Tag Archives: cleaning

November 10, 2025 · 5:51 pm

Dumpster Diving

My husband has never heard of Marie Kondo. Nor does he subscribe to her renowned KonMari Method of keeping only the possessions in one’s life that “spark joy.” It’s a wonder I convinced him to park a ginormous dumpster in our driveway for the better part of a month, hoping against hope that we’d somehow find the will to purge our home of the crap we’ve accumulated as a family for over 22 years.

I, for one, found it to be a cathartic experience—especially the part where I got to fling stuff into the air with wild abandon. It’s possible I may have even shouted something in triumph each time I tossed one of my husband’s college textbooks or a tangled mass of badminton netting into the giant metal bin. The only thing more liberating would have been to light it on fire.

But there were times I got a bit misty-eyed when faced with the matter of keeping or chucking an embarrassment of cap guns. They were a hallmark of my childhood after all. Never mind that several were jammed or in another way deemed nonfunctional. Not surprisingly, I had great difficulty parting with my kids’ toy machine guns, too, and felt compelled to squeeze the broken triggers multiple times before hurling them into oblivion.

I’m like a kindergartener, only less disciplined.

Needless to say, my excitement grew as the days passed and the dumpster became filled with more and more junk. There was a glut of the ugly-as-sin carpeting we just tore out of the living room. There were also boxes upon boxes of heavy books and lesson plans, circa 1974, that I hauled down from the attic, risking life and limb on a 17-foot ladder. There was an abundance of college notebooks that were spared from the trash for nearly five decades. For the love of God, who does that? A hoarder, that’s who. There was a gas grill, an office chair, three sets of antiquated golf clubs and a bug collecting kit of undetermined origin. Of course, there were still bugs inside it—dead as ever. Even my dust-covered treadmill found its way there, despite the challenge of dragging it all the way through the house and garage. At least we got some exercise in the process.

Even our neighbors got in on the fun when I gave them the go-ahead to deposit their gargantuan television set inside. I only wish I had witnessed its arrival. Instead I had to hear about several family members pushing and/or “riding” their 72” TV down the street and up our driveway. I can only imagine what it must have been like to then lift the stupid thing into the dumpster. Hopefully, no one got a hernia.

As one might expect, my hoard-happy husband and I had several heated debates while we attempted to clean out our garage—most of which involved dumpster diving (his) and emphatic arguments (mine) over the issue of whether or not something “brought joy” to one’s life.

“What do you mean ‘Does this bring me joy?’” he demanded to know as he held a bucket with no bottom in his hands. “I happen to like this bucket.”

“It has no bottom,” I reminded him.

“I don’t care,” he defended.

In hindsight, maybe I should have requested that a marriage counselor be included with the dumpster rental. Judging by our impassioned exchanges, I’m guessing a lot of couples would be interested in such a convenient arrangement. Better still, a copy of Marie Kondo’s Spark Joy could be presented to help the utterly hopeless.

Although we still have a lot of stuff to purge after filling an entire dumpster to the brim and it took two people with master’s degrees to open it, on the bright side, we found a buyer for my husband’s vintage (old-as-dirt) Schwinn bicycle and classic toy trucks. What’s more, we unearthed some marbles while sorting through a hodgepodge of items.

It’s good to know we still have some.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live, anxiously awaiting the arrival of another dumpster for Round II of The Purge. Visit me there at www.Facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

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Filed under "S" is for Shame, Captain Quirk, Family Affair, Home for Wayward Toys, Home Improvement, Normal is Relative, Ode to Embarrassment, Project Schmoject, Rantings & Ravings, We Put the Fun in Dysfunction, Welcome to My Disordered World

Tagged as cleaning, downsizing, dumpsters, family, hoarding, Home Improvement, junk, marriage, marriage humor, parenting, purging

September 12, 2018 · 12:35 pm

Fridge Fiasco

We have an old refrigerator in our garage—one that migrated there when we remodeled our kitchen some time ago and it was no longer deemed efficient, never mind fashionable. Granted, it’s an oversized beast whose shelves are a tad unstable and whose exterior was all the rage in 1989, but because the universe sometimes smiles upon us, it’s been humming along just fine, thank you.

Needless to say, it has served us well in its new location, wedged comfortably between the tall, wooden shelves that house a hodgepodge of our must-have tools and garage-y tripe. For the most part, we stock our side-by-side with food that we don’t need immediately and drinks that can’t possibly fit in our new fridge despite the undying efforts of many. The overflow, if you will. What’s more, it’s a great place to store extra loaves of bread, an embarrassment of prepackaged snacks and a ginormous lemon pie from Rosencrans’ Bakery that my husband simply couldn’t resist.

It’s also the perfect place to chill wine and bottled beer. The only problem (that I unfortunately discovered one evening not so long ago) was that I had apparently overloaded the shelves in the door with said wine and beer. Of course, for the past several months everything had been just fine, the Michelob Ultra mingling nicely with the Korbel and Moscato. But on the night in question, things were not so fine. Translation: It was a train wreck.

