Cabin fever cleaning

If only we had more hurricanes, I’d get so much done around here. I spent yesterday performing the dreaded semiannual “Seasonal Clothing Switch.” Normally that happens in about January after I’ve made do with layering all my summer clothes over tights for three freezing months. Not this time, no sirree. I finished up work at about 1 this afternoon and spent a few hours reclaiming the laundry room. Unfortunately I didn’t think to take any before pictures, but try to imagine piles of old dog beds and blankets, overflowing boxes, bags of donation clothing, and a metric ton of cat hair and dust. Got the picture? Ok, then take a look at the semi-finished product:

The pegboard is “attached” to the washer (i.e. propped up against) with magnetic clips and holds the majority of the attachments for my beloved Dyson vacuum. And yes, the attachments do sometimes fall off during a particularly rigorous spin cycle. And yes, it does scare the crap out of us.

A suction cup hook on the side of the dryer holds our laundry bags.

The Martha in me wanted to label everything with daintily typed stickers, but in the absence of that nice stuff, I did some half-assed masking tape labels.

I even labeled the hamper, and hung a bag that’s to be used specifically for bleachable items!

I also finally set up the folding table that I picked up a few months ago because I was so tired of trying to fold fitted sheets without letting them touch the cat-hair-and-dust-laden floor. Why not fold them on the bed, you ask? Because then they’d touch the dog-hair-laden duvet. Duh.

Who knows what sort of fun/nerdy project I’ll work on tomorrow! That is, if we still have a house tomorrow.

Also, I’d like to thank Zac for outing this blog and forcing me to post something. You should now go read his blog, where he’ll actually be doing real things, as opposed to posting about masking tape labels.

a laundry list of things to do

We’ve got a big new project brewing that is going to change our lives forever! And no, it’s not a baby.

On the second floor we have this middle bedroom that we’re currently using as a “dressing room”. We have some dressers, a couple of clothes racks, and a whoooooole lotta dust and general grossness. I hate that room. I prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist and spend as little time in there as humanly possible. The paint is peeling, the walls are crumbling, the lighting is terrible, and there’s a gaggle of dust bunnies in any given corner at any given time, regardless of how often I vacuum. It’s one of those rooms where if you drop an item of clothing on the floor, it needs to be shaken out rigorously to get the dust and animal hair off it. Or really it needs to be thrown back in the laundry, which brings us to our second problem.

The washer and dryer are in our even grosser basement. There is no five-second rule for dropping something on the floor down there. If you should happen to let a pair of undies slip through your arms on their way to the dryer, just give it up, they’re goners. On top of the general unpleasantness of doing laundry in the basement, our dryer broke a few months ago, which means everything gets line-dried. Our towels are crispy, our sheets take two days to dry, and underwear really just never snaps back to its original form, leading to an inordinate amount of wedgies, and even once dry, our clothes smell like a gnarly basement. On top of which at this point, I’m convinced the washer doesn’t really wash anymore, so the dog and cat hair remains embedded in every fiber of every garment we own, and everything smells vaguely like moldy water. It’s really a sad state of affairs at the Passyunk Palace.

We’ve had the idea for a while now to convert the “dressing room” into a laundry room/linen closet/walk-in-closet dealie. The dryer issue has sealed the deal and made us speed up our plans. Since the room has two doors – one that goes in from the hallway, and one that goes in from the bedroom, we’re going to split the room in half and have one side be a walk-in closet for the bedroom, and the other side be a laundry room and linen closet from the hallway.

I have very high hopes for this project. In addition to being able to conveniently and thoroughly clean our clothes, the closets are going to open up a whole new world of storage possibility. I’ve been daydreaming about things like having shelves full of neatly folded stacks of sheets, rubbermaid bins full of extra blankets and pillows, boxes of off-season clothes, hanging space for winter coats, a permanent home for the vacuum, and a shelf full of extra toiletries. For once in my life, I’ll be able to buy a 12-pack of toilet paper!! And yes, I realize I should be a little concerned over feeling so happy about 12 packs of toilet paper. The upshot is that we will be finally getting closer to cleaning up the house – having a place for everything and everything in its place. Because right now we don’t have a place for anything, and everything is just hanging out in plain sight. And it’s making me crazy.

So consider yourself among the privileged few to see the “before” shots, as this room is the biggest embarrassment of the house and is normally off limits to visitors: