Category Archives: Home and other Repairs

Things I’ve had to learn to fix around the house, where I’ve found the knowledge, and why we can seldom accomplish these fixes in the same time frame as those guys on You Tube.

January Cure 2018- Day 1- Clear and Organize a Drawer

02 Tuesday Jan 2018

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This may be as far as I got last year. I don’t remember and don’t intend to remember because I’d rather save the brain space for where I last left my phone.

I chose the “Stuff I use Daily” drawer in the kitchen. It has no real category other than that. It holds odds and ends that I use daily or even 2 or 3 times a week. At least, that’s what it’s supposed to hold. That’s where things like measuring spoons, whisks, bottle openers, ice cream scoop, jar openers, a butter brush, and such are supposed to go.  That’s not all that was in there.

I forgot to get a “Before” picture, but this is the big stuff that was in there. I had cleared out the ancient packets of yeast and soy sauce, the rubber bands, the loose change, and a handful of petrified jelly beans and other gleefus, and had narrowed it down to the stuff I actually use daily, weekly, a lot less than once a week, and never.

 

No wonder my whisks wouldn’t fit and I could never find my measuring spoons. WHO needs 4 ice cream scoops? Only 1 survived the purge. The survivor did not have a nice hand fitting handle, nor did it mechanically loosen ice cream from the scoop. No, it was old faithful. 40 year old, solid metal, no bells, no whistles, ice cream scoop. Easy to use, takes a sledge hammer to break.

 

Then there were these. I think we’ve used the corkscrew a half dozen times since it was given to us in 1995. I don’t think we’ve ever used the nutcracker we got at the same time. My husband’s grandmother gave them to us the first year we were together. I laugh raucously every time I see them, so they’re keepers. I just have to find another place to keep them so they can continue to appear and make me guffaw when I’m looking for something else.

No, I did not find dachshund or cat poop in my “Stuff I use daily” drawer. This is some kind of seed pod. I have no clue what kind of seed pod, and I have no clue why it’s in this drawer, but it’s been in there for several years because I keep saying “I need to plant that and see what grows”, and then don’t.

 

TaDA! 

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January Cure 2018: But first a word from our sponsor

02 Tuesday Jan 2018

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Last year’s January Cure didn’t go so well for me. I did something to my good knee early on and as it was only getting worse, I put myself to the sofa with the mutts and Netflix. That knee is no better now and the knee on the already goofed up leg is failing because it’s had to do too much to make up for the other knee. I won’t discuss other skeletal failings at this point, suffice to say I need an android body.

Another issue that will hamper my Cure this year is Art. It’s insidious. It slyly creeps into your life as an innocent and fulfilling hobby and then spreads like herpes. A friend got me interested in acrylic pour painting. It is very cool and very rewarding and makes watching paint dry actually exciting. It’s also a good way to participate in art for someone like me who cannot draw, much less paint.  What acrylic pour painting requires are, a sense of color and space. Lots and lots of space. Overheard in this house at the beginning, “Do we ever actually eat at the dining table? Okay, let’s do this there.” I’m no longer sure we have a dining table. We must, all those paint bottles, cups, popsicle sticks, jars, jugs, canvases and stuff can’t be floating on air. I just can’t see the dining table.

There’s a big mess to be made with acrylic pour painting. As the name implies, you pour paint. When you pour, there is inevitably runoff. Turns out, when this runoff dries, it too makes interesting and colorful patterns that can be peeled up, cut out and turned into really groovy pendants. No room on the table for that. Had to set up a jewelry making station in the actual craft room. That was art station 2.

I posted a picture of a couple of pendants I made and was asked “Do you sell those?” and answered “I guess I could”, which prompted “Can you do one in these colors <insert wild combos here>?” and I answered “I could try.”, which led to art stations 3 and 4, an Etsy shop and 12 hours a day prior to Christmas trying to balance art and rest for my busted up body. 

