Exceedingly Mundane

Well, I have now experienced the phenomenon of cleaning out your parents house. We went to Hattiesburg yesterday for another trip, with another UHaul. This time, we cleaned out every last thing from my parents house. My sisters and I had done some cleaning out of my mom’s things about a year or so after she passed away (it will be 11 years this June, goodness gracious). And now since we’ve moved my dad into the assisted living place near our house, we have been working at whittling down the remainder of the contents of their house. We took everything to his new “apartment” as we call it, that we thought he wanted or needed. My sisters and their kids have gotten everything that they want out, we’ve sold some furniture and big items to some extended family, and now we’re down to the last set of items. I swore years ago I would never have another garage sale, but you know what they say about never saying never… LOL!

So, yesterday was another long day, about 14 hours in all, and this week will be a lot of prep work. Everything that I spent all day yesterday packing, has to be unpacked and setup and priced for the garage sale. Thankfully, we had most of the big pieces out, so there was very little furniture to haul. It’s just down to kitchen stuff, linens, old clothes, etc. I wonder what kind of prices to put on things these days. I don’t have garage or yard sales and don’t go to them, so I don’t have any idea what people sell these kinds of things for today.

Get this – we found 2 or 3 film cameras, and he was like, sell those. I softly told him, Daddy, today people have digital cameras and cell phones for taking photos! LOL!

Anyway, we have the house empty, so we can now move forward with trying to clean it up, getting it painted, cleaning or replacing carpets, listing with a realtor, etc. It’s such a big job. And in so many ways, it’s so hard. Even though this wasn’t the house I grew up in, my parents lived there for many years, my dad about 21 in all, 10 of those with my mom. All of their earthly belongings have been divvied up and sent to various family and friends, and the rest of it is sitting in my garage, waiting to be paraded out to strangers, to sell for little or nothing. There’s something so inherently sad in that, the end of things, the summation of a life.

Yes, I’m obviously a bit melancholy with this post, please forgive me. I still miss my Beau so much. Yesterday was one month since we lost him, and I still miss him so.

On to bigger and better things, but first, a lot of work to do with this garage sale!

I always have such good intentions about blogging. Take this blog post, for instance. I took this picture over a month ago, and stored it away to write a post about:

Now, here it is several weeks later, and I no longer have any of the dish soap or hand soap. I was going to blog about how I had bought my first Mrs. Meyer’s products last fall and winter. I love this pine scent that came out around the holidays. I was going to blab about how my local Target had this one seasonal scent, but I can no longer find these products at my store. And of course, they’re not at Walmart (where I normally shop, I know, I know!). I don’t shop at drugstore type stores (CVS, Walgreens, etc), so I don’t know if they carry them. I was pleasantly surprised to find some unscented Mrs. Meyer’s products at my local Marshalls / TJ Maxx stores. That’s where I got the countertop spray in the middle, which I do still have 🙂

I had the best intentions about doing a nice, little post about cleaning products, and what people use to clean their kitchen with. Are you a germophobe and very concerned about germs, and only use anti-bacterial products? Do you hand wash dishes, and if so, what brand or type of dish soap do you use? Are you adamant about your floors and countertops, and what do you use on them? Are you a sucker for a certain kind of dishwasher product – tabs, gel, powder, etc?

I must admit, I’m brand dependent, but only to the extent of what I can find in bulk at our local Sam’s Club, combined with what I like. I normally use Palmolive anti-bacterial dish soap. It’s an orange colored liquid that I buy in a huge container at Sams, then I fill up a glass olive oil with spout type container at home (did that make ANY sense?!) to use for washing pots and pans in the sink. I use Cascade tabs in my dishwasher. I’ve tried powder, gel and tabs, and I do like the ease and convenience of the tabs. Sam’s sells both Electrosol brand and Cascade brand, but I couldn’t tell a huge difference between them. The Cascade are a bit cheaper, so that’s what we use. I keep hand soap on my sink, but once I had used up all of my Mrs Meyers, I admit I went back to using the Equate brand from Walmart, an antibacterial one. I mop my floors with Armstrong floor cleaner. With a dog that is only allowed on the tile in the kitchen, my floors have to be cleaned pretty often 🙂

So, there, it’s not timely or well-stated, but I wanted to ramble on about cleaning products in the kitchen. I’m always interested in what other people use, and what they like and dislike. It’s usually a good way to find something new to try, that I might like better 🙂 I am a homebody and I work hard to keep our home a happy, healthy, clean, comfortable place. These topics are so mundane to most, but always so intriguing to me!

Leave me a comment and let me know what you use at your house, or if you really could care less about this type of stuff 🙂 Maybe you’re not the only cleaning up the kitchen, or maybe it just doesn’t matter. But if it does, and you’ve found products that you either like or dislike for whatever reason, let me know!

Oh, and have a great day!