Cleaning out the Kitchen

I began the #40bagsin40days Lenten challenge a couple of weeks ago.  I admit.  I had dreams of cleaning out my entire house.

Turns out, I've gotten bogged down in my kitchen.  There's a lot more "stuff" in there than I thought there would be.

While I've been at it, husband and I decided to go ahead and fix all of the little stuff that has bothered us about that space since we moved into this house.  It's been on our "to do" list for 9 years now, but it's never been a priority.

We've emptied out well over half of the cabinets.  We've gone through each and every item and decided what we do and don't use.  Items that needed to go away have been given away.  We cleaned out the cupboard which is just behind the kitchen door, and husband is in the middle of building a custom designed rack so that we can rotate our canned goods in and out without losing stuff in the very back corners of the cupboard.  Items that need to be corralled, like the Easter Egg stuff is all in bins, and the bottom shelves of the cupboards contain these bins of items that are not used often, but that we like to keep track of.

I even went so far as to go through the spices.  We had five jars of Turmeric - each with a little less than a quarter of spice left.  Hey, presto, change-o, I consolidated all of the various jars of Turmeric into one!  Sadly, there were many more extraneous jars of spices - not just the Turmeric - that could be consolidated.  In all, I ended up recycling over 20 jars and little containers of spices that had been hogging space in our cabinets.  I can now actually see what I have on the shelves!  That's an unusual feeling!

Yesterday, I emptied out another cabinet that I've been meaning to get to since we moved in here.  There were 5 sets of drip pans for an electric stove in there.  We have a smooth top electric range.  Not sure how long those pans have been sitting in there, but they are gone now!  This cabinet is going to end up housing my pans and cookie sheets that are currently crammed into the drawer under the oven.  I want to store them vertically, if I can, so I'm looking around for ways to hold the upright without spending a fortune.

I still have the largest project left - getting at the island in the kitchen.  It's an awkward set up - the island itself has cabinets that hang down from the ceiling and come to 12" above the counter top.  No space to do anything here except pile stuff.  When we moved in, our intent was to pull down those cabinets over top of the island and move them down into the laundry room to make a nice island there to fold laundry.  I believe we're about to make it happen.  With the space we've opened up in the other cabinets, we should be able to move everything out of those upper cabinets and take them down.  I don't think it will happen before Easter, but it will happen before graduation.  Finally, one of the larger visions we had for this space when we moved in here - opening up the kitchen - will be done!

I have added a Kitchen Remodel board to my Pinterest Boards.  I don't honestly think we'll be able to pull off a lot of these ideas, but it's fun to look at these great ideas and dream!

The bag count so far?  9 bags to Goodwill.  1 to the Public Library.  2 bags to a mission trip to Guatemala.  4 bags of trash. 1 bin of recycling.

Update on My Mom

 A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that my Mom was having issues with her eyes.  She has blood pooling behind her retina.  You can read the original post here:

http://mini-van-mom.blogspot.com/2013/07/moms-eyes.html

So, in the past couple of weeks, things have moved along very quickly.

She has bought a house down the street from my sister.  She has lived in her current house for 35 years.  The house is in an ideal location, as it is an hour away from each of us.  This has made it a wonderful destination for family gatherings over the years.

But now, she's moving down the street from my sister.  It's well over 2 hours from here, down Highway 95, around Washington DC, and through the hideous Northern Virginia traffic, and then down another hour south.  Life, it is a changin'.

She is getting her current house ready to sell.  Yesterday, we went down to her house and spent one of the most hellacious days I've had in quite some time.

Middle child hasn't been home for most of the summer.  The last time he saw Grammy was in May, just before his graduation.

Now that he's home, and this is his break between working at camp and going back to school, we made plans to go down to her house for the day.  We were going to take Mom out to lunch, run loads of stuff to Goodwill, and let middle child have some quality time with Grammy.

I was in for a rude awakening.  We got to Mom's house just before noon, and my sister had decided to come over for the day.  She was loading up stuff to take to Goodwill.  She had already taken the chairs that were supposed to be mine - given to the family by my Grandmother on my Dad's side 30 years ago.  They're gone.  So are my Fisher Price toys that I specifically asked her to save out for me the last time we talked.  So were the handmade inlaid wood pictures my Dad had made that I had asked her to save.  So was the shotgun my great-great grandfather carried when he fought in the Civil War.  By the time I got to Goodwill, they were already gone.  I would be okay if they had gone to my sister's house, but no, they went to Goodwill.  Family heirlooms, given away to strangers in a fit of whatever it is.

But still, this isn't about me, it's about my Mom.  We need to do what is best for her.

We pulled in, and she immediately put the kids to work loading stuff into her car.

Then, she pulled out to go run errands, and told us she'd be right back.

I told Mom that we should head out and get lunch, or head out to a restaurant and then text my sister, let her know where we were, and have her meet us there.  No go.  Mom refused to budge until my sister got back.

My sister pulls into the driveway behind me, blocking me in, brings in a rotisserie chicken- one chicken for 6 people - eats about half of it, and then starts cleaning like a ferocious, angry, possessed woman.

Meanwhile, my youngest child is with me, and she is a vegetarian.  Mom hasn't been to the store in over a week, so there is very little in the house, and there is nothing for a lactose intolerant vegetarian to eat. 

I asked my sister if she could move her car so that I could get out, and she told me she "wasn't moving her car until the house was cleaned."  Frustrated beyond words, we began cleaning.  I cleaned out the tracks in the windows.  I sliced my finger open on the tracks... Youngest child was beyond starved, but I had nothing to give her, and my car was sandwiched in.  No way out.

I cleaned baseboards.  I cleaned cobwebs.  The kids pitched in and cleaned windows and magic erasered the walls.  We loaded the stuff for Goodwill that was still sitting in the front yard.

Throughout it all, I kept reminding myself that this wasn't about me, this was about my Mom.

At 5, I told my sister I had to leave.  I loaded my kids in the car, and at 5:30, she finally ambled out with Mom and her youngest daughter and they took off.

We were starved.  I showed up at Mom's house having had a Starbucks coffee and a piece of pumpkin bread.  At 1, I split what was left of a chicken thigh with middle child.

We went straight to Wegman's and grabbed dinner from the hot bar.  We went upstairs to eat dinner, and recover from the emotional stress of the day.

At this point in the day, youngest child had had a piece of pumpkin bread, a banana, and two popsicles.  She downed  a salad, a bag of nuts, and a hunk of bread.  The poor thing was starved.

But again, we reminded ourselves that this was about Grammy, not us.  Grammy's house is going up on the market a week from this coming Sunday, and she wants to move the house quickly.

After our fruitless stop at Goodwill, we finally left for home.  The hideous Washington traffic was worse than usual, and it took us 3 hours to get home last night, even though we left Northern Virginia after 7:00, when traffic has usually begun to die down.

This morning, I looked through my e-mails and found a note from my Mom.

"I just realized" she wrote, "That she had nothing to eat.  There was no food for her, and your sister wouldn't let you get your car out to go get food.  I'm sorry.  I should have realized that was what you were trying to say when you kept saying "I need to go to the store and get something for her to eat."   I couldn't understand why she wasn't content with the chicken."

I know, I know, this is about my Mom, and what's best for her.  It's not about me.

But I'll tell you, when I couldn't sleep last night, it was all about me. 

I really do need to let this go somehow.  But how?