So, there’s art all over the dining table, 3/4 of the craft room desk my son and I built along two walls, a card table in the craft room and a card table in the den. We have renamed the house “The Mad Artists Laboratory” and our Etsy shop is named after the friend who started us down this road (probably rubbing her hands and cackling maniacally), my son (who also got sucked in) and me, JJaphne. If you’d like to see (and dear lord I hope you buy, because I need to reclaim some space and pay my Home Owners Insurance and Property Taxes) our stuff, the Etsy shop is here: JJaphne Jewelry and Art.

So, this year I have to have a different relationship with The Cure. Large projects will have to be done during the week on my son’s days off, and might not get done at all. The smaller “Jean Safe” tasks will be accomplished on weekends and on three days during the week which may or may not coincide with The Cure Calendar. 

That’s enough for the rationalizations. On to the first real assignment to clear out and organize a drawer in the next post.

 

Day 3 January Cure 2017- Purge the Pantry vs Cabinet Cleanout

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

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I think this is the first time I’ve had to swap out a task during the Cure. Today’s assignment is to purge the pantry of unused items that you know in your heart of hearts will never be used, items that are past their expiration date and things that just don’t belong there. Unfortunately, my pantry is right next to the AC intake and the technician from the AC company will be here this morning performing routine upkeep duties for a couple of hours and a ladder will be blocking the pantry doors. As soon as he leaves I have to run up to Wickenburg to pick up a couple of bales of alfalfa hay that I should have picked up yesterday, and then spend some quality time with rain soaked pony stalls and the muddy barn aisle.

I do, however, have a cabinet in the kitchen, well away from where the AC dude will be working, that needs a good hearty purging. It’s got a lot of cool stuff in there that I would use, if I could find it. So, I will swap out the Purge the Pantry task with the Cabinet Cleanout mission that is coming up on everyone’s calendars on the 17th. Thankfully, tomorrow’s easy mission is to set up the outbox because I get to spend quality time with my mother-in-law tomorrow and need to tighten doorknobs to get them off my list.

This is the problem cabinet. Adding to the issue of too much stuff in there that needs to be pitched, is the fact that this is a corner cabinet of which only one third is visible when opening the door. Inevitably, stuff gets buried in the sides where it’s not easy to see. I don’t see an easy (read as affordable) solution to this dilemma, so I’m off to do the best I can with what I’ve got.

cabinetcleanout1

The middle shelf and top shelf are going to be trouble. Except for the items in the front of the middle shelf, I’m pretty sure everything else on those two was packed there by my 6’4″ husband. I have several shelves like these in the house that have stuff I could probably use that he put out of my reach. I’m adding those to my list of things to do once a month so I can reclaim some nifty items.

Cool tools. I’d never tried to use this little step stool I picked up on sale at Home Depot 6 months or so ago. Since I had a counter top and cabinets to cling to for balance, I could at least reach the front of those upper shelves without fear for life or traumatic brain injury. The cabinet is deep however and my honey had crammed it full to the very back corners. BBQ tongs to the rescue!

tools

Amidst the expired peanut butter, stale crackers, Christmas candy stash from 2 years ago and a year old bag of tortilla chips (eww), I found an amazing array of coffee mugs I’d forgotten we had. They aren’t microwave safe and are really too big for coffee, but they were great for soups. My husband didn’t like them for coffee because it cooled to quickly in them and he thought they were redundant since we already have soup bowls and he was probably right. I will likely put them in the outbox, but I remember the folks that gave them to us so I’ll think on that a bit and see if I can come up with something useful to do with them.

mugshot

These two cuties! I’d gotten these at separate garage sales years ago and used to keep sugar and creamer in them for when guests came by for coffee. Unfortunately, it seems no one has ever heard of “coming by for coffee” anymore, but they’re keepers none-the-less.

butterpots

SCORE! I knew I’d gotten two jars of Mayhaw jelly on amazon last summer. This is what I get for hoarding things I can’t readily find here, it gets buried behind other things and I can’t remember where I stashed it “for later”.  Toast and Mayhaw Jelly just got put on the breakfast menu this morning.

