I love cleaning. Sometimes.

We have lived here more than 4 months.  And we are still more than 4 months away from living in our new house.  I feel like I'm at a point where we've been here a while (the newness is wearing off), but we still have a while to go (the new house is an empty shell - nowhere near done).

So, the answer to my restlessness is to clean.  (That's my answer to a lot of things I have no control over - cleaning makes me feel in control of my space.  It's therapeutic.)

I have already cleaned all the doors in this house.  And the light fixtures.  And the vents.  And fans.  And the washer and dryer.  And the baseboards.  And the vent intakes.  And scraped the paint drops in the bathrooms.  And replaced the intake filters.  And kept up with sweeping, mopping, etc.  I really felt like this house was kind of dirty since it was on the market for a while.

Well, now I got to work on more deep cleaning.

I cleaned behind the fridge and behind the stove.  (And along the sides of the fridge and stove - gross!)  I found pet hair, pet food, Christmas toys, and a bunch of dust and dirt.  (Fortunately, I found zero ants!)

When I came home from Maryland, I had cleaning to do - Michael was here and while he does his dishes and laundry (what a good guy!), he used the shower/bathroom and that's all my job.  Every time I clean the shower, I spray the good stuff in the shower, let it sit 10 minutes or so, and scrub as little as possible because the chemicals make me sick.  I don't know if I'm allergic or what, but they make me cough, upset my stomach, and give me a headache.  As a result, the spray stuff left stripes as it dripped, and the whole wall was never fully cleaned.  So, thanks to my tile guy in the new house, I tried what he said and used dawn dish soap and a non-scrubby sponge.  I'm telling you, it worked!  And since there were no chemicals, I could sit and scrub the parts of the walls that had built up soap scum.  Since I wanted it to be therapeutic, I cleaned every nook and cranny, both sides of the glass, the shower head, the shelf above the wall, and the walls around the shower.

Then I moved onto the rest of the bathroom.

Then I dusted the whole first floor (which needs mentioning because I usually dust twice a year).

Then I checked pinterest for ideas to clean the stainless steel in the kitchen.  I tried vinegar, which worked okay, but not great.  The people who lived here before left the cabinets FILTHY, and I cleaned some with the vinegar I already had out, but ran out of energy to clean the rest.  For whatever reason, they had tape all over the fridge (probably because magnets don't stick to it) and they had tape on the cabinets too!  I had to scrape it all off and get that old glue off with vinegar.  It worked!

So, this house is getting a super deep clean and I'm feeling better.  I'm in control of something anyway.  :-)