[My office/pantry, a small sampling of the state of the rest of the house.]
Back in the fall of 2009 I started a short-lived "special series" on the blog called Slow + Steady Cleans the House (Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4). My heart was in the right place, but I spent more time blogging about cleaning and organizing than actually cleaning and organizing. Then the holidays snuck in after Week 4 and I never got back into the groove.
Fast forward five years. We now live in a larger house three thousand miles away from our first family home, and I still have the same cleaning and organizing problems as I did then. If nothing else, I am a reader and I know from the many decluttering and organizing books I've read that this whole "live simply, cleanly, mindfully" idea is a mindset and a process. It's a lifestyle change that takes work, both things I'm not comfortable with. But I need it. There is something inside of me that desperately needs calm in my home environment.
I think I'm ready to get down and dirty, face my emotional attachment to stuff, and finally create a home where the people in it have control over the items in it, not the other way around.
There are three components I want to focus on during this process. It may be a bit ambitious to tackle all three from the get-go but it's important to lay the foundation of what I want to accomplish.
address what it means to be a smart and responsible consumer
find an effective system to remove unnecessary items from the house (declutter) and properly store the items we keep (organize)
make an attempt to clean the house a little bit each day
The ground rules I set for myself in 2009 also apply now ::
As the name of the project implies, this will be a gradual process. I will not expect miracle results overnight.
No matter the temptation, I will not compare myself to others. I may steal their cleaning/organizing ideas but I will not compare the progress or result of that idea-stealing.
I'm doing this for the kids as much as I'm doing it for myself. I want to set a good example and teach them organizing skills so when I say, "Clean your room" they know how to do it properly and they don't ask me, "Well, why don't you clean your room?"
I will not give up. Even if I encounter some set-backs (i.e., letting dishes or laundry pile up) I'll ease myself back into the cleaning routine.
I am not looking to be perfect, just adequately organized and clean so that housework no longer causes me stress.
Today is National No Housework Day! I don't really need an excuse or a "holiday" to not do housework, but I will gladly take it. And, since my mom is here, I'm sure she'll pick up the slack! ;)
updated April 10, 2014 :: See, I told you she would do the housework I don't!
With the recent snowstorm and today's warm weather, the snowmelt was pretty drastic and quick. I was getting nervous about it, and my concern was exasperated when I discovered parts of the side yard were flooded. I knew it could lead to flooding in our basement, which was an issue we had in the fall (we had only moved into the house two months prior).
The anxiety caused by that leak last time really put me in a bad place for a good month, month and a half. It led to all kinds of other uncertainty and negative thoughts and I was sad a lot. All that emotional turmoil was caused by something that wasn't, in the grand scheme of things, a life-altering incident. Was it a nuisance and stressful? Hell yes. But it's a problem that's solvable (albeit with a good chunk of change). Yet, I let it get the better of me and I was consumed with worry and negativity. It really wore me out.
Part of the reason I decided to take part in One Little Word was to help train myself not to go through a similar experience. I think about my word [today] a lot, even though I haven't really worked on the monthly assignments very much. And, here we are, facing another wet basement and I'm trying to talk myself through it in a manageable, realistic way.
What can I do today to help solve this problem? Take action to dry the basement, come up with a plan to solve the problem long-term, and talk to people about what I'm feeling instead of bottling it up inside.
Was today stressful and did I worry? Yes, but I was able to talk to my husband and my mom about an action plan. They reassured me it was going to be OK, and I know it will be.
There will be bumps in the road, I can already tell. (I'm not 100% calm right now.) But being cognizant of my thoughts and how I plan to manage my anxiety is going to help me get through this better than I did in the fall. I'm going to take it one day at a time, in chunks that I can deal with, and I have to think about only the things that are in my control.
Second Snow Day in a row (although, officially, yesterday was an Emergency Weather Day because of icy conditions). It's not even officially winter yet and we've already used up two of the four Snow Days we can have before the district starts tacking on days to the end of the school year.
