Ok, I should never start to clean with a toothbrush. That other night when I was cleaning up the upper cupboard in my kitchen I looked over at the wooden hood over my glass top stove. I had garland left on it from Christmas. Took that off & the wood was dirty & sticky. I got out the krud kutter & then a deep cleaning wood cleaner I used on my parquet floor in the entry way. I sprayed it on & it started to take off the dirt, but it made it sticker & the paper towel stuck when I was wiping it off. so I sprayed on more & got out an old tooth brush. Wow, it's taking forever to clean but it's clean when I'm done & can see the beautiful wood. The only problem is that once one starts a project like this, it just keeps going & honestly takes forever. Not something one can just get done in a night of cleaning. This is going to be a long term project......using papertowel because so much dirt comes off, I don't have enough cleaning cloths to use.....just using paper towel & throwing it away.....oh well, will go through a few trees with this job.

I have a stainless steel kitchen sink (not my favorite). I kept one side clean where I wash the dishes. I had a copper dish drainer in the other side where I would rinse recyclable plastics & drain things I was going to throw away. It had gotten so grungy & little spiders had gotten under the dish drainer that I kept killing. That half of the sink was really grungy. I finally got it cleaned out today & used the same stainless steel cleaner that I used to clean out the pot I burned the mulling spices in. I figured if that cleaner could clean out the pot spotlessly, it would clean the sink. Then I moved the copper dish drainer out of the sink & onto the stove. I noticed that the stainless steel cleaner also worked on copper, so I squirted some out in a container & got my trusty tooth brush out & started scrubbing the copper dish drainer. I thought it would never look like copper again. Well, just like the wood job, cleaning this whole dish drainer with the copper cleaner is a huge job, but it takes all the dark off & the areas I have cleaned are sparkling.

Oh I hate cleaning at this level of detail.....but the little things look so pretty again....not that anyone but me is around to notice.....but.......It just takes too long & other things don't get done while I'm doing those little detailed things so I do a little at a time while getting the other things done also.

I have gotten so much cleaning & organizing done this year even though it doesn't look like it, I KNOW what I have accomplished & since I'm the only one here, I'm the only one who counts anyway. It's interesting though because I realize for the last 2 years just how non-functional I have been. Two years ago, my pain specialist had closed his practice & I was searching for a new pain specialist & then when I found an outstanding one, I was having to lower the dose of medication I was on while he was the only one who offered a treatment to help with the pain in another way which has really been great, it was still difficult & I was dealing with my massive migraines again for several months until we got that back under control. That was going on during the late winter & spring so I was basically useless until summer.

Last year the end of March, I had major oral surgery (all my teeth removed & ended up couldn't tolerate the dentures). That 1 1/2 hour surgery wiped me out until late summer so I had NO energy to put into cleaning the house at all.....then I ended up caring for 3 rescued stallions all late summer & fall until just before Thanksgiving. That basically blew the whole year.

This is actually the first year in 2 years where I have truly had the energy to be able to really get into cleaning. The mess that was created over those 2 years is horrible & catching up feels almost impossible....but trying to little bit at a time even with those stupid huge projects that require the scrubbing of a toothbrush to get them clean.

UGH, I truly wish I had a tiny cabin with only a couple of rooms. It would make life so much more simple.