Unintentional Spring Cleaning

Just some humor to start your day. Maybe you can relate, I hope it brings a smile!

All I planned to do was just pick up the crumbs.

An Actual Journal Entry

Woke up, still tired and moving slowly, yet as I drank lemon water, I noticed little bits of things on the kitchen floor, even though I’d just swept it yesterday.

Apparently I couldn’t tolerate that, and went to the kitchen storage room to get the broom. I noticed that the storage room floor was surprisingly dirty (although I don’t know why that would be surprising, since it’s right by the door to the outside). No problem, just 1 minute of vacuuming would solve that.

In order to get to the vacuum from the coat closet, I had to move the backpack and shoes that were blocking it. Hmmm. Pretty inefficient set up.

Organizational Brain Flash

To make it more efficient, I could put the backpack in either the hall storage room or guest bedroom closet. And when I was done with the vacuum cleaner, it could go in the hall storage room too, which would free up room for the shoes.

Now, if I was going to vacuum the kitchen storage room floor well, I had to remove the laundry supplies and the small tub, broom and dustpan from the floor. Not a big deal.

While vacuuming the storage room floor, I actually closed the door to get all the corners. I noticed that there was a roll of Christmas wrapping paper behind the door which I completely forgot about, so I wrote a note for myself, “Wrapping paper behind door”, and taped it on the shelves.

While I was taping it the note-to-self on the shelves, I noticed what looked like mold: greenish-brown spots on just one section of the side panel of the shelves at eye level. I wetted a paper towel and wiped at the green stuff. Nothing came off except a little dust, so I think it’s paint.

Great, the kitchen storage room floor is now clean! Woohoo!

May as well

Since I had the vacuum cleaner out, I figured I may as well vacuum the hall and guest room that I didn’t vacuum last week. And since I’m in the hall, I may as well vacuum the furnace closet floor and spider webs. It’ll only take a minute.

Oh look! A gigantic toaster oven on the floor of the furnace closet! I’d forgotten about that. Someone had kindly given it to me not long after I moved in (a year ago), I’d never used it. (It was pretty creepy inside, dirty, greasy and rusty; I’d actually considered cleaning it but it is too big to go on my counter.) So out went the gigantic toaster oven onto the kitchen counter, for now. Later I’ll put it in the trunk of my car to donate or throw away when I am done with my cleaning.

The vacuum cleaner took care of the few cobwebs around the furnace closet door frame, as well as the floor, and voila! Furnace closet, finis!

Getting warm

Continuing with my original plan, I rolled into the guest bedroom. I moved the books on the floor onto the bed (bookshelf is full). I noticed some dust and cobwebs on the Wi-Fi modem router thingy, so I pulled that out away from the walls so I could dust it and vacuum that corner.

By then I was getting pretty warm so I opened the window to let in the cool morning air. Then I looked at the window…and the screen…

Since the middle of this past winter, I have wanted to get the big old cobwebs and leaves cleared off of the screen and window glass. Well, with vacuum hose in hand, there’s no time like the present! Why not? Five minutes tops.

Very fast spider

I opened the window wide and removed the screen, pulling it inside the room. But to my surprise, the screen dragged with it most of the cobwebs. One of the “residents” of the cobwebs was a big spider. Wow, I’ve never seen such a fast spider! It promptly ran inside and onto the carpet somewhere.

I stopped to go get my pet taxi (clear plastic bulk-food container), planning to relocate the spider to my deck (I only kill mosquitos). When I came back I finally found and captured the spider, and dumped it outside.

Turns out vacuuming was not strong enough to get most of the webs completely removed, so I went for reinforcements. I got a toothbrush and a little broom, and used my wooden Puerto Vallarta pen (sitting on the bookshelf) to dig around all the nooks and crannies of the window frame.

Success! All the rest of the gunk and dead spiders were gone. I put the screen back on, and snapped everything into place.

Ta-da!

The vacuum cleaner roared, I made some very nice-looking vacuum cleaner tracks, and ta-da! The carpet in the guest room was spic-and-span!

Feeling the energy of triumph, I decided this would be a great time to try out the extra attachment—the upholstery cleaner—on the seat cushions of the chairs. The upholstery attachment worked—amazing! But I never could figure out where the attachment holder was supposed to go. Ah, well.

Whew, all done! [Not]

With all the vacuuming done, it was now time to empty out all the dust from the container of the vacuum cleaner. This was still a fairly new vacuum cleaner, so I explored until I noticed there were a couple blue tabs where you could actually remove that extra cylinder for more cleaning! Wow!
Upon some more exploring, I found the spongy filter, similar to my old vacuum cleaner–pretty exciting, let me tell you!–and cleaned it under running water until it sparkled.

Wait… did I ever get around to sweeping the bits of things off the kitchen floor? Who knows.

Time for Breakfast

I stopped to eat breakfast, mostly to rest my back. Then I set some things back in order…
…Put the chairs back against the wall in the guest room, and router in the corner
…Put the books back on the floor
…Found a place for the vacuum in the hall storage room
…Admired how organized the shoes were in the coat closet
…Reswept the deck
…Put the toaster oven in my car trunk, and
…Put ointment on my neck where I seemed to have a new bug bite

Analysis

(Yes, I know I need analysis, but that’s not what I’m referring to here.)

How does this happen, and happen repeatedly?

It begins with a bad habit called, “It’ll only take a minute”; then exacerbated further by ADHD.

If the internet is to be trusted, this scenario is more typical of women than of men. (But I hope both got a kick out of reading it!)

Can you relate? Would you care to one-up me with your own unintentional cleaning fest? (Please do tell your own story in the comments!)

Have a great day!

With appreciation to the following for free-to-use images:
staticflickr, staticflickr , marksowers , staticflickr , nbcnews , creoleindc, blogspot