Sunday, January 04, 2009

Mr. Clean

Well, now that last week's craziness is over...

We had our neighborhood New Year's Day party, a casual affair which nevertheless required Larry and I to work like dogs for approximately 5 hours that morning cleaning up the house (not counting the hours I spent on Wednesday cleaning up the basement family room). Larry went above and beyond by cleaning out all the crap in our computer desk (thus ensuring that we wouldn't have to spend the afternoon praying that no one would open the cabinet doors and discover what disorganized slobs we really are). I almost cried with gratitude, it looked so good.

Then he moved all our files upstairs (to our bedroom), along with the box full of aforementioned computer desk crap, the basket full of unsorted mail, and a box of Christmas goodies I never got around to mailing (hey, I'm not proud of it, okay?). Oh, yes, and there was a tub for Christmas decorations, also. So what if we had to crawl over piles of junk to get into our bed that night? Our main floor was company-ready!

We spent the rest of the day socializing with our neighbors, eating and drinking and feeding the kids tons of junk to keep them quiet. It was fun, but tiring. It would have been great, after our day's exertions, to sleep in a bit the next morning, in our cluttered yet comfortable bedroom, but...

Larry had scheduled a plumber to visit us bright and early on January the second, in an innovative attempt to solve our shower drain problems. This attempt involved routing the garbage disposal pipe away from the shower and through our laundry room instead. If it worked, this ingenious solution would save us the thousands of dollars it would cost to rip apart the basement bathroom and part of the foundation, replace the shower drain pipe, and put in an all new shower, etc. (although, I must admit, I wouldn't have minded that "all-new" part).

But let us review - through our laundry room...

Because we live in a garage-less townhouse, our laundry room serves as home not only to our washer and dryer and second refrigerator, but also to all the items that one would normally find crammed into a suburban garage. Why don't you pause one second and mentally review everything you store in your garage? You know, tools, lawn furniture, gardening supplies, paint cans, painting equipment, all the assorted flotsam and jetsam of suburban living (with 6 kids).

Got a good picture? Great! Now move all that stuff indoors into a 10x10 room, while making sure to leave a path to the washer/dryer barely wide enough to accommodate a laundry basket. I know, it sounds tricky; but let me assure you, it can be done.

(I would have taken a before photo, but Larry wouldn't let me. Party pooper, isn't he?)

Anyhoo, Larry roused both Brian and David early Friday morning to help him move all the junk out of the laundry room so that the plumber could do his work. I helped by not looking at the mess they were making of my (freshly vacuumed and tidied) family room. In Brian's words, "Mommy, you don't want to look down there."

If an 8-year-old boy is saying that, you know you're in trouble.

Today? Larry spent cleaning lint out of the dryer duct (now that he could reach it) and doing I know-not-what to the pile of junk he had removed from the laundry room. Because, folks, it ain't going back in there. My laundry room is now a thing of beauty and a joy forever. I danced around its empty floor this evening and told Larry that just seeing it like that made me hot with desire for him.

And I meant it.

24 comments:

  1. I can picture the joy. Someday the stars will align and it will all be clean at once.

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  2. Having spent years in a very small garage-less townhouse wonder, I am so happy that you have ten minutes of fresh oxygen to breath before someone walks through it and spoils all that hard work. But even when it fills up again, you'll at least know the backside of your dryer is clean.

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  3. I would have loved to see a before picture, as it would have made me feel much better about my own laundry room and its excessive amounts of miscellany that would normally go in a garage. However, we SLEEP in what used to be the 1 car garage.

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  4. Men really need to understand that the way into a woman's pants is by cleaning. Huge scary messy rooms getting cleaned up and organized by someone else are women's viagra.

    I always know when husband is unusually frisky because the mudroom or laundry room will be completely cleaned out and organized when I return from somewhere or another.

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  5. Wow thanks.
    Tomorrow I'm cleaning the lint out of the dryer duct and tidying up our laundry room.
    I plan on making my wife all hot for me, too!

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  6. LOL - you and I must have the same love language. There is nothing hotter than for Knight to complete a honey-do list (or even just one big item on it)... :-)

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  7. So...this 2nd refrigerator you speak of...does it get cleaned out at the same time as the first refrigerator, for your "as the food turns" postings? Just wondering...

    Mostly I'm jealous that you have a 2nd refrigerator! I'd be jealous of your laundry room --I have a laundry closet in my kitchen-- but my husband did manage to fit our STUFF *and* both cars into the garage. It's a tight fit, kinda like your laundry room was before it got cleaned out. (Good luck keeping it that way!)

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  8. I understand your het up state. I'm even giving Larry a second look this morning!

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  9. Oh, gosh, our bedroom is completely full of empty boxes that Christmas presents shipped in. We have to crawl over them to get into our bed. Every night we get into the clean oasis of our bed muttering about how we need to break the boxes down and get to a recycling center. This has been going since Christmas Eve. Probably be Valentine's Day before we actually do it though!

    Faith

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  10. That Larry is one sexy guy!

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  11. So, are you also looking to create kid #7? Just asking, cause it sounds like a clean laundry room could lead in that direction!

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  12. I'm hoping that my office makes me dance around like that one day.

    Larry is a saint...(don't look under your bed)

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  13. Too bad more men don't understand that a clean kitchen can be worth more to them than a dozen long stemmed roses.

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  14. "...and told Larry that just seeing it like that made me hot with desire for him."

    I feel the same way when Hubby cleans the bathroom, especially when he remembers the tub.

    Ohhhhh baby!

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  15. Well? Did the new routing system work? (After all that work?)

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  16. Oh gosh! You are so hilarious! I REMEMBER that feeling of JOY when our laundry room was updated. Yes, we tore out the EIGHTY YEAR OLD CONCRETE TUB and put in new fiberglass. OOOH! It was wonderful! Plus, we had to remove everything so guys could jackhammer up the floor to replace the sewer line (oh yes, this was a FUN job!), and after the new concrete was down, the sheer BEAUTY of a NEW floor was a JOY to behold. It still gives me shivers. So glad so many others completely understand!! :)

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  17. Oh I cannot imagine no garage. I can imagine (but only imagine) a laundry room free of clutter. That must have been a glorious thing.

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  18. Ooooh this sounds so familiar - we do this mamouth tidy up before guests...well I do! But then you always end up with a pile of paperwork, that never gets delt with...it just moves round and round, from surface to surface...

    resolution for 2009 - I must deal with that blasted pile!

    Happy New Year!

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  19. Sounds like our laundry room, except our laundry room is more of a laundry nook in the hallway by the kitchen.

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  20. We spent 8 days over the last 2 weeks decluttering the house and hubby's workshop. We can walk accross the floor to any of his powertools now and use them without moving stuff. Now to get him to build me all the shelves, furniture, etc he promised me if we rebuilt the shop. He has almost every power tool I can imagine (table saw, band saw, planer, joiner, circular saw, reciprocating saw, jig saw) except for a lath and router now, so there are not many excuses he can use to get out of his honey do list.

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  21. LOL what a great post- I so know where you're coming from.

    There's an award for you over on my blog @ http://myloonyverse.com Enjoy.

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  22. I wish I had a clean laundry room. Mostly because it would mean my laundry was done. Pretty sure that's never happened. Ever.
    I'm wondering if the routing system worked, too?
    Hopefully it was worth all the headache!

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  23. My husband and kids once did a great deal of work on our garage by moving everything first into the family room. I was on the phone to my mom and told her, "The garage threw up."

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  24. That is cool. I wish someone would come do that to my garage/office.

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