Ground Control to Major Mom

Hi!

Let me catch my breath…

“Phew!”

The photographer just left — she was here to take pictures of our “staged” house for the MLS listing.

So now we can mess up the house again! Just kidding…

I will admit that I feel like if I BREATHE too sloppily, the house will get messed up again…I don’t think I can use my kitchen or bathrooms anymore!

Enjoy some pictures from my adventures in cleaning:

Here’s the UNDERSIDE of our stovetop. One of those places I never think about when doing ordinary cleaning.

Before (those white streaks are from Formula 409 working its way through the stains):

From 2008 04 26 Pr…

And AFTER:

From 2008 04 26 Pr…

As you can see, the 409 did a pretty bang-up job!

So as not to steal my realtor’s thunder, enjoy a sampling of pics from our really clean house. I need to show this off, I’m so proud! I didn’t do it alone, though…Dave was very helpful with many of the outside items, keeping our trashcans empty, and for throwing out his old valet in our bedroom. He now has to drape his clothing somewhere else 🙂

Living Room:

Kitchen:

Dining Room:

Master Bedroom:

Master Bath:

I’m going to pour myself some frozen Margarita. I have some leftover from my jewelry party last Thursday. I know it’s only 3pm but I think I deserve it!

That’s my fridge. I love it. I think stainless steel is sexy.

But…over the past 3 years, my boys have had a field day playing with their letter magnets, their Thomas and Friends magnets and their keeping-up-with-their-chores magnets.

So the front is now pretty beat up.

Again, in anticipation of the house going on the market next week, I’ve been cleaning up the clutter, which includes removing all the magnets and pictures. So I’m left with all these scratches on the front of the fridge in plain view:

The area in question is closest to the door handle. The other light further to the right spot is a reflection.

I’ve use these products to try to clean up those scratches, to no avail:

Yes, you even see a Scotch Brite pad and a 380-grit sanding block! Those were BAD.

The stainless steel cleaners do just that, clean.

The Scratch-Out in the yellow bottle is actually for automotive uses, it didn’t seem to make a difference on our big scratches. Maybe I’m not using it right?

The “winner” in this batch, unfortunately, is the WD-40, which merely cleans up the scratches enough that they aren’t so glaring. If you scrutinize the surface, all the scratches are still there.

If you have a personal favorite for keeping your stainless steel scratch-free, do tell!

Today I was continuing to prepare for our house to hit the market by applying Olde English oil to all my wood furniture.

I guess this was the first time I had ever oiled all the furnishings at once, for I realized, 90 minutes later, that we have a LOT of wood furniture.

All of the living room, dining room, master bedroom, both kids’ bedrooms. All wood.

My arms are quite sore, which led me to think about this:

Enjoy the trip down memory lane…

Okay, so I fell off the scope for a bit.

This week was pretty darned busy for me, so a couple things had to fall by the wayside, the blog being the first thing. Photographs of my life were next.

Then paying attention to my boys, the poor babies.

This past weekend I had a pretty big yard sale. So for the 10-14 days leading up, I had been working room-by-room, assessing and clearing out extraneous crap.

Sometimes they were old items, like books Dave and I had both read. Our Lazy Boy chair with a gaping hole in the upholstery right at the crotch. The too-small Crock Pot. The Rival 2-cup Hot Pot from college. Air Force BDUs, stripped of the patches (10 — count ’em — TEN sets!).

Sometimes they were things we’d outgrown: infant toys, size 2T clothing, double jogging stroller, diaper pail/changing pad (YES!), baby monitor

Some of our items were simply excessive: Did I really need 3 tricycles?

But many of our things for sale were items that I didn’t trust would make it through another move. Several of our Little People play sets, for example. They were large and I could see many of the plastic pieces getting crushed between here and Nebraska.

How about one of those garden hose wind-up reel thingies? Wouldn’t make it to Nebraska, either!

Anyway, Saturday was the big day, and we ended up making over $300! I was impressed! $50 of that is a wash because of my hefty advertising budget: online, print and signage in the neighborhood.

Next weekend is the neighborhood yard sale and I’ll put the remants of the stuff out this Saturday for a little bit…everything else will go to a local thrift store in Fuquay-Varina.

So I’ve been busy with all that.

The realtor was here over the weekend, also. She and her partner did a walk-through and made some suggestions on how to stage the house appropriately. I was disappointed to hear that they prefer all my horizontal surfaces (dresser tops, mantle, tabletops) EMPTY…I’m currently putting away my Asian knick-knacks and Hummel figurines.

We also took down our swingset. It was an illegal swingset. We bought the house with the illegal swingset, then about a year after we bought the house, we received a letter from the property manager indicating we had an illegal “improvement” to our property and it had to be removed immediately. Dave appealed the letter and eventually got approval for the structure, but the letter of approval states that the swingset needs to be removed when we sell the house.

So as not to mislead any potential owners, Dave solicited to some of our yard sale customers that the swingset was theirs for the taking if they could help remove it and haul it away. In about an hour on Saturday afternoon, it was gone! Wow!

What of the Weather Station that was mounted on the swingset? It’s still in our backyard in an alternate location. The data is still pretty accurate, except the wind measurements are taken about 2 feet closer to the ground than before.

As of today, I’m finally calming down a little. This week I can relax some…it’s too soon to start the uber-cleaning cycle before the house goes on the market (why bother? the kids will dirty it up again!). By this weekend I’ll be ramping up again…

Ta!