Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody Clean Up!

13. August 2008 · Comments Off on Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody Clean Up! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Today, after a VERY long bike ride during which I got extremely lost in an effort to help find Dave a safe bike route to work (by the way, it can’t be done without riding all over highway interchanges), I continued the finer points of unpacking our house.

First off, the moving company made it over this morning to pick up all of our packing material which had been filling our garage. We now have a garage ready for our vehicles!

Yesterday I received a request from Jake’s Kindergarten teacher for “spare” art supplies, plus scraps of ribbon, yarn, sponges, wrapping paper and CDs. Well, Jake’s class will hit the jackpot from us! I found a wad of craft ribbon, tons of yarn leftover from my scarf and blanket projects and several duplicate bottles of paint.

I had been planning to consolidate two plastic drawer bins of art supplies into just one, so I’ve been gathering the pencils, markers, crayons, paints, crayons, paper, crayons, glue sticks, crayons and glitter.

Did I mention crayons?

The original Crayola crayon boxes don’t last in our house. One of the boys will open the box with too much gusto and “poof!”, the top rips right off. Of one of them will empty all the crayons onto the table, and the box falls to the floor. Then I walk past the table and step on the box on the floor. So early on I decided that when the kids got crayons, they’d go into one of those plastic Ziploc containers.

But I now have 4 of those containers, filled to the brim with crayons, plus a good-sized wooden cigar box.

Timmy was on a “must break all crayons” phase this past spring and today I was picking out the pieces of crayons. Timmy is currently on a “must peel all crayons” phase. I was about to throw out all those pieces of crayon and it hit me that I could recycle them into “chunky crayons”.

All you have to do is peel crayon scraps, pop like colors into Dixie cups in a muffin tin and then warm them gently until the scraps melt together.

Chunky crayons will be good for doing rubbings, so says one mother on the link I offered above. Good idea!

Timmy will be tasked with peeling several dozen crayon scraps. He’ll be thrilled! Hopefully he’ll never want to peel a crayon again!

This Laundromat Thing Ain’t So Bad

16. July 2008 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

The washers and dryers here are ENORMOUS!!!
A week’s worth of laundry for a family of 4 all fit into ONE washer!
I’ve divided the clothes among 3 dryers to save a little time.

Need a House?

02. May 2008 · Comments Off on Need a House? · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Need a house?

This York Simpson Underwood Listing is a much better website than what’s on Realtor.com.

I have to brag a little about the pic of the outside of the house. We asked that the photographer come in the afternoon to minimize the shadows — the sun shines directly on front of the house in the afternoon and that day couldn’t have been better! Bright sun, azure blue sky!

Now That’s What I Call CLEAN!

29. April 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

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!

How Many Products Does it Take to Screw Up Your Fridge?

23. April 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

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!

Wax On, Wax Off!

22. April 2008 · Comments Off on Wax On, Wax Off! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

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…

"Where’ve You Been, Woman???"

21. April 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

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!

Get It Sold!

13. April 2008 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,


Need a house?

For those unaware, I’ve been going crazy since early March getting our house ready to sell. Unlike in Florida, where we didn’t have to do jack squat for the house to sell in summer 2005, this time around we’re making this place look like a museum, new paint all around, repairs, powerwashing, new landscaping, as much as we’re willing to budget.

Since we can’t currently guarantee we’re going to make any money on the house, we can’t go too nuts. No new appliances, no new flooring, carpeting, roof, etc. The most we’re investing in is an exterior trim paint job.

But there’s this show on HGTV called “Get It Sold” and we’ve been enjoying learning about these little low-cost tips to “stage” the house. One of the recommendations is that we remove personal pictures and replace those picture frames with more neutral artwork.

Dave and I had prided ourselves in our living room, filled with black-and-white 8 x 10 portraits of the family, with the only color picture being the full-sized family portrait over the fireplace. You can see what I’m talking about in this picture from Easter morning (yes, Dave’s wearing bunny ears, what a trooper!):

We didn’t want to run out to Bed Bath and Beyond or some art store to spend money on neutral stuff that we wouldn’t even want to take to Nebraska.

Dave came up with the idea to make some 8 x 10 black and white prints of some of the less personal photography we might have on our computers. He and I spent the better part of an evening browsing our digital photo collection (about 19,000 pictures, going back to 2002) looking for something worth blowing up and hanging on our wall. Oh yeah, it has to look good in black and white!

After Dave campaigned (and lost) for a picture of a calf, and I campaigned (and lost) for a picture of Mount Washington, NH we settled on 5 very nice pictures, that we had Shutterfly blow up for us for a grand total of $20.02! I’m in the middle of re-framing the black and whites right now and it’s looking very impressive.

The picture of the tall ship goes into our bedroom, while the other 4 pictures will be in the living room, in black “floating” frames.

Laundry Day!

17. January 2008 · 9 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

It’s laundry day in the Vollmer house. For those who don’t know, I HATE laundry. Always have. I was quite lucky as a kid — I did a lot of chores in my house growing up (washing dishes, mowing the lawn) but laundry was never one of them. I think my Mom had her way of doing laundry and it was just less work to do it herself rather than deal with us kids messing things up. I understand completely — I get nervous that Dave might accidentally let a bra or sweater go into the dryer and we all know what happens then!

Anyway, before kids, and while Dave and I were both active duty Air Force, our laundry was easily a 1/2 day chore, once a week. One load of whites, one load of colors. Our uniforms were usually being professionally cleaned, so we didn’t even have to worry there.

Of course NOW, particularly in the wintertime, during Timmy’s potty training (that’s another posting, we’re in the home stretch!), the clothes pile up like crazy. Once a week is a no-go. But I’m not disciplined enough to do it daily, which is what many of my friends claim to do: 1-2 small loads per day = 10-15 minutes worth of work per day.

What I do is probably worse: 5-6 very-large-loads every 4-5 days, 1-2 hours of folding/putting away.

And then I really take my time — I’ve been known to let the clothes sit in the dryer or in baskets in the laundry room for as many as 5 days. I’ll just pull what I need from the piles. But typically, I can do everything in one day.

So go ahead — take my poll! I’ve been wondering if I’m sort of a freak because I don’t do laundry daily.

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