My brother-in-law and his wife live in Rochester, New York and we were talking about snow over Thanksgiving, and it came up that DC-area "Snowmageddon" was a regular occurrence in their area. Which makes me wonder how bad it has to get in places like Rochester, Minnesota, or Canada before they declare a Snow Day.
The kids are, obviously, enjoying this unexpected long weekend. I actually am too. I've decided not to venture out and I'm taking advantage of the serenity (minus the kids' voices) to catch up on some reading. Luckily, we have enough food in the house so I don't have to go out.
7:45ish
8:45ish
9:45ish
10:45ish
11:45ish
OK, so most of the pictures look the same, but it's been snowing consistently for several hours so it's piling up more than it did on Sunday.
By 3:00 the scene was already changing ...
There was just enough snow for me to build a snow penguin:
I'm going to take it easy the next two weeks because of the Thanksgiving holiday so there won't be any in-depth cleaning posts or polls, but I wanted to leave you with something that has been very helpful to me and is better for my family :: homemade cleaners. I hope you'll consider using them too.
The health risks of using commercial, chemical-based cleaners always bothered me, especially since having Ian and Maya. It took me awhile to switch over to greener cleaning products, but I've been very happy since doing so. With a little elbow grease these products clean just as well, if not better, than the store-bought stuff.
My essential "cleaning kit" includes the following :: Dr. Bronner's peppermint Castile soap, Costco-sized white vinegar + baking soda, borax, essential oils, scrubbing brushes, old toothbrushes, and microfiber cloths.
[My cleaning supply carrier full of stuff that rarely gets used.]
A book that really helped me is Green Up Your Cleanup by Jill Potvin Schoff. I use several of her cleaning "recipes" instead of store-bought cleaners ::
ALL-SURFACE SPRAY
2 teaspoons borax hot water 1/4 teaspoon liquid Castile soap
Put the borax in a 16-oz spray bottle, fill it with hot water, and shake until the borax dissolves. Last, add the Castile soap. Spray on surfaces like counters and walls, let is sit for a little bit, and wipe off with a clean sponge or microfiber cloth.
GLASS CLEANER
1 cup distilled white vinegar 1 cup water 1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap (optional) 3-8 drops essential oil like lavender, lemon, peppermint, and tea tree (optional)
Fill a spray bottle with vinegar and water, and shake gently. You can add essential oils to cut the vinegar smell. According to the book, you should use the liquid dish soap in the glass cleaner to dissolve the buildup left behind by commercial glass cleaners. Once that buildup is gone you can omit the soap.
BAKING SODA SCRUB <-- love this stuff!
2 tablespoons baking soda liquid dish soap or Castile soap
Put the baking soda in a wide-mouthed container (I used an old reusable Ziploc sandwich container) and add the soap a little at a time until you have a foamy paste. Apply the paste to what you want to clean with a rag, sponge, or brush and let it sit for a little while before rinsing with vinegar. Spray the vinegar off with water. You can keep the scrub in the container for awhile with the lid on it. But I've gotten so lazy that I just squirt some Castile soap on whatever surface I want to clean and sprinkle on baking soda before scrubbing away.
DISINFECTANT
2 cups water 1/4 teaspoon (about 25 drops) tea tree oil 1/4 teaspoon (about 25 drops) lavender oil
Fill a 16-oz spray bottle with water and then add the essential oils. Shake gently before each use. Spray on surfaces and leave to dry.
Schoff has a few other "recipes" I haven't tried yet, like laundry soap and dishwasher soap, both items I still buy at the store (although I try to buy the "green" option, whatever that means). And I still buy toilet cleaner at the store. Every once in awhile I try to use baking soda to scrub the inside of the toilet and then I spray it down with the disinfectant. I'm not sure which is more effective, seeing as my toilet always seems to be dirty ... I'll just have to keep experimenting.
And I'm leaving you with one last "miracle" cleaning tip (which I read about in a Japanese baking soda + vinegar cleaning book) :: you know that oily buildup that accumulates on stuff near the stove? I've always had a heck of a time scrubbing that crud off my teapot, which I leave on my stovetop. I used abrasive cleaners and hot water and nothing ever worked. Until I read that baking soda alone could clean it up! Sure enough, all you have to do is sprinkle baking soda on the item and scrub with a dry brush (I usually use an old toothbrush) or even your fingers. The oily residue just balls up and crumbles off. Once you're all done rinse it with water.
