A Major Mess – In The Kitchen

Like most teachers, I spend much of my time off of school trying to “catch-up” on all the stuff that has fallen by the wayside.  This vacation is no exception.  I figured I could get caught up on the laundry, find my desk, maybe do some scrapbooking, get some lessons planned for January, help the boys clean their room, clean out the pantry and maybe, just maybe, feel a bit less stress when I head back to school on Jan. 7th.  But, like usual, things didn’t go as I planned.  I started off doing fairly well – I was plugging away at the laundry, got everything that didn’t belong on my scrapbooking table off and even got a bit of lesson planning done (albeit, it was while sitting in the ER with Chris).  I did some writing and actually found the kitchen table for a short time.

However, organization was just not to be.  Thursday, I had maintenance come to deal with the list of repairs I needed done.  One burner on the stove was boiling on low, the boys’ toilet was running all the time, we needed a new filter for the AC/heat, and the refrigerator was freezing everything.

They needed to order a part for the stove (and would come back in a week or so to put it in) and the refrigerator needed to have the temperature raised.  So, they raised the temperature.  On Friday, it didn‘t seem like the fridge was all that cold, but hey, what do I know?

Saturday I got up and headed to the store.  I needed coffee (you can read about my coffee experience here).  When I got back from the store, I unloaded everything (boys were still sleeping) and got all the perishables put away.  Then Chris and I realized that the fridge wasn’t working properly.  Things weren’t really cold.  The freezer seemed to be getting a bit warmer, but things were still pretty frozen.  So Chris called maintenance.  Since it was Saturday they only work if it is an emergency – thankfully, this qualified.

The maintenance guy got here and sure enough, the fridge wasn’t cold.  First, we had to take everything out of the freezer so he could see what was going on.  Then, because he couldn’t fix it (didn’t have the part), we had to take everything out of the fridge.  He took the fridge away and brought in one from an empty apartment.  Of course, we aren’t going to get to keep this fridge (the doors open on the wrong side anyway), so we will have to do it all again in a few days when the part comes in OR they get us a brand new fridge.

In the meantime, everything in the fridge is all over the place.  We were hurrying to get things back in the fridge so they wouldn’t spoil and figured we were successful when everything fit (the shelves are arranged differently and we didn’t take the time to change them).  Everything is in the fridge, but I can’t find anything and somehow there continues to be water on the floor in the kitchen.

And stuff leaked, ice from the freezer melted on the floor and there was the dirt from the maintenance guy’s shoes.  The floor was not clean by any means, but now it is even farther from clean. Washing the kitchen floor was on my to-do list, but I figured I’d get that done after they fixed the stove.  Now everything is a sticky mess and where it isn’t sticky, it is slippery.  The unwashed laundry got shoved on top of the washer and dryer.  And there are more towels to wash because we put them on the floor to help with the water.  I didn’t finish getting the groceries (pantry stuff) put away, so that stuff is all over now too.

So, while I had been making progress on getting the kitchen re-organized, it is now in worse shape than when I started!  I had gotten 2 drawers cleaned out and re-organized, cleaned the stove and microwave and re-did all but one of the cabinets.  Thankfully, the refrigerator disaster didn’t undo any of the work I already did, it just meant that instead of getting away with only doing part of the kitchen, I would have to work on the whole thing.

I really wasn’t planning on doing anything during break anyway.