"Some Chores"

         You know them. The chores you must do, but hate to do, so you avoid them until—well, until something goes wrong. Then your evasive maneuvers avalanche into a major problem.

         I could list at