This week I tackle the dreaded laundry monster. Laundry, to me, is a mystery chore :: it's not an extremely difficult task (after all, the washing machine + dryer do most of the work) but it still doesn't get done often enough; all of us seem to wear the same clothes over and over again but the mountains of laundry seem to get larger and larger; and where do the darn single socks disappear to?!
Everyday I am faced with some kind of you-still-haven't-finished-the-laundry reminder :: we have stacks of clean clothes in the living room that need to be folded, put away, or washed again because they've been sitting there for god knows how long; and we have way too many laundry hampers around the house full of dirty clothes and linens. And we can't forget about the washer that's full of dirty clothes and the dryer that hasn't been unloaded yet.
It's clear that we haven't found a laundry system that works for us. I'm hoping that if we have an actual plan we can conquer laundry. So, what do you do?
I'd love to read about your laundry process, so please feel free to leave comments as well.
In an absolutely perfect world, someone else would take care of my laundry for me, but that ain't ever gonna happen. So I've been thinking instead of what would be a more ideal situation. Unfortunately, that entails some major renovations to our house so I had to scrap the idea. (Honestly, I would rather have an office/craft room or a nicer bathroom but more square footage for a laundry room would make things so much easier!) So now I'm down to being realistic about our laundry solutions. Boo being realistic!
First, I think we're not using hampers well. Before we had kids we kept two hampers, one for white clothes and one for colors. I did the laundry when they got full, and the clean clothes got put away because I needed the hamper to be empty for the new dirty clothes. But then, somewhere along the way, we started accumulating more and more laundry baskets and hampers. I think that was the major mistake.
Now that we have enough baskets to leave our clean clothes in, I don't bother to fold and put the clothes away. Instead, we just pull clean clothes out of the basket to wear. And because we have the dual system of throwing dirty clothes directly into the washing machine and putting some dirty clothes into hampers, the whites and colors don't get sorted and some clothes don't get washed for a long time (i.e., the washing machine fills up more quickly than the hampers fill up so the hamper clothes get neglected).
As a solution, I'm really liking the idea of these laundry baskets by Rubbermaid :: Stack'n Sort baskets, which were mentioned on the Real Simple Home & Organizing blog. Each member of the family would get two (whether for whites + colors or for clean + dirty). Once we have the hamper situation squared away we'll stop putting clothes directly into the washing machine.
Second, I think a laundry schedule would work for me. Otherwise I go much too long between washing towels and sheets. Writing laundry into my weekly schedule might help me to be more efficient about getting it all done. My plan is to start laundry in the morning on the days I go into work late (Monday and Thursday) and do a load (or two) of linens during the weekend. If there's a lot of laundry that needs to be done, I might do a load on Wednesday (when I come home early from work) or on Friday (my day off). With this schedule I might end up doing a load everyday (!) but at least I've scheduled specific times to get it done.
Third, "doing laundry" means sorting dirty clothes, washing + drying, folding, and putting away. It's the whole package and needs to be done as a whole package. Going back to my last point about scheduling laundry, I need to make sure I have enough time during that day to complete the entire process.
And last, Rupert and I are trying to get the kids involved. We obviously can use all the help we can get! Currently, the kids put their dirty clothes in the washer and they sort the clean clothes. For the most part they do a good job, but it dawned on me that they pay very little attention to what Rupert and I wear; it's not uncommon to find Rupert's shirts in my pile and vice versa. I'm sure with some more practice they'll get it one of these days. As they get older I'll have them take on a bit more of the laundering process.
Laundry is definitely a chore for me, so I was surprised that no one chose laundry as one of their three worst chores in last week's poll. Cleaning the kitchen came in first as the worst chore, followed by dishwashing and dusting + vacuuming (a tie). As I've been thinking more and more about cleaning in order to write these blog posts, it's becoming clearer and clearer that having fewer possessions would make cleaning much easier and go by much more quickly. (I think a decluttering post will be in the works for posting in the near future.)
