Wednesday's Mission and Zone Work

It's hot here today! Actually, it's only about 68 degrees or so right now, but the sun is shining brightly and we don't have air conditioning, so when I get busy in the house and forget the heat, before I know it, I'm sweaty and hot. Thankfully I'm finished with the greater portion of my housework for the day, so I can do the less physically-active things I have planned later this afternoon.

Kelly's mission for today was to clean all those small countertop appliances. I set my timer for 15 minutes and cleaned my bread maker, electric kettle, coffee maker, stand mixer, and can opener. I also wiped down my tin canisters holding tea and artificial sweetener, and my Tupperware canisters holding brown sugar, flour, and sugar. I spent an extra 15-minute session wiping the outside of my deep freezer and microwave and the top of my fridge (it was nasty up there, but I'm short so I don't see the top of the fridge very often - out of sight, out of mind!) just because I wanted to get them done today and had no reason not to. I want to be efficient in my use of time, not lazy!

I reset my timer for 15 minutes of decluttering and dug into my corner cabinet. This cabinet has a set of those lazy Susan (I cringe!) rotating shelves in it, which are very handy if you remember that you can actually turn the shelves and you don't have to become a contortionist in order to retrieve something from the back of the shelf! It also helps if you don't put a lot of things on the floor of the cabinet, because it's so hard to reach around said shelves to the back. Yep, I had stuff crammed into every possible space in that cabinet! In addition, my older son, who has been away at college for almost a year now, spilled sugar in this cabinet sometime before he left. I have cringed every time I've opened this cabinet, and I open it daily, knowing I needed to get the sugar cleaned up that he missed when he cleaned it up. So I set to work and pulled out all the stuff in there - extra drink pitchers, extra baking pans, the blender, the accessories for the stand mixer and food processor, the revolving cake stand; not to mention the measuring cups that I use every day - they're just handy to have right there where I bake and cook, as this cabinet is just to the left of my stove. I sprayed down the shelves with Formula 409, then took a damp cloth and wiped them clean. Who's the wise guy who designed the grooves into the bottom of those shelves? I'd like to talk to him. After wiping the shelves, I wiped under the bottom one on each side as I could reach. I couldn't figure out how to get the shelves out of the cabinet, or I would have taken them out to get the bottom wiped out really well. Oh, I also vacuumed out the loose sugar, so that's gone, even if the bottom didn't get wiped down completely. Just as I was replacing the last few things my timer beeped, and I was done.

Last item for today: iron the valances and re-hang them. I was hoping they wouldn't need ironing, but they do. I'm off to the ironing board! Have a productive day!