mayhawjelly

And TaDA! Cabinet is cleared, cleaned and organized. 3/4 of the cabinet is empty. What you see is all there is. Nothing is hiding behind it that front row. Kind of a shame to have all that wasted space behind but I wasn’t the builder, so it’s not my fault.

cabinetdone

Okay, I’m outta here. The hounds and Kraken puppy are making we’re hungry noises, the ponies, goats and chickens need tending and the A/C dude will be here in an hour. Good luck with your pantry purges today folks!

Day 2 January Cure 2017- Making a List (humming- checking it twice)

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Today’s assignment is to make a list of all problem areas, large and small in the entire house. From burned out lightbulbs and loose doorknobs to jammed full closets, disorganized cabinets to repairs and improvements.

This is my third year participating in this Cure and each year this list has made huge improvements in my house. Every year this list makes me tackle those dark places that groan in the night.. no wait, that’s the voice in my head that groans when I think about them.

Don’t get put off by all the things that are on your list. I’ve had some huge and daunting tasks on my master list, from my laundry room hell to the pit of despair that was my husband’s office which became the place where everything went we didn’t know what else to do with. While we did manage a nearly complete redo of the double closet in the laundry room, there was no way to handle the office of doom during the Cure. This was something we simply kept working at a bit at a time because we needed to make it work as an office, a craft room and a guest room. This required many measurements, much planning and a lot of building.

Our big project for the Cure in 2015 was the laundry room. It is a tiny room. Barely wide enough to fit the washer and dryer on one wall. On the opposing wall there was a shallow closet hidden by double sliding doors where everything got stuffed and hidden. The room is so small it wasn’t as long as those sliding doors we removed. We found this fact when my son was taking the doors out of the house one at a time and left one leaning against the laundry side of the door to the kitchen. I peeked in to see how he was progressing, knocked the door over where it wedged itself between the door to the kitchen and the door to the garage. I tried to save the situation by reaching through to catch the door before it fell, missed and my arm got pinned in the door.  It was funny as hell actually so don’t gasp. In spite of all the gasps, giggles and cursing, we got it done and it made for some amusing and impressive blog posts.

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The Cure shows that everything can be done in small bits so that it doesn’t overwhelm and yet leads toward a clean and functional home.

During last year’s Cure the office where everything got stuffed was our big project.  This is what it looked like on January 10.

Officebefore2

 

This is what the office looked like at the end of the 2016 Cure

officeafter2ndhour

 

And this is what it looked like later last spring when we got it finished and working to suit our needs.

officeshelfhungwithtoys

guestbed

One messy drawer here, one cluttered cabinet there, one loose doorknob a week, one dark corner a month, your master list is there to keep the problem areas in focus.  Some large areas like our office/guest room/craft room, might take several months of planning, some hard tasks like our laundry room might take a month in small bits and pieces. The thing is to slowly keep chipping away at them and not worry about the time it takes. Every clean shelf in those seriously problematic places makes a huge difference in the appearance of the room and, therefore, your outlook on the task at hand.

So, here is my list for January 2017:

Loose doorknobs: Master bedroom door, Laundry door

Light fixtures: Clean and replace bulbs

Cabinet under sink: Clean and organize

Spice cabinet: ugh, just do something to make it work

Long term: Guest room closet: Jeeeez just DO it.

Cord jumble behind TV.

Clear out trunks to store china. Get rid of china cabinets.

Wash Windows, Mirrors and Door glass

Straighten Laundry Room and wipe down washer and dryer and add another bin for the Kraken’s Chow

Paint doors

Choose new paint for den

Stain and replace hound chewed baseboard in guest bathroom.

Wash guest bath curtain

Sew fresh curtains for Den

Clean book/plant shelf in den

Either sell or give away piano or sign us both up for piano lessons.