As for the follow-up poll about how often people spot-clean, it turns out people are kinda split on this one. One person answered "weekly" but two others answered "once every two weeks," and another two, "when it gets disgusting." I wish the two people who answered "other" specified their frequency. I am definitely not a weekly spot-cleaner -- the days just seem to fly by before I can get the cleaning supplies out -- so I'd have to say I wait until things get disgusting. When I write it out like that for all the world to read, it makes me feel pathetic. Gotta work towards spot-cleaning a bit more frequently ... or at least train the kids how to do some of it!
I'm now starting week 2 of Slow + Steady Cleans the House and I haven't done a lick of cleaning in the last seven days. Why am I not surprised?
[Cleared off the top of the dresser + reorganized my books.]
Actually, I partially decluttered our bedroom last weekend but what I didn't get cleaned up is still on the floor. That's my problem :: I lose steam part way through an organizing or cleaning project and I'm left with a bigger mess than when I started.
[What was on the dresser is now on the floor.]
So, why did I not finish? Let's analyze this for a moment ... I've read enough organizing books to know the basic guidelines, and I clearly did not follow them ::
Make a commitment to organizing + cleaning as a family --> So far I'm the only one on board. I also started cleaning the bedroom by myself to surprise Rupert but I should probably enlist his help next time.
A place for everything, and everything in its place --> There was a lot of useless junk on my dresser that I got rid of (including some old poetry medals I won in middle school), but I still have too much stuff to store in an orderly way. I have to work on minimizing and finding a proper place for everything instead of just leaving stuff on any available flat surface.
Touch items as few times as possible --> I need to remember that the extra 10 seconds to a minute it takes to properly put things away is worth not having junk all over the place all the time.
Changing behavior takes a long time; I will have to repeat an activity for more than three weeks before it becomes a habit --> I should spend some time each week doing the same cleaning/organizing activity so that it becomes a regular part of my routine.
Cleaning + organizing are more mental exercises than physical acts --> Most importantly, I will have to think about my possessions, the reasons why I keep certain items, and my motivation behind mindless shopping.
So, my goals for the following week are to finish picking up the junk on the floor in the bedroom, and to go through guidelines 1 ~ 5 everyday.
All right, down to some business :: Last week's poll results surprised me. I asked what your cleaning methodology is and I thought for sure that most people cleaned a bit everyday or weekly. Most respondents are like me :: they clean before company comes over. Or, as my mother-in-law mentioned, she hides stuff before company comes over. Valid point -- cleaning and hiding are two different things.
Of the 13 respondents, six said they clean before company comes over; four have a housecleaning service; and there was one respondent each for seasonal cleaning, monthly cleaning, and feigning housecleaning ignorance. But, surely, people must do spot-cleaning every once in awhile. Otherwise, everyone's house would look like mine and I know for a fact that they don't! So let's get a bit more specific here ... and be honest!
OK, but this week's official poll is actually about your three most dreaded chores.
It's no secret that I am not a fan of housekeeping. "Not a fan" is an understatement :: I loathe and detest it and often take naps instead of picking up a sponge or a mop or a broom. Who wants to spend their time scrubbing toilets and wiping down baseboards when they could be doing anything else?
[How true it is.]
Of course, I'm not alone. My friend L recently asked on her Facebook page if money were no object would you hire a housekeeper or a nanny, and all the responses were a resounding yes for the housekeeper. I think most parents -- whether at home or at work -- would rather spend time with their kid(s) than have to say, "Hold on, sweetie, Mommy has to wash the windows instead of take you to the park."
Heck, even if money were an object (and, believe me, it is), I'd hire a housekeeper to come every once in awhile. The only thing stopping me is my husband. In fact, my mother-in-law has offered on numerous occasions to send her housekeeper to clean my bathroom and kitchen (because they are, in fact, that dirty!) but Rupert has pooh-poohed the idea repeatedly. (It's not that he thinks housework is a woman's job; I guess it's the principle of not having to pay someone to do something we can do ourselves. Along the same lines, he didn't like when our parents sent a gardener over to spiff up our yard. Again, I would rather hire someone to do that occasionally instead of listening to Rupert mumble about the amount of yard work there is when he could be spending time with the kids or studying.)
