How to Clean Your Kitchen

One of the problems in working from home is that you have days when things are just going to hell not falling into place.

I mean, yeah, I had them at the workplace, too, but here I generally have no one to blame but myself. You know, at work, there's always someone else to blame. And that can be therapeutic, if inaccurate and unkind.

I was supposed to be in NYC this week with the ongoing project of "helping mom move".

D, however, ended up getting sick with a nasty bronchial thing, and since he's asthmatic and has run into pneumonia, it didn't seem really fair to leave D and C to fend for themselves, especially since C doesn't really drive yet and D has ended up in the hospital on occasion for these bronchial things.

So here I was. In Michigan. With no appointments or plans. I have papers to correct, but no lesson plans, as my last class session was Monday.

This is unheard of.

So I immediately schedule a bunch of appointments that I've been putting off during the time of "the move" and thought about projects that really, really needed to get done.

And, well, there was the kitchen.

The kitchen is absolutely, positively in need of an overhaul. That is frequent at this time of year because I'm still using up the last of my various farm share stuff, and I sort of end up converting from summer/fall ingredients to actual winter things.

What are winter things? Oh... things like oatmeal. Cookie-making supplies. Lots of soup bases and various containers of last summer's frozen soups defrosting in the fridge. Meat.

And then there were all the leftovers from THE turkey, and the things accompanying THE turkey, and the things that were made from the leftovers of the turkey and accompaniments, and those things made from those things, and if I ever see a turkey again...

But I digress.

So, here's how I clean the fridge when I'm in this kind of mood:

First, find appropriate music.

Decide you have no appropriate music. Use your last bit of iTunes money from your July b'day and download this.

Transfer it to your iPod.

Set up iPod in the kitchen.

Now you're ready.

Except you need a glass of water. And then it's probably time to check your e-mail. Because, you know, you only checked it fifteen minutes ago and maybe an agent wrote to tell you she NEEDS your book. Or maybe a student has a question. Or maybe D wrote.

Ooops, no. D is asleep in the bedroom. He's sick. D'oh.

Anyway, you've checked the e-mail and you cross the house back to the kitchen. But you've left the water in the office. So you go back for your water. And you walk back to the kitchen. (Are you bored yet? I was.)

Now that you're actually in the kitchen with Fiona Apple singing "Blue Christmas", you realize that you really need, yes need, a Torrone nougat before you get started. This is because you only buy these at Christmas time, and there's Christmas music playing. And you have to eat the Torrone as slowly as possible because a. it's food of the gods, and b. you're not supposed to be eating them anyway, so if you're going to splurge, you should really. take. the. time. to enjoy it.

So three bites and fifteen minutes later, you're ready to clean the kitchen.

Go check your e-mail.

Damn. That agent still hasn't written.*

Back to the kitchen. You realize that you probably truly have run out of excuses this time. You pull out the garbage can and drag it over to the fridge.

You have a guilt/panic attack because you're going to throw out food and that is wasteful. You make several silent pledges that you will eat everything from now on. Every scrap. Always. You have a sudden image of yourself as the Goodyear blimp. You have a panic attack for a different reason.

You go to turn up the music to drown out your internal dialogue. It doesn't work.

Shelf by shelf, you go through unmarked packages, moving things from side to side and realizing that what was really wanted was organization. You and your family did NOT let things rot, despite your worries that caused this massive procrastination in the first place. You are a good global citizen. You are not wasteful.

You are, however, very disorganized.

You finally decide that you can find things again, you make a mental list of dinners/cooking projects for the next few days and happily shut the door. You still have to clean the rest of the kitchen, but... nah.

Time spent cleaning the fridge: 14 minutes.
Time spent avoiding cleaning the fridge: 42 minutes.

Uh huh. Mission accomplished!


*Note to self: since you have no submissions out currently, the reality that the imaginary agent is going to write is slim to none.