A Stay at Home Day Getting Stuff Done

Today, I woke up to much cooler weather, and I can't say I'm sorry. I've been struggling to sleep a couple of nights in the last week and have found myself waking up ridiculously early a sweaty mess and then felt really tired for the rest of the day. A bit of cooler weather was very welcome, as far as I was concerned, as I was able to take the dog for a lovely long walk without her or I getting exhausted and overheated and then get on with other jobs that needed doing.

I decided today to do some cleaning for a change. I find it hard to do such jobs when its so hot outside. I started with the kitchen. I vacuumed through and then mopped and continued into the hallway and downstairs toilet. I try to do this every week, but haven't managed it for a couple of weeks for one reason or another. It always makes the house feel a lot cleaner just doing this.

I also decided to wipe down all of the kitchen cabinet fronts.  Having white coloured cabinets, means that fingerprints show up and I can only stand them up to a point.  It was time to go over them all and it made a really big difference once it was done.

At this point I should probably mention how the kitchen is coming along. The answer is slowly. The painting is finished on the walls and floor.  The worktops and window sills have been re-sanded and oiled. OH has ordered a new glass splash back for the hob and some samples for the kitchen cupboard doors.  He's managed to source some in the UK, that aren't prohibitively expensive, so we're just hoping the quality is good enough, as we've both decided that re-painting our existing ones is not a feasible option.

Most of the kitchen is now back functioning normally.  The new dishwasher is plumbed in and we're using it and we've taken the old one to the tip. We've agreed to buy a new fridge freezer and know the one we want, but are just hanging back until after the summer holidays until we buy it. The only other thing I want to get is a new microwave, but I'll buy that myself at some point.  Just a small one, as we don't use it much and I don't want it to take up much space. Still a work in progress, but we're almost there.

Anyway, I digress. I feel like I've neglected the house for a while now, pouring all my energy and spare time into work or the allotment. The way I feel about work at the moment, makes me feel like I've been wasting my time, so it was good to get back to looking after our home.  After all, it is the place I come back to, to recuperate from the physical and emotional stresses at work, so I need it to be a reasonably clean and relaxing place to unwind.

After lunch, I continued and ventured upstairs to vacuum the top floors of the house. I started in LB's room which is always a mess, on account of her being a teenager with more important things to do (i.e. usually on her phone). I put some clean bedding on, straightened it up a bit and wiped some surfaces, but I didn't do a deep clean on this occasion.

The bathroom was beckoning me and had needed some attention for a while, but I just haven't been in the right mind set lately. Today, I made cleaning it a priority. It took a couple of hours, despite being very small, because I did a thorough blitz, changed all the towels and filled up all the cleaning products. It felt very satisfying to see it sparkling clean for once. Let's just say it's been a while.

I didn't get around to cleaning our bedroom I'm afraid, as I just didn't have the energy or motivation, but I'll try to tackle it on Friday or over the weekend when I'm next off.

Tonight, I just have some ironing to do and laundry to put away and I will then feel like I've caught up and am ready to go back to work tomorrow.  Who knows what challenges this week is going to throw up. Sometimes, you just need to feel things are in order at home, to help you face challenging situations at work.