Mighty Mouse vs. the Kitchen

I've moved a few times the past couple of years. I took off a couple of days a couple of weeks ago to move and to help get the cleaning process started here at home. Oy, did we have a full day in store for us.

I took Friday off with the goal of cleaning out the upstairs and downstairs kitchens. We got off to a late start, but my mom and I managed to finally get it together enough to start upstairs.

One shelf down!

We started by emptying out a ply board pantry that had mostly boxed food/mixes and some baking pans. We had to throw all of the food away because of the rodent problem. We filled up a huge trash can just with that pantry. I also encouraged my mom (With minimal argument except- "It's a jar." "It's an antique... jar!" "It's a Jar.") to donate as much as possible that was in good enough condition to give. We filled up a container the size of the back seat of her car with those items.

Cabinet cleared off and out!

Downside to clearing the clutter?
You can see the wallpaper...

After we cleared the pantry, we took a break and dropped the box off at the Goodwill donation site. It is conveniently located just down the road. We got a bite to eat and went back to work.




There was a bag full of papers with old phone books, pages and pages of contact information, and even our old Rolodex. Clearing that out started to get a bit daunting and then my mom made a comment. "What would you do with it if I were gone?" I felt like that showed a lot of clarity concerning our situation. Without trying to be morbid, there have been times when I've thought about how the difficulty of one day losing her would be even more overwhelming knowing I'd be left with all of this stuff. With that in mind, she gave me licence to discard just about every paper I was sifting through. I had to pause, however, when I came across a graduation card written to me from my grandmother. At first I thought it was one of the last things she had ever given me (we lost her later that year), but when I looked at the envelope, I saw notes names of friends I had made that year including notes with their moms' names. The bills inside the card (yes, I managed to score ten bucks!) were from the late 80s. This card, with money intact, had been around since my kindergarten graduation! I got a little misty eyed, then got back to work.

We began clearing out the drawers and the bottom cabinets. We've not been able to use them because of the pest issue. The counters have gotten cluttered because we don't want to put anything down where the mice are. Cue the mask request.

These things were Filthy. Every drawer. Every cabinet. Truly repulsive. I don't remember how many trash bags we filled. At one point, I was tossing out big plastic jars of protein powder. We had been fostering mighty mutant mice with protein powder! Even though realistically it was pretty disturbing, I found that visual rather amusing. Anyways, there was a bit of a battle back and forth in deciding what pots were usable, give-able, or just needed to be trashed. There were a few times I offered to buy a really nice new cookware set if my mom would just toss it all. We came to a decent compromise, and will be sanitizing things soon.

We found an old library card of the girl
that lived her over 20 years ago!

Emptied and ready to be scrubbed!

So that's pretty much where we left off, the basement waits for another day. My mom scrubbed down the emptied cabinets and drawers and the room is already so much cleaner. Unfortunately, we can't put stuff in its clean and proper place because we think there's still a rodent among us. I'm afraid we won't be able to really get rid of that problem until we clean out the basement. I really think that the job we did in the kitchen is the hardest part-for the upstairs. But to look around, it almost feels like we're still at square one. But I know this is not really the case.

Thank you Mr. Trash man!

A big sign of progress already is that we were able to have someone fix some plumbing problems we were having. My wonderful uncle came over and fixed the all the faucets in the kitchen and the bathroom. I also noticed that at least one friend of my mom has offered (with expectancy) to help clean the house. Thank You! As my dad tells me, this mess didn't happen over night and it won't be fixed over night. And we're moving forward. I've also made a couple of  Mark sales. Thanks so much to you, too!.

Stay tuned for more updates. And any ideas or suggestions on how to make this project a success are welcome!

Once the Golden Girls are singing a
lullaby, it's time for bed.