Organize drawers under TV.

Big Project: Walk in closets in Master Bedroom: Go through clothes and send 3/4 to charity. Rip out carpet and ready floors for tile. Remove closet doors and switch them to open outward. (I see some cussing coming here.) Stain and install shelving (I see a mess and more cussing coming here.)

So, ready your master list! Start small on the big projects by aiming to clear one shelf or one corner a day. Just one 30 minute task at a time. A bulb or doorknob a day your way to a better home.

 

January Cure 2017 Day 1

02 Monday Jan 2017

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I woke up with coffee while refreshing the Apartment Therapy page, anxiously awaiting the whip and chair that will force me to clean house from top to bottom in one month. I have surely slipped into some alternate reality where I look forward to the torture that is cleaning my house.

How this can happen is beyond me but it’s happened 3 years running now. It’s the mop and bucket family reunion. I have Harry Potter online friends, horse owning online friends, and Apartment Therapy’s January Cure has given me a very large group of non-clean freak friends that are almost as disorganized as I am. This is the real reason I tune in and get excited at the end of December. My buddies! I live for reading the discussions, commenting on posts, posting myself and getting to know everyone.

HAZZAH!! The first assignment was just posted and it is NOT THE FLOORS! WOOT WOOT WOOT WOOT! Today’s assignment is to declutter just one single drawer. How easy is that? Of course, you haven’t seen my nightstand drawers. I’ll pick the worst one. Top drawer, left nightstand.  I will take before and after pictures. It’s really a mess. Little odds and ends. Guaranteed to take an hour to sort through, pitch and relocate all those odds and ends.

But there’s a problem here. No flowers? We’re not supposed to run out and get ourselves a bouquet? Every year I’ve done this we’ve first had to get flowers to perk ourselves up for the tasks ahead. Every year I’ve immediately looked at my cluttered and disheveled counters full of mail, baking ingredients, gifts that haven’t been put away, snacks, etc. and thought “Okay, so where do I shove a vase of flowers? Between the bags of flour and sugar or can I shove those tins of cookies and popcorn out of the way enough to make room?” But not this year! This year I had company in for the weekend so I had to make the clutter disappear by friday. This year I have plenty of room for flowers so it’s only appropriate that this year they’re left off the first day to-do list. I call MALARKEY and I’m going to be a rebel and pick up flowers anyway.

Okay, so, it wasn’t what I’d consider “easy”. Easy is mixing a shot of Frangelico in a cup of eggnog and watching something on Netflix. Cleaning the dreaded nightstand drawer was like uncovering an archaeological site wherein several civilizations are buried.

 

bedroomjunkdrawer2

So I removed the top layers and found a first gen iPod, 7 old pairs of reading glasses, two dozen pens of various types, jewelry, pills, birth certificate, old check book (from 10 years ago), thermometer, hand creams, chapstick, several pairs of ancient earbuds tangled up with everything else in that drawer, bottle caps, hair bands, hair clasps, chocolate frog cards, bubble gum turned to granite, a couple of “neat rocks”, old bankcards (5 to 8 years old), candy wrappers and book lights.

pilojunk

What’s worse than a bunch of totally useless, non-working junk taking up space in a drawer? The bottom layer of fuzz, critter hair, and change, that’s what.

crudchange

There may have been enough change in this drawer to take myself out to lunch at some place fancier than a fast food burger joint. Obviously, I need to eat larger pickles because just this change filled 3/4 of a dill spears jar.

The end result, is the jewelry I couldn’t find is now in it’s proper place where I can find it, things I often actually need at bed time are where they can be reached at bed time, hardware has been moved to where hardware should go, the glasses are bagged up for charity, the now-I-know-where-all-my-pens-went pens are now with office supplies in a closet that was “Cured” last year and has remained healthy for an entire year,  medications and supplies are in the medicine cabinet or first aid basket in the pantry, and the drawer is vacuumed and wiped clean.

TaDA!

afterdrawer