I remember back when I was a lot younger the idea of a self-cleaning oven seemed ridiculous. I didn’t see any mechanism in there that would scrub the sides of spray any cleaning foam on the walls. It didn’t make sense at all. Eventually I learned that there was no scrubbing involved, and that the oven just cranks the temperature all the way up to burn everything into oblivion. Here in my condo I was actually rather excited to use the cleaning feature on my oven for the first time. I was fascinated by all of the blackened bits catching fire then burning away. Anyway, just today I had to run the oven through a cleaning cycle. The bottom of the oven was covered in a lot of greasy crap resulting from my pie making adventures. Since then, every time I turned the oven on it would be filled with smoke. Not good. I didn’t want to wait for it to go through a thorough cleaning so I just used the fast cleaning cycle. Well, within the first half hour it was already doing its thing. The oven got all smoky, and eventually it started seeping out. I had to switch off the circuit breaker switch for my smoke alarm because my place was getting a little bit too filled. My eyes were watering from all the smoke. I switched on fans all over the place and opened the balcony door. After another hour or two the smoke died down. Everything in the oven was turning to ash and it was wonderful. Makes me think, too bad there aren’t switches like that for rooms in general. I mean, not including the burning everything to the ground part, but imagine hitting a button and coming back two hours later to see everything tidy. Yes well, technology isn’t heading in that direction, eh?
Tag Archive: cleaning
Off of the floor
It’s unfortunate, but like I’ve mentioned many times one difficulty I’m having is keeping my place tidy. It’s not uncommon for me to get back home at a late hour. By then I’m hardly in the mood to get to work to bring some order back. When I finally do have time, it’s not uncommon for me to occupy myself with other activities. That’s how things go. Just how it is for now. Anyway, ever since picking up a Roomba I’ve at least been keeping the floor someone free of large piles of clutter. I shouldn’t be surprised at all, but doing so has actually made my place seem more open. It’s all an illusion, of course. The more floor space is visible, the bigger and more airy the place seems.
I’m declaring it right now. My goal this weekend will be to clear the tables of bills and ads, to mop, then to clear the bedroom floors sufficiently to get the Roomba going in there. Seems like a lot, but at least if I break it down into individual tasks that need to get done I should have a better chance of getting things accomplished. Oh, but if that doesn’t happen at least me place will continue to be under the illusion of looking spacious. Hurrah!
Vacuuming bot
One thing about being out often is that cleaning up once I find me way home is kind of low on my priority list. I’ve written about this before. Anyway, because of the fact that I’m often out, I’ve thought about getting a Roomba for a while now. A friend has told me that her robot vacuums have done the trick for her. I knew that Canadian Tire sold them, but I was anticipating a day when that vacuum would go on sale. Just today I checked the site and found that the 530 model was on sale. The price was down to about $300. Nice! I took that as my queue. I ended up naming the Roomba Samuel.
Now, after charging Samuel and clearing my living room floor of obvious obstacles I let it run for about an hour. I was surprised to see that it actually did rather well. There were some moments where I thought that it would just skip over some dusty and dirty spots, but no, that sucker eventually got to some dusty patches on the floor and it made sure to scrub it. I eventually had to turn it off because it was getting late and I didn’t want to annoy my downstairs neighbours, All the same, the areas that it did reach are looking rather good. Samuel got stuck in a few spots so I have to do a bit of arranging to prevent it from getting caught. Otherwise, I almost feel comfortable non babysitting it next time I give it a run. Hello, clean floors!
Getting the house in order
Maybe it’s a refection of where my life is at the moment, but my condo has been in a state of disarray for the past few months. No, it’s not dirty, but more untidy than anything. For the longest time I haven’t had that much time to get it organized. There were some weeks where I was out every night. The few nights that I had to myself were ones where I just needed to rest and slack. Things have accumulated to the point where it’s now a bit overwhelming.
Yeah yeah, I can hear it now: “I don’t understand how anyone can let things get so untidy. How do you live such a horrible and irresponsible life?” Whatever. Keep your judgments to yourself.
