Cleaning: The Entryway

To be honest.... I'm a messy person. Most people who know me know that, so it's not really a secret. The really sad part of it is that the rest of the family has to deal with it. Trying to fix that though. Cleaning up my mess and bettering the house the best i can without spending too much extra money. A lot of the house mess is from me and my daughter. Just got so use to the mess that it didn't bother me. Things look so much better now. I wish i could of painted the walls but we don't have the money for that and if we painted then we would need the whole house ready to just get all the walls done.

Brace yourself for this sight!

How did that even happen?!
It was a little neater,  controlled chaos type thing, but i had to moved my pile of stuff, boxes and this toy shopping chart of my daughter's that i was stacking on, so that i could get into the closest for the carpet cleaner. The pile was just crazy after that so i figured i should clean it up. If i was going to clean that, might as well get all of the entry way cleaned up.

Got the stuff cleaned up....Well sorta. A lot of the mess is stuff that would be going into my room or my daughters...and well...those are also rather messy themselves so i just shoved them where i could to get them out of the entryway to organize later.
In my thinking about redoing the look, i wanted to shift things around and change up the walls. Our house isn't really decorated but I'm attempted at making it appear that way in all my cleaning. The wall was just a bunch of stuff placed where ever mostly. There was a bunch of old medals that were over 27 years old and the fabric they were pinned to was just falling apart. My mom decided to just store them upstairs, they are hers and they are mostly like for these marathon type things she participated in while in Germany. Those plates on the wall and those pictures above the blue shelf are also from Germany. I had planned on trying to get those apart of the decorating but my mom wanted to just take them to store instead of trying to figure out where to put them. About the same for that brown picture leaning against the wall. It's something my dad's dad made and he didn't want to get rid of it but took it upstairs to store instead of hanging it up. Here's the picture because i think it's pretty good. Also the pictures that were above the little shelf.

Got more stuff cleared out and pretty sure before this picture i used the carpet cleaner on just the carpet you can see, if not before then was after.

I was going to clean up the other part of the floor but i had to wait for my mom to get home before i could. We needed a new mop so she said she'd get one on her way home. She still wasn't home after the carpet dried mostly so i set off to clean up some of the other parts while i waited to get the floors finished.

So i cleaned the closest door. This is probably the best picture i have to show how dirty the closest was. the left half was cleaned and the right side was still dirty.

Never really think how dirty they get and it was gross. Hard to clean too. My fingers were sore from going along each thing. Probably could of done like a butter knife and rag to get each one but i figured just my fingers would be fast enough.

This house is old anyways, but these baseboard heaters seem to really show it's age. They just get in the way but we have to have them though we don't use them. I cleaned it up a little at least.

Some of the paint didn't want to come off easy so i left it. The other white paint was from when we painted the walls white back when i was a kid and I'm 26 now. Not perfectly cleaned but looks a lot better.

I had floor pictures to try and show the before and after of getting it cleaned(the part just by the door) but it was hard to see how dirty without really looking because of the design of the floor.....again showing the age of our house lol. I think it wasn't perfectly clean but it did look a lot better. We have linoleum floors that are getting pretty beat up and sometimes certain cleaners make it sticky after getting it cleaned. Luckily between the mop my mom got and using actual cleaner to use with a mop, no sticky floors and they looked cleaner. Will scrub the rest of the floors and go over this section again when done with all the kitchen areas. Our floors get way too dirty too fast...Partly might be because we never get them fully cleaned to start with and don't clean them as often, including the carpets. I use to love the swiffer that we use to use because no bucket and easy to use. It was great at first but after using that was usually when the floors got sticky. Then to really get the floors cleaned up, i would have to use way more pads for it and that would just cost too much. My mom would just use one over all the floor and it would be gross but I'm sure that like half the floor probably was still dirty. Didn't really scrub very well either. Anyways, back to the entryway.

After the floors were done, i got a cabinet moved that just happened to be small enough to fit between the light switch and having the closest door opened all the way. It was along a different wall but i decided to move it there to help open up another area, will talk about that area next once it's cleaned.

