Thanksgiving Prep Pt One
Nov. 13th, 2022 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigidLast year's Thanksgiving was a total and absolute bust. I had pretty low key simple plans for Thanksgiving but they relied on a lot of help from Nesko. Nesko, who'd had the Covid and Flu booster/vaccine just previously. Nesko, who spent the day in bed moaning but was perfectly fine the next day. Really bad timing there.
This year I've invited two people over - 2 people who work from home and rarely interact with others - and with windows cracked and air filters running it should be ok, right? Right?
We're running around trying to get everything guest-ready which is honestly A Big Job because we have a leak in the kitchen that's rendered wall cabinets unusable so all the stuff that was IN those cabinets is now in the dining room and it's a lot of stuff. So the dining room isn't currently usable and I need to sort through all that stuff and see what can be packed away and what needs to be stored because I use it frequently and It Is Quite A Job and also I recently went from working in the office 3 days a week to working in the office 4 days a week so I can't spend two lunch breaks + time I'd usually spend commuting on the task, I'm down to one.
We got the carpet thoroughly shampooed using one of the best investments we've made - a carpet shampooer. It became very obvious that we need to do this much more frequently. I want to say that last time we shampooed the carpet we made the same revelation then quickly forgot because it is, quite frankly, a lot of work to move the furniture that is ON the carpet. Which we did. We even raked the carpet thoroughly and rotated it to help with wear patterns etc. It's pretty obvious where we walk on this beautiful carpet which was itself an investment... it cost something like $300 and we were so broke at the time that we paid for it in installments.
I like to do a big Fall Cleaning as well as a Spring Cleaning because we're about to close the house up for the next five or six months and I'd like to be as pleasant as possible and not... musty. Close. Slightly gritty. This place gets dusty like woah and it's possibly because our back parking space is gravel. Probably, in fact. But I don't remember my childhood home getting this dusty when we had a gravel driveway. Maybe that's just because kids don't notice dirt.
We still need to put some of the smaller furniture back in the living room, and then sort out the sunroom which is Lego Central and holy SHIT do we have a lot of Lego... 3 big bins full not counting the assembled sets that are on display. Childhood Lego + Birthday Lego + Christmas Lego + This Is Really Cool Lego + This Star Wars Lego Is Going To Sell Out In A Few Days Buy It Now Lego really... it really adds up, gotta say.
The big thing that's weighing on me though, back to our horrible half-disassembled kitchen, is our fridge. I scrubbed the outside down two weeks ago during my ADHD-Style Clean Sprint which is where I just wander around the house and tackle whatever cleaning stuff I notice. If it gets boring I quit. If it gets too involved I quit. If something else distracts me I quit. I got a lot done including scrubbing the toilet bowl, washing all the dishes (in stages), scrubbing down the front of the fridge as mentioned, and cleaning handprints off woodwork and doors. I organized some stuff too. So the outside of the fridge looks... fine, I guess. It's 14 years old and was brand new when the previous tenants moved in, like actually from a store brand new and not refurbished, and when we moved in I assumed it was at least five years old. No, it was one year old and part of how they trashed the placed. So the front of the fridge looks like someone took a sander to it in spots. It's weird! They stole doorknobs and one of those sink strainer baskets! Why!! But even though it's kind of unsightly we can cover that in cool magnets and take out menus and it's not grimy.
It's the inside that's been bugging me.
I've been picking away at cleaning it, tossing stuff here and there as I see it. I went in today and tossed everything that was expired or spoiled or "what the fuck where did this come from." Everything that's left is food we use regularly. Milk, eggs, butter, cheese, a few cans of soda, salted caramel coffee creamer that's lactose free, a jug of high quality maple syrup, english muffins, etc. There's not much else I can toss, although we can eat up the stuff that's in there and... I don't know. Forgo english muffins for a while? The thing is, the fridge is only like 1/3 empty.
"How can you have THAT MUCH food????? That is SO American." Well yes first of all it is but second of all this fridge is small. It's not a mini fridge but it's a small fridge. If you've rented a cheap apartment you've probably had a fridge like this. It's only about five feet tall. I'm 5'3" and I can see the top of it while standing flat footed, bare footed, on the floor. So we have a very small amount of food, considering, and yet. AND YET. And yet our fridge is still almost full. Not packed, but almost full.
I do not know how much Thanksgiving stuff I can pack in there!