I’m planning on using this week to get things in order. If I have to pretend that I’m having company over, then that’s the tactic I will use. The important thing is that I get on it. Having my place in this state isn’t helping with the energy flow. Maybe this is just a reflection of other things. Who knows? Point is, I need to get my house in order–in more ways than one.
Declaration of order
Ah, you’d think with all of this increased domestic time I’d have actually taken advantage and cleaned this place up. Umm…well…can’t say I did. Too many distractions around here. Thing is, the situation around here is getting a bit out of hand. I really need to ensure that I’m ushering in fall with a good state of order around me. I need to have good energy going around here. All of the clutter is not helping that.
So, I’m declaring that tomorrow will be a day to get all my things in order. Stamped it, declared it. I refuse to live this way.
Pride in my living space
I’ve been saying for a while that I wish I had an extra day to get some proper housework done. With the civic holiday upon us, I made sure to not let this opportunity slip through my fingertips. I don’t think I completed everything that needed to get done, but I did get a fair amount out of the way. Perhaps this is of the few times you’ll read me writing this, but I am ridiculously happy that I got around to mopping the kitchen, living room, and bathroom properly. The floors look great again. Also, seeing as how I don’t use all four sides of the dining room table all that often, I’ve pushed it off to the side. I took two of the chairs and put them up to the breakfast bar. The result is that there’s a larger amount of open flooring now. It’s making my living room look a lot bigger. I could almost be fooled into believing that I could fit another cushy living room chair in here.
Things are almost orderly, and it feels good. God knows why it’s not in this state more often, you know? There are still some areas of this place that need some reconsideration. There’s an ugly computer desk in the corner of the living room that’s just being used to hold small books and random junk. I really want to dump that thing and put a big potted plant there. There’s a stack of boxes in my bedroom occupying a space that could take a shelf or stand of some sort. And Jesus, after all this time, I really need to get my dishwasher hooked up. All it’s doing is just sitting there looking pretty. Crazy, eh?
Anyway, maybe it doesn’t seem like it at times, but I do take pride in my living space. I worked hard to get to this point. I need to make sure things are presentable–not just for other people, but for myself.
Cleaning day
Hey, so remember that thing where if you clean your place a little bit each day you won’t end up being overwhelmed by having to clean everything all at once? Yeah, that didn’t happen. And now on my designated cleaning day I’m overwhelmed. I did make a bit of progress, but aesthetically I don’t feel like I even made a dent. Damn. I guess there’s tomorrow, but…maaaaaaan.
To a clean state
Upon getting my own place, I told myself that I would never let it get to a point where cleaning up is a horribly tough prospect. I figured that as long as I do a little bit every day to keep things somewhat organized things won’t get far too disorganized. For the most part I’ve kept it up. Over the past month or two though I’ve gotten so busy that cleaning up has been pretty low priority. Even though things were kind of untidy I just told myself that things weren’t horribly bad. A little bit here, a little bit there: it wouldn’t have been that hard to return to a clean state. And that’s how things just kept piling up. Not much of a problem if I wasn’t expecting anyone, right? Well, a few days ago I was told that I’d be hosting Easter dinner. Circumstances are such that my parents aren’t able to cook at their house. So, it was mom’s idea to have dinner over at my place. I don’t mind at all. I mean, I haven’t hosted people over here in a good while. Of course, this means that I’ve had to clean this place up.
I’ve been up since the early hours just trying to get things in order, and it’s been tough. Especially for the first few hours, it really felt like I wasn’t making any progress. I think part of the problem is a lack of proper storage for random things. If there’s something I need more of here, it’s a bunch of drawers or shelves or containers that I can use to stash things away in. Everything needs a place–even little bits of clutter. I’ve accumulated a lot in the past while. I’ve had to send large amounts of it to recycling; a lot of it has been shredded as well. There have also been a lot of distractions making it hard to focus on the task at hand. At this point, late in the day, I’m not entirely happy with the current state of things. I’m going to use tomorrow morning to rush to get it all into shape. Going to rock tomorrow, for sure.
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