It looks so tiny in the picture lol. It was being used for our storage containers for food but i switched it to being used for our pots and pans and some other stuff. There the pans were now has the containers, still trying to get these completely organized. My brother didn't seem too happy about it being here though. Either because it's right by his room (you can see his door) or because it's a tiny bit farther from the kitchen, no idea on this. For now it seems like it should work. And should keep me from piling things in front of the closest again like before.

Next up was the walls. Had to clear them off and clean them and put up what we were going to have up.

Oh the dust and cobwebs. The plates and such were pretty thick in dust.

We really don't clean as much as we should...though we do clean more often than we deep clean like this. These were probably never dusted since being first put up. If we don't see it, we tend to not worry about it. Not the best way to go about things like this lol.

I don't remember what i was waiting on but i ended up cleaning the other wall while i waited to put up pictures on the other side. Probably was waiting for my mom to get done with something to get input on what pictures to do.

This wall was just horrible. Messy kids and dirty hands touching it. Looks a lot better now.
I hate scrubbing our walls though. With the house being from the 70's, some of the walls were painted funky colors and we did like only one coat of white paint years ago that I'm sure isn't very good compared to newer paints. So if i scrub too much, the old color starts to show through. I mostly just used hot water and a rag, also the dollar tree off brand for a magic eraser, really helps with getting off pen marks and stubborn spots. Really eats off the paint though. That water in the bucket turned white from all the paint that scrubbed off.

The other wall had some scrubbing to do but the wall is bigger so would take too much time. I didn't completely finish that wall like i should of but i was tired of the paint. it's mostly behind the door that i didn't wash all that well.

These are the frames we decided to put up. The middle one doesn't have any of our pictures in it yet, barely even had a picture to put in here until my mom remembered it and i remembered seeing a frame in the closest. It being a little smaller than the waterfall frame bothers me just slightly but oh well. The one with the dog is of my mom's old dog who had to be put down years ago. I got the frame and put the pictures in it(i even took most of the pictures) as a surprise to my mom at some point after she was gone. My mom said the frame had to stay by the front door or get moved over by the garage door because those were the places that she was always greeted at. As for the hanging up the pictures, my dad had a fun tool that just sticks into the wall and gives you a line.

He doesn't use it often so i kept thinking i was making up the product or had seen it on TV or something and that he didn't actually have it. Was glad to find out he really did. Made hanging these up a lot easier.

The entryway was just about done after getting the pictures up. I had other ideas i would of liked to do but would of cost too much and take way more time and my mom already was wanting me to get done so i could move to the next spot. I had at least wanted shoe rack but figured i could say that i was done and just if we found one then we'd get it when the time came.
Turned out that time came the next day. Took a break from cleaning to go to this kid sale to look for some summer clothes for my daughter. while there we found this.

As i walked up to it, i figured it was going to already be sold but it wasn't! It was $25, a little more than we wanted to spend but it was collapsible for easy moving and probably wouldn't really find anything much cheaper. It was much better than what we were using for a show rack before, that one would stick out too far. This one turned out to be perfect!

It fit between the carpet and where the door opens to. All other options/ideas for what to put there would of taken up too much space. Once getting this all cleaned up, i didn't want to over crowd it and wanted it to keep an open look, partly why i kept it to just 3 pictures on the wall. Filled up the rack more after this picture. the bottom shelf is for a few of my shoes, ones i don't wear often. Middle shelf is for my daughter's shoes, She doesn't often keep her shoes on once home, like i do, so she's the main reason for having the rack. We were always losing her shoes until we had set a place for shoes before. The top shelf is mostly for my mom. She likes having a place to put her lunch box after work and there's space for that and her thermos. There is a small bit space left on the top shelf that I'm tempted to add a basket or something keep my camera along with the battery charger and SD cards...but not positive. I want to do the basket but not sure if i want to put it there, it could get knocked off when my mom is grabbing her stuff. Just something I'll think about.

This all probably would of been done in a day if i had help with the cleaning but after a little less than a week, i got our entryway cleaned and looking nice.

Looks so nice now. I have an idea for the wall on the left but I'm not ready to do that so i decided to not include it to making the entryway done. So that idea and possibly a small umbrella holder between the shoe rack and door are about the only things to possibly finish but not important enough to say it's not done.