Well, it's only going to be 5 people so I guess I can juggle things and maybe I'll get a cooler to fill with ice to hold drinks so they're not in the fridge. It'll be an adventure.
This year I've invited two people over - 2 people who work from home and rarely interact with others - and with windows cracked and air filters running it should be ok, right? Right?
We're running around trying to get everything guest-ready which is honestly A Big Job because we have a leak in the kitchen that's rendered wall cabinets unusable so all the stuff that was IN those cabinets is now in the dining room and it's a lot of stuff. So the dining room isn't currently usable and I need to sort through all that stuff and see what can be packed away and what needs to be stored because I use it frequently and It Is Quite A Job and also I recently went from working in the office 3 days a week to working in the office 4 days a week so I can't spend two lunch breaks + time I'd usually spend commuting on the task, I'm down to one.
We got the carpet thoroughly shampooed using one of the best investments we've made - a carpet shampooer. It became very obvious that we need to do this much more frequently. I want to say that last time we shampooed the carpet we made the same revelation then quickly forgot because it is, quite frankly, a lot of work to move the furniture that is ON the carpet. Which we did. We even raked the carpet thoroughly and rotated it to help with wear patterns etc. It's pretty obvious where we walk on this beautiful carpet which was itself an investment... it cost something like $300 and we were so broke at the time that we paid for it in installments.
I like to do a big Fall Cleaning as well as a Spring Cleaning because we're about to close the house up for the next five or six months and I'd like to be as pleasant as possible and not... musty. Close. Slightly gritty. This place gets dusty like woah and it's possibly because our back parking space is gravel. Probably, in fact. But I don't remember my childhood home getting this dusty when we had a gravel driveway. Maybe that's just because kids don't notice dirt.
We still need to put some of the smaller furniture back in the living room, and then sort out the sunroom which is Lego Central and holy SHIT do we have a lot of Lego... 3 big bins full not counting the assembled sets that are on display. Childhood Lego + Birthday Lego + Christmas Lego + This Is Really Cool Lego + This Star Wars Lego Is Going To Sell Out In A Few Days Buy It Now Lego really... it really adds up, gotta say.
The big thing that's weighing on me though, back to our horrible half-disassembled kitchen, is our fridge. I scrubbed the outside down two weeks ago during my ADHD-Style Clean Sprint which is where I just wander around the house and tackle whatever cleaning stuff I notice. If it gets boring I quit. If it gets too involved I quit. If something else distracts me I quit. I got a lot done including scrubbing the toilet bowl, washing all the dishes (in stages), scrubbing down the front of the fridge as mentioned, and cleaning handprints off woodwork and doors. I organized some stuff too. So the outside of the fridge looks... fine, I guess. It's 14 years old and was brand new when the previous tenants moved in, like actually from a store brand new and not refurbished, and when we moved in I assumed it was at least five years old. No, it was one year old and part of how they trashed the placed. So the front of the fridge looks like someone took a sander to it in spots. It's weird! They stole doorknobs and one of those sink strainer baskets! Why!! But even though it's kind of unsightly we can cover that in cool magnets and take out menus and it's not grimy.
It's the inside that's been bugging me.
I've been picking away at cleaning it, tossing stuff here and there as I see it. I went in today and tossed everything that was expired or spoiled or "what the fuck where did this come from." Everything that's left is food we use regularly. Milk, eggs, butter, cheese, a few cans of soda, salted caramel coffee creamer that's lactose free, a jug of high quality maple syrup, english muffins, etc. There's not much else I can toss, although we can eat up the stuff that's in there and... I don't know. Forgo english muffins for a while? The thing is, the fridge is only like 1/3 empty.
"How can you have THAT MUCH food????? That is SO American." Well yes first of all it is but second of all this fridge is small. It's not a mini fridge but it's a small fridge. If you've rented a cheap apartment you've probably had a fridge like this. It's only about five feet tall. I'm 5'3" and I can see the top of it while standing flat footed, bare footed, on the floor. So we have a very small amount of food, considering, and yet. AND YET. And yet our fridge is still almost full. Not packed, but almost full.
I do not know how much Thanksgiving stuff I can pack in there!
Well, it's only going to be 5 people so I guess I can juggle things and maybe I'll get a cooler to fill with ice to hold drinks so they're not in the fridge. It'll be an adventure.