It's not that I'm bad at housekeeping. On the rare occasions I get around to cleaning, I do a fairly thorough and good job. It's the upkeep that I cannot, well, keep up with. And since I started working almost a year ago, the house has gotten worse. As a result, our house is in perpetual disarray. We're getting pretty close to the point where we would be a good candidate for one of those organizing shows on HGTV.
[My view on housekeeping isn't this extreme ... but it's pretty close.]
I do not jest, nor do I exaggerate, when I say the house is not just dirty, it's a health hazard (I can picture my mother and mother-in-law nodding in agreement). Every surface is covered in dust and/or cobwebs. There are stacks of crap throughout the house. And let's not even talk about the bathroom; it's like a science experiment gone awry. Suffice it to say, it would be easier to completely remodel the bathroom than try to clean it completely (at least, that's what I keep telling Rupert in the hopes of moving along our my remodeling plans). Looking around the house it is just overwhelming; I don't know where to start or what to tackle first.
Enough is enough! I've been a homeowner for over seven years ... let's show some pride of ownership here, people! So I'm starting a new project :: Slow + Steady Cleans the House. I want to take a more organized and routinized approach to cleaning the house and keeping it that way. And I'd like for you to come along for the ride. That means I need your advice and feedback. Part of my housecleaning improvement process will be to learn and to understand how other people tackle their housekeeping. I think your answers will be really enlightening and helpful to other readers as well. So, how can you contribute? For one, you can comment on each week's blog post; but the easier way will be to participate in the weekly poll.
Polls will be posted each Sunday. Results will be announced and discussed in the following Sunday's post. This week's poll is a general view on how often you clean. Not surprisingly, I'm of the "Housecleaning? What is that?" camp. Occasionally I dabble in the "Clean before company comes over" category but usually I just don't invite people into my house. I'd like to change that. Sure, I claim that I don't care what other people think but it's hard not to compare the state of your house with those of your friends' (who also work but somehow manage to keep their homes habitable).
Last piece of business :: in order to embark on this weekly cleaning journey (which will, by association, include organizing) I set some ground rules for myself ::
As the name of the project implies, this will be a gradual process. I will not expect miracle results overnight.
No matter the temptation, I will not compare myself to others. I may steal their cleaning/organizing ideas but I will not compare the progress or result of that idea-stealing.
I'm doing this for the kids as much as I'm doing it for myself. I want to set a good example and teach them organizing skills so when I say, "Clean your room" they know how to do it properly and they don't ask me, "Well, why don't you clean your room?"
I will not give up. Even if I encounter some set-backs (i.e., letting dishes or laundry pile up) I'll ease myself back into the cleaning routine.
I am not looking to be perfect, just adequately organized and clean so that housework no longer causes me stress.
yesterday turned out to be an unexpectedly productive day. i woke up late with a massive tension headache caused by my sinuses and i thought sunday would be a repeat of saturday :: sitting on the couch and doing nothing.
but the headache medicine kicked in pretty quickly so i took some things out to the garage to put away. that, for some reason, triggered an urge to go through the junk that's piling up near the garage entrance. lately, going into the garage was like going through an obstacle course :: dodging and stepping over empty boxes, sports equipment, the drying rack, various art supplies, etc. plus, there were tons of stuff to be donated from months ago, so i pulled it all out of the garage, reorganized the sports equipment, finally decided to recycle all of the empty boxes i'd been saving for a rainy day, and went through containers and drawers i hadn't opened in a long time.
rupert took a prius-full of stuff to donate, and i set my sights on making a dent in my crafting supplies. that's going to be harder to deal with. i have no issue purging other people's stuff but when it comes to my stuff my hoarding instinct kicks in. my goal is to go through it all this summer and decide, once and for all, what i will use and what i will never use. that means i have to abandon some of my crafting ambitions and admit i'm never going to make polymer clay accents or learn how to calligraph.
