"Spring" Cleaning

Hello, dear blog readers! Now that the morning sickness is starting to abate a little bit, the house and clutter have really been getting to me. The drips of grease from the stove hood, the various boxes of clothes that have been given to us for Big C, the old clothes that need to be sorted and then put away....The latter has been difficult because C, also known as "Toodler," has become very adept at throwing clothes from the sorted piles into absolute chaos, leaving me to start over.

I began my cleaning process today by powering through about half of the kitchen. I know that I've cleaned our microwave fairly routinely in the past, but not since C. was born. (Ugh!) The stove (aside from the immediate top) was the same situation. I managed to get the microwave and stove clean, along with wiping down the outside of the fridge and all of the cabinets/walls around the appliances. The downside of cooking with an old stove in a small kitchen is that it doesn't take much for a non-outside-vented stove to add a film of grease to everything in the residence. (Welcome to smelling like a greasy diner!) The only bane of my existence so far has been the drip pans under the electric range cook top.

Parenthetically: in the last 11 years of apartment renting, this is the HARDEST (or rather, most difficult) stove I've ever had to clean! No wonder the fire alarm went off for the first week that we lived here: it had a thick residue of cleaning agents on it.

I don't know about the rest of you, but since this is the first apartment I've lived in that has coil burners, I had to learn the hard way (finding things online today) that you can isulate the drip pans with aluminum foil. Talk about an easy way to clean/easy fix! I scrubbed for an hour and a half with everything from Easy Off, Barkeeper's Friend, baking soda/water/vinegar mixes, and Scrubbing Bubbles, but alas: the char remains. Hopefully it will burn off eventually. I know I've cleaned these burners before, but I can't remember them being so stubbornly difficult.

We took a break from the kitchen chaos (gotta look worse before looking better, right?) to take a walk through one of the local forest preserves. We took C. along for the ride, and for once in a rare while, he did not complain about being strapped down for more than 20 minutes in a stroller. The orange-and-brown/black caterpillars were out in full swing, so I got to show him one. Of course it curled up into a ball, thus having no interest for Toodler.

All in all, a productive day. Hopefully I can get the kitchen done tomorrow. Eventually I'll bust out the carpet steam cleaner--not an easy feat with shag carpet--and get rid of the moldy spots under the book shelves. (Yes, water damage abounds here too with poor air circulation!)

Happy Tuesday, dear blog readers!