Eager to retrieve a cookie that was chilled to perfection, I yanked open the door and in so doing, four shelves filled to capacity with the aforementioned beverages crashed to the floor, collapsing in a heap, stacked one on top of the next—a disastrous chain event. And although some time has passed, the sound of breaking glass and the resultant shards that laid everywhere torment me even still. Oddly enough, one of the bottles lost its metal cap but refused to break, instead spraying its contents straight up into the air, making a mockery of my attempt to grasp what had happened. For what seemed like an eternity, I stared at the carnage at the foot of our dear refrigerator, hoping what I had witnessed had only been a dream—something horribly imagined.

As luck would have it, and in accordance with Murphy’s Law, booze had spilled on nearly every shelf and all over the garage floor, slowly seeping beneath the lawnmower as well as the fridge itself. Like a fool, I stood there and watched it creep across the concrete, unable to respond like a rational person might by sopping up the mess with paper towels and throwing them in the trash. Upon further inspection, I learned that liquid had also pooled in the well below the bottom set of drawers, along with fragments of broken glass, too numerous to count. As the stench of beer filled our garage and the clatter of bottles still rang in my ears, all I could focus on was the tragic fact that alcohol had, indeed, been lost—sacrificed to the gods that govern stupidity. Even a soggy Oreo had paid the ultimate price, which is heartbreaking if nothing else.

Eventually I snapped out of my stupor and started cleaning the mess, but not without enlisting the help of my teenagers who were, of course, thrilled to be of assistance. Not so much. Nevertheless, they wore a path to the sink, washing everything I handed them while I dealt with the shattered glass and ever-expanding puddles of beer. Thankfully, the dog didn’t come running to inspect the awfulness that had befallen our happy home.

I’m also grateful that I somehow managed to NOT cut myself, and that a number of bottles had been spared, allowing me to have a cold one after such a fiasco.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live, probably visiting the fridge in my garage and (hopefully) remembering to open its door more GENTLY. Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

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Filed under Ode to Embarrassment, Welcome to My Disordered World

Tagged as cleaning, household messes, humor, Murphy's Law, parenting, refrigerators

November 11, 2015 · 11:59 am

Dust Happens

I have an aversion to housework—especially dusting. It’s just so completely exhausting, what with all the moving-of-stuff and then with the putting-it-all-back nonsense. What’s more, I can never remember how I had it all arranged before I started to dust and when I’m finished, I have to REASSEMBLE it in a manner that is not only functional, but also pleasing to the eye. Because who wants to look at fake plants, vacation pictures and trinkets et al. if it’s arranged improperly? I don’t.

Admittedly, I’ve been known to photograph my furniture, with its corresponding décor sitting on top of it, so that I don’t have to recall how it was positioned beforehand. Stop laughing. I probably deserve a medal because it’s a technique that is both clever and effective. So is using a vacuum cleaner when the layer of dust on tabletops is so thick it is thought to be offensive to one’s sensibilities.

Of course, my dogs sneer at me whenever that happens, judgmental beasts that they are. Or maybe they’re simply confused. “Vacuum cleaner? What on earth is that? She’s never pulled that from the depths of the closet before.”

So if my dogs are acutely aware of my shortcomings as a housekeeper, it’s no secret to others that my home is far from impeccably clean. Sometimes, however, I live in the Land of Denial—ignoring written messages on the TV screen like DUST ME or the fact that I unearthed a pine needle from last year’s Christmas tree the other day along with enough dog fur to make a rug. Not a toupee. An actual RUG.

There’s nothing quite like an impending visit from guests, however, that stirs within me a very real sense of panic—one that propels me from the couch and inspires me to scrub, and to dust, and to exhume from the aforementioned closet the vacuum cleaner. It’s as if the walls themselves shout at me, YOU LIVE IN A HOVEL AND PEOPLE ARE COMING! CLEAN ALREADY!

I know it’s really bad when my husband picks up a toilet wand and starts scrubbing, usually first thing in the morning—plagued, perhaps, by the thought of our filthy toilets throughout the night. I am rarely plagued by such thoughts unless I know that guests will soon make landfall (see above). Or we’re on the cusp of yet another holiday (see below).

That said, I positively detest the thought of setting festive décor ON TOP OF DUST, although it’s been known to occur on occasion. Halloween was a perfect example. October 31^st sort of snuck up on me this year, finding me totally unprepared for the event. At the last minute, it seemed, I was pulling rubbery bats and warty witches from our tub in the attic to display around the house. Dusting was out of the realm of possibility. Reference paragraph #1.

Let us not forget another reason that dusting is such a royal pain, aside from the sneezing frenzy it often rouses. It is the idiocy of dusting the stuff that sits on top of the stuff you’re dusting—a hazard of the trade. Also there’s the awfulizing we do as parents when we ask our children to help out with the housework, dusting in particular, completely convinced they’ll break something in the process—another hazard of the trade. Plus there’s absolutely NO CHANCE they’ll return stuff to its rightful place in the universe—which is patently intolerable. Hence, my hatred of dusting and all that it embodies.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (probably not dusting). Join me there, at the corner of Irreverence and Over-Sharing www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.