekend!

John is working on the sprinkler system in the back – this seems like a never ending project. This is what happens when you get multiple leaks in the pressurized line, dig up to fix it, and realize the previous owner didn’t use the proper thickness of pipe. No wonder our water bill was so high compared to everyone else! I really wish I had taken a picture of the roots growing into the cracked pipes. He is also adding a new line.

I decided to do a little decluttering as I was cleaning. We replaced my iPad with an iPad mini for my birthday so the old cover can go. My iPad was so old, they would only give me $20 for the trade-in. Guess it is better than nothing.

When I got into a kitchen drawer, I found these old Weight Watchers point “calculators”. Guess they can go since they now have a great app for tracking your points and determining points for various foods.

An old sleep shirt and a couple of nonworking pens – you would have thought no more would exist in our house but you are wrong. I was also able to convince John to get rid of these baseball themed pajamas – he would wear them one day a year for pajama day at school/work and well . . . he’s retiring this year!

And these old headphones! Who uses corded headphones anymore?? These are so old they are literally falling apart.

Days 96 & 97 of Isolation

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After working on the windows, I decided to declutter/reorganize the DVDs.

We had reached the point of more DVD’s than the shelves would hold. That meant going through the old VHS tapes and reorganizing the cupboard to make room for them. 21 items decluttered!

I also decluttered 10 old coupons from my desk.

A few other things we did over these 2 days:

  • 3 hour phone chat with a friend
  • chats with both kiddos
    • Kiddo #2 detailed her delivery of diapers from the “Diaper Drive” she organized at work for a local women’s shelter. 5300 diapers were donated over 2 weeks! Great work!
  • trip to the cemetery to “visit” John’s Dad.
  • John cleaned the rain gutters at his Mom’s house
  • did some DAR research for a prospective member
    • This is another rabbit hole for me!

We watched MANY episodes of the series “Yellowstone”. We are really enjoying this one!

Days 92-94 of Isolation

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Now that we have a TON of time to do all those wonderful chores we’ve procrastinated doing, we decided to conquer one accidentally!

Ours were the windows. We spent DAYS working on them. Partly because I also vacuumed all the baseboards in each room as I worked my way through the house.

It all started when I was cleaning the bathroom. I decided I should vacuum the blind. Then that led to vacuuming the window sill. The window sill needed more than vacuuming this time so I had to wipe with a damp microfiber cloth.

That led to wiping the window itself. Once you do the inside of the window, you have to do the outside. This is where John comes into the chore! That means removing the screen and cleaning that. Before you put the screen back on, you have to clean the window track. Some of these were really YUCKY!

Even though it is not perfectly clean, it is so much better than before.

I don’t know about you guys, but this hadn’t been done thoroughly in our house for at least 5 years (assuming we did it during the 2015 Great Flood).

So one bathroom window means every window was cleaned inside and out! Every screen was cleaned. Every track and sill was cleaned. Every blind was vacuumed.

What pandemic chore have you completed lately?