Once More Into the Organizational Breach!

Another day spent bringing the house to heel. I started with the utility room again because I just couldn't let it beat me another day. Three separate times I thought of something that tried to pull me away, but I stayed strong. Well, I stayed strong for the first two. By the third I decided I had better act upon them or I would forget them because I couldn't keep three things in the front of my mind. Distractions notwithstanding, I did get the gift wrap area done today (shown at right), if not the rest of the counters (shown below).

We also tried a housecleaning system today that brought to mind one of my grandmother Jessie's stories about her early married life. She and Grampa Pete (Cecil, but everyone called him Pete but me--I called him Grampa or Grumpy, which he wasn't) lived in Alexandria Virginia, and they both worked for the government in Washington DC. It was the late 1930's, and on Friday night when they got off work they would go home and quickly clean their house together before having friends over or going out for the evening. I have a wonderful series of pictures of them with another couple on one such evening in their house. The pictures are simple: two happy couples talking, posing, drinking, laughing, enjoying their evening. It's hard to believe they were taken 80 years ago.

But back to the system. Today we tried working through the house together in series: First I went through picking things up off all the surfaces and putting them away, Jessie followed behind me with the Swiffer hand duster and dusted all the surfaces. Then Dave followed her with the vacuum--cleverly getting up everything she dusted onto the floor--and moving all the furniture out of the way to vacuum underneath it. I fell into the back of the line and finished with mopping the floor--including under the furniture Dave moved out--and putting the furniture back in place. It was a great and highly efficient system--even with a slightly balky teenager at the head of the line.

Now my spouse and I sip well-deserved glasses of sauvignon blanc in reward (a toast!) and listen to "All That We Let In" by the Indigo Girls. He is making chicken biryani, raita and nan for dinner, and we have two slices of lilikoi (if you're in Hawaii it's lilikoi, if you're mainland it's passionfruit) cheesecake for dessert. Two slices is okay because it's not Jessie's thing and it was a gift--thank you Lenny the Fish! Haven't decided what we'll watch tonight. I'm in the mood for Kill Bill, and Jessie doesn't like Tarantino's films. Come to think of it, Pulp Fiction would be a good choice too...

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Dinner and he movie are long over. Cheesecake was YUMMY! The Sprout's tender sensibilities were not up for anything dark and grim so we rewatched Grosse Pointe Blank. It's been 21 years since it came out and it has held up incredibly well from the direction to the acting to the music. I spent the movie knitting a cotton dishcloth for Dave with a cat in my lap. Got it half done (the dishcloth, not the cat), and will finish it tomorrow. My mother and MIL both made these dishcloths for us in the past, and they're so great that they're the only ones we use. But time has passed, we have lost a few to the garbage disposal, and the rest are pretty uniformly grey and ratty. Fortunately I have my mom's stash of spooled cotton for knitting them, and everything (including the pattern for them) is available on the Internet so I decided it was time to learn to make them myself.

Now it's time to go to bed to join my dulcetly snoring spouse. I leave you with the Violent Femmes (from the aforementioned movie).