let me back up a moment and talk about those boxes. i have been saving almost every single usable box i've received in the mail for the last couple of years. since i sell my crafts i kept the boxes in case i needed to ship something. the boxes piled up higher and higher, and packing materials started overflowing out of them. it was overwhelming to walk by that tower of corrugated cardboard. and guess what? i hadn't used a single box! getting rid of them was enough to clear the air in the garage to make it feel moreclutter-free (that's an illusion, though; there's still much more decluttering to be done).
towards mid-afternoon, while going through a container of stuff i found old letters i'd been saving in a plastic bag. you'd think that if these memories were important enough for me to save, i wouldn't leave them in an old grocery bag buried inside a box i don't ever open. so i went through the letters, sorted them by sender and approximate date, and slid them into sheet protectors in a binder. i could just get rid of them all, but i'm a sentimental sap. how could i possibly throw out recycle love letters from rupert? or from my best friend?
skimming through some of the letters it really hit me that my world was so small back in high school. my friends and my relationship with rupert were everything to me; even the slightest disturbance in my relationship with these people was traumatic and emotionally all-consuming. seriously, judging by the letters, my life must've been d-r-a-m-a-t-i-c compared to my life now.
i do have to say, though, my generation (or was it just my friends?) were good letter writers. in this age of emails, texting, and im-ing i think the art of old fashioned note-passing and letter-writing is getting lost. we took the time to truly express ourselves in words and complete sentences. i'm glad i kept these letters because they really reveal my life and feelings when i was 17 years old; things that i've forgotten but i know helped to shape me. i'm not sure i want to share some of the letters but it's good to know i have them to read again and again as i get older and need a reminder of what it was like to be young.
so, after a jaunt down memory lane i finished up in the garage for the day and headed inside to play rock band with my sister and her boyfriend (even ian joined in). after that i managed to make a quick layout, which i hadn't done in months. so i think i ended up using all of my productivity for awhile!
i'm in a slightly panicked mode at the moment. my aunt (my mom's older sister) is visiting from japan and i cannot have her over to visit until the house is spotless. my aunt is a traditional japanese housewife, which means my standards are waaaaaaaaaaaaay short of acceptable. even my own mother, who shakes her head in despair when she comes over to my house, was worried that my aunt would give her a hard time about the state of her house.
seriously, i was almost tempted to hire a maid service to get the house in order before my aunt's arrival. almost. but i was even too lazy to do that.
instead, this was the perfect opportunity to get started on a green, deep clean. i ordered green up your cleanup by jill schoff and went scampering around town gathering up the materials needed to make my new cleaning agents. this is a fantastic book and i highly recommend it, even if you haven't been thinking about greening up your cleaning routine; it'll make you rethink what you're doing to your house and your body, and then give you easy alternatives. i also had my aunt bring me a japanese book about cleaning with vinegar and baking soda. i'm really hoping that with these two books i can get rid of all the toxic chemicals that purport to clean my house, and rely on more natural methods.
i'll let you know how it goes ... i've only just begun to clean the bathroom ::
baking soda scrub :: i used this to clean the hard-water spots on the glass tub doors 2 tablespoons baking soda liquid castile soap (i used dr. bronner's peppermint liquid soap i bought at tj's)
i put the baking soda in an old plastic reusable container, added a couple squirts of the soap, and mixed it until it became a foamy paste. i scrubbed it on the glass with a brush and left it for about 15 minutes, at which point the doors got a squirt of vinegar water before a rinse with the shower.
love this stuff. it smells good and it actually works. the hard-water spots on our glass doors are really bad but i managed to get most of it off. to do a comparison test i left the bottom half of the door untouched and there was quite a difference.
rupert noticed a single wasp flying around the birdhouse on top of our deck rafters. he could just barely see the start of a wasp's nest inside the birdhouse. probably not a good thing to allow a wasp to make herself at home near the kids' play area outside. so i told rupert to knock the birdhouse down and throw it away. when the wasp flew away to do whatever it is a wasp does, rupert acted as my hitman and "took care of the situation."