Cleaning: The Freezer

For years we've had a large freezer because of not having enough freezer space with the ones for the fridge. We've had one that opened from the top that use to be in our garage. After years of being in there, my dad wanted the garage space, we got an upright one and moved it into the kitchen/dining room area and it's been there since. My brother gets the little freezer in the fridge for his food and the rest of us get the big freezer. Plenty big enough but without organizing and over buying, we end up with a mess in there. We sometimes have problems with it, the floor will end up wet and we don't know if it's leaking or what is going on. Chunks of ice keeps building up on the bottom of the freezer so that might be somehow where the water is coming from. Don't have the money for a new one so hoping this one doesn't crap out on us. For now it still works and i got it it all organized. Wasn't too much to clean besides some sticky syrup that was on the door shelves.

Just was jam packed with stuff and could barely get to anything buried. We'd often buy more frozen veggies because we couldn't see at first if there was any in there. Turned out there was a lot of veggies in there and ice cream. I have this feeling it could be much better but i'm alright with how i got it organized. Bins are amazing!

I didn't even have to throw out that many things, there was a few big bags that got thrown out.
Had a little bit of trouble of where i wanted to put things but what i figured seems to be working out for now.
Here's how i have it organized.
Door: Mostly ice cream. Had way more than i thought we did. Now it's not all buried and can actually be eaten. My daughter is always asking for ice cream so now we know what we have. Top of the door is where i'll keep my daughter's chicken nuggets. For now it also has some ice packs and my coconut whip cream.
Top Shelf: This will be where we keep our boxed food mostly, since it will be easy to stack. The bin on this shelf is to hold some random things that didn't fit into the other shelves.
Second Shelf: VEGGIES! Whole shelf of veggies. Had so many more than i thought since most were buried. Shouldn't have to buy any for some time while having veggies with dinner every night.
Third Shelf: Right now this one has a bin for potatoes, like hash browns and fries. The other bin has my smoothie packs i made. Next to that on the left side is the bags of left over fruit and behind those, the drum to our little ice cream maker.
Bottom Shelf: Meat and otter pops. The otter pops are mostly there because had no other place to put them.

This will make meal planning much easier as now i know what we have in here that needs to be ate. Or even just doing lunches since there's a bunch of TV dinners.

Cleaning: The Fridge

I have a love hate relationship with the fridge. I love that it holds the food but i hate how small our's is. Probably part of the annoyance is from being jealous of all the new larger fridges i keep seeing on Pinterest. Right now our fridge is the upright half fridge half freezer, my brother currently gets the freezer for his stuff because we have a large freezer for our other foods. I would absolutely love a fridge with the freezer on the bottom to have more space in the fridge. The space in the kitchen for the fridge is too small for most new fridges in that style. Used some pinterest ideas to try and help get what we have to work and hopefully stay organized. I ended up not taking a first before picture of the fridge but i have a before and after on the cleaning and then my organizing.

The cleaning....Was gross. Had things spill before but then never really cleaning it. Then we'd just shove things where they could fit instead of finding proper places for them. I have organized this fridge so many times but it never stayed organized. Hoping this will be one of the last time of big organizing and from here out will just be clean ups.

The before and after cleaning

The drawers were sticky and now they glide better. The very bottom was sticky goo that had just pooled and sat. I don't even know what that is on the back of the fridge. All cleaned up so was like a clean start now.

After the cleaning, i just put back everything where i could fit it just to get it back in there until i could go get some bins. Was hoping to do more bins for more things but with our limited space there wasn't many bins that would make it worth it. If it took up the whole width, why bother putting a bin in there?

Here's the before and after my organizing.

Biggest thing i found out about us....we have a lot of condiments. I tried to get things sorted to keep things together. I'm not overly happy with the set up but that's mostly because i find it too small.