a few minutes later, from inside the house, we saw the wasp return and fly around the rafters. and fly around and around the same area. occasionally it would stop on the wood beam. but then it would fly around where its nest should've been. i could imagine it thinking to itself, "well, i'm sure i left it here somewhere," the way some people wander around the same area of a parking lot looking for their car.
even after close to an hour, as we left to eat dinner at my parents', we could see it looking for its nest. it was rather sad, actually, and i felt bad about it. hopefully it found a better place to nest, away from mean people like me.
the plumber came again yesterday and i was prepared for the worst. that anxiety was all for naught. sure, the laundry, shower, and kitchen pipes all lead to one pipe to the sewer line -- it's not the ideal plumbing set-up -- but at least we can take care of it if it backs up again.
what i was really worried about was the puddle of water under the house :: did we have a major leak? was the foundation being compromised? would we have to replace the piping? did our home inspector miss something major when we bought the house? the plumber's assistant crawled under the house and checked out the pipes and found nothing wrong, thankfully. and the puddle from two days ago was gone. the plumber's educated guess :: the water heater leaked water all the way under the house and it stopped once the water heater was replaced.
it still cost a lot to snake the pipe from the outside; double what the other pipe snaking guy charged us. it didn't bother me that much, though, as i did two loads of laundry and didn't once hear the gurgling in the shower drain, or smell the sewer in our bathroom. sometimes it's worth the price just to get the problem resolved ... after two years of suffering!
things are breaking left and right around here. we are in need of repairs up the wazoo and i am vigorously writing checks for this repairman or that repairman.
first it was my car battery. luckily, the aaa service guy replaced it right in my driveway, but that convenience costs money. then it was the oven ignitor and sensor. of course, there's our beloved dslr that had to be taken in; who knows how much that's going to cost to fix/replace.
and then there's the plumbing. there seems to be issues with the plumbing every time i flush the toilet. last fall we had to replace pipes in our front yard because of tree roots clogging them up, which was causing our bathtub to not drain (the roots were so bad the roto rooter man's snake got stuck in the mess and it took him hours to free his equipment). most recently we got some leaks repaired. but that wasn't the original problem i called the plumber for. because i am the fumbling, accident-prone person that i am, i broke off a part of the toilet's inner workings. luckily my plumber never pushes unnecessary repairs so he thought the toilet could work without that piece. so far it's working okay, but that's another potential problem waiting to happen.
and, because everything has to go wrong at the same time, our water heater is leaking. rupert noticed a pool of water in front of the water heater closet outside on sunday. at first we thought it was a rainwater puddle from the week before, but upon closer inpsection we could hear water running and see trickles of water pouring onto the brick patio. my mother-in-law's plumber came today and his estimate to get a new one installed is $850. oy. i pray that rupert is not reading this post because this will displease him greatly. it figures the price of water heaters went up at the beginning of the year ... why couldn't it have started leaking in 2007? yeesh!
and our last plumbing problem i hope will get remedied today is the disgusting back-up in our shower every single time we run the washing machine. not only have we not been able to use that shower stall for at least a couple of years now, but we have to rinse the shower and air out the bathroom constantly because of the nastiness.
it would be wonderful if that were the last of our problems for awhile. somehow i'm not too optimistic. did i mention before how sometimes it sucks to be a homeowner? yeah, i thought so.
ants have been raiding our house the last couple of days. i think the rain has driven them indoors. which is annoying and disgusting since they arrive in droves and keep on coming. yesterday they were in the kitchen and this morning rupert found them in his sock drawer. yuck.
it seems that every other thing in this house is breaking/broken. yesterday the hot water stopped running. rupert, being the stresser that he is, was on the verge of freaking out.
but, we worked together and re-lit the pilot light on the water heater and all is well again ... at least with the hot water. it was nice to figure something out together and take care of it instead of paying someone else to do it. (granted, relighting the pilot light is not a big deal, but i was proud of us nonetheless.)
current items in need of repair ::
toilets (plumber coming today)
dslr camera (sent out for repairs yesterday)
shower plumbing
lawn
cracks in ceiling
patio bricks
etc. etc. etc.
as much as i love our home, sometimes it sucks to be a homeowner!