Here's how i decided to organize it.
Door: Drinks, most of them. Reasoning for the door, i wanted to pretty much put drinks as an easy grab. Top little thing has the butter sticks.
Top Shelf: Condiments. I can't believe we had overflow on this one... There's also two stacking bins that is holding a few small items, like jams and other small items. I placed the stuff that get used the most in the front. I help my parents out by making them sandwiches for lunch so i made sure i could get to the mayo and mustards easier.
Second Shelf: Area for my mom's lunch and leftovers/for dinner. Wanted to give my mom a space for her lunch since she takes a variety of items and having everything in one spot makes the morning easier on her.
Third Shelf: This one has extra drinks that didn't fit the door and extra condiments in a bin in the back with a few things that are slightly used often in the front.
Bottom Shelf: This one might get shifted as we go shopping again or so. Right now it's planned as snack station for my daughter and also eggs because they didn't fit any other shelves lol.
Top Drawer: Suppose to be veggies and maybe fruits if i put any in there. It also had overflow from the meat and cheese drawer.
Bottom Drawer: Meat and cheeses. This drawer is maybe 1/3 or 1/2 the size of the top drawer.

Will see how well this stays. I will probably have to readjust as other people put things in there. At least it looks better.

Cleaning: Art Board

Been getting into the whole spring cleaning. Going slow and mostly getting one thing done a day or so. That way I get to really focus on what I'm doing and get a deeper clean. Lots of areas still to clean up i get stressed easily if i take on too much.

My very start was cleaning up my daughter's art board. It wasn't really that bad but she had drawn on the wood and i had been wanting to clean it up for some time now. The other side of it is a chalk board which was mostly just chalk dirty.

It didn't take long getting this cleaned up because of using a magic eraser. Well an off brand one that was from the Dollar Tree. Cheap, works, and saves even more when you cut them in half before using them. This is what i used.

I'm glad it worked well enough on the marker, because of the groves in the wood, some spots were left but were a lot more faded. The board started like this.

Then after some scrubbing, it got all clean!

Even got some of the marker off of the tray.

I spaced on taking a picture of the before on the chalkboard side. I'm always surprised how dirty chalkboards get though is why they are so hard in getting back to black without deep cleaning. Even my drying the board was still picking up chalk.

Possibly could of gotten it a little more clean but it was cleaned up enough for me. It looked black and got the wood wiped up. Looked much better.

It wasn't too long after i got it cleaned that my daughter decided to draw with chalk.

Even with it being random scribbles, it looks better on a clean board than it did before i cleaned it.

Once I can get around to making up more of my set chore list of when to get things done, I'll probably add deep cleaning this to it. At some point i would like to paint the wood to give it a fresh clean look, just not sure on the color.

Smoothie Packs

I kind of wish I actually took more pictures but things were a mess and fairly hectic from trying to figure up pricing and make the packs. My pricing will probably be off a bit because of already having things and i had a few mess ups in figuring things out because of one reason or another. Some items are pretty cheap because i got them from Grocery Outlet and the rest from Safeway.

First up was figuring out the prices of each item. Some were easier because it was based on serving sizes to divide into the cost. Others were based on weight so i wanted to see what i really paid for the items that have waste like banana peels.

Really didn't need this much flax but is a great add on to smoothies and i needed it for at least one of the smoothies but added it to a few extras. I paid $3.69 for the whole pack and it had 52 servings of 2 Tbs so made it roughly $0.07 per 2 Tbs. Doesn't seem so bad when it look at it like that, though $3.69 for the whole pack didn't seem that bad. I put the left over into the freezer to help it last longer since i don't go through it that fast.

For the bananas, they were priced $0.69 per pound. We paid $1.53 for the amount we got. I thought there was just 5 bananas because my mom said 5 when she grabbed them and i didn't think to count them as i peeled them. so my pricing was off just a tiny bit because i had did the pricing for 5 but turned out to be 6 bananas. Anyways, i weighed the bananas without the peel and based on what i paid for them and how much edible banana there was, i really actually paid ~$1.21 per pound instead of $0.69 per pound. Bananas are more expensive than i thought they were lol.

Probably could of gotten more out of the pineapple but i was having trouble with turning the cutter and didn't want to scrap out everything that i could. Managed to get about 2 cups out of it. which i just needed 1.5 cups so just made it more expensive for not getting more out of it. Paid $2.99 for the pineapple so the 2 cups made it ~$0.75 per half cup. Probably still better compared to like canned pineapple, not sure on frozen since i didn't look at that price.

I think my most expensive item i got per serving i used in these was the kale. I paid $3.99 for 2 cups worth. I don't use kale often so i paid more for a smaller container than the like $5 for a larger pack. I think my getting the cashew milk and frozen broccoli at Grocery Outlet was my best deals. I got a carton of cashew milk for $1.49 (About $0.37 per cup) and a bag of organic broccoli for $2.99 (about $0.33 per half cup) when a smaller bag of generic non organic bag of broccoli was more expensive than what i paid for my bag.

I tried to stretch out my smoothies over the month by doing 2 packs for the ones that says it makes 2 servings. I don't need to drink 2 servings so i made them into two packs so that i got an extra day out of them. A few packs, the recipe didn't say it was 2 servings, so i packed as one, though they are probably actually 2 servings. Will deal as it comes around to having those ones. I have enough packs for most of the rest of the month, but i didn't jam pack the month so then some mornings i don't have to have a smoothie.

Smoothies

Peach Carrot Smoothie (Found here)
The pack has:
1 cup peaches
1/2 cup carrots
1/2 banana
2 Tbs flax seeds
Flax wasn't originally in the recipe but figured i'd add it because i could. So each pack should make only one serving. I already had the coconut water so that isn't part of the cost of this pack. One pack cost roughly $1.78 for what i had to purchase. Not too bad i think.

Citrus Flax Green (Found here)
The pack has
1 clementine
1/2 banana
1 cup spinach
2 Tbs flax (did 2 each instead of separating to 1 each)
1/4 cup pineapple
Hoping that the 1/4 cup water will be enough with it being frozen and halved, but i can add more if needed as i blend it. Whether i stick with water or do coconut water instead, my cost on that isn't anything as i already had the coconut water. It was roughly $1.07 for one pack.

Pineapple and mango (Found here)
Pack has:
1 cup spinach
1/2 cup mango
1/2 cup pineapple
1 clementine
1/2 banana
I was going to add flax but spaced on it. Not sure what liquid i'll add. Maybe coconut milk, which i already have so doesn't go into the cost i added up. Cost for one pack was roughly $2.24.

Green apple (Found here)
Pack has:
1 cup kale
1 cup spinach
1 green apple
1/2 cucumber
Just noticed i forgot to write on the pack to add the lemon juice! Hopefully i'll remember. Also, i think this probably should of been done in 2 packs but it says it's one serving of 16 ounces and i'm not sure if the other packs are 8 oz or if 16 per serving. Cost for this around $4.10 which seems a lot but would of been close to the other pack costs if halved, but also this has kale in it and that was my most expensive item i had gotten.

PB&J (No picture)
Pack has:
1 cup strawberries
1 banana
1/4 cup quinoa
No recipe for this one to link. Will also be adding 2 Tbs peanut butter and 1/2-1 cup of liquid when i blend it. I already had the quinoa and peanut butter so those costs aren't included. Everything else was cost around $1.76.

Vitamin C (Found here)
Pack has:
1/4 of a red pepper
1/2 grapefruit
1 orange
Not really sure on this one but going to try it. Can always hold my nose if i have to lol. Cost for this one was about $1.83 a pack.

Sweet Pea (Found here)
Pack has:
1/2 cup peas
1/2 banana
1/2 green apple
1 cup strawberries
Then it calls for almond milk but because of finding cashew milk for $1.49 (at Grocery Outlet) and there wasn't almond milk right there for that same price, i decided on cashew milk for this smoothie. I did end up buying peas but i took it out of the smoothie costs as it turned out we had peas already so it didn't end up going in the smoothies. so cost of everything minus the peas was about $2.24 per pack.

A & F (Found here, #4)
Pack has:
1/2 cup broccoli
1 cup blueberries
1 orange
Will see how this one goes lol. Cost was roughly $2.56 per pack.

I figured out that out of everything i bought during my shopping trip, i spent about $59.86 on things for the smoothies and only about $29.30 was used in these packs for 14 smoothies packs. Still have about $30.56 worth of food left to be used in other things this month, or next month or whenever. Might use the rest of the fruit for like oatmeal or something for the days of not having a smoothie. The flax will last me a long time unless i find more things to add it to so good investment really. At least all my cost on this is for the whole month and not just for the week like it looks like on the receipt. Though i guess technically only 2 weeks worth of smoothies if i had one a day, but have stuff for other things too. Anyways, this is all about my cost per smoothie i had to pay. Prices will vary based on what you have on hand already and where you live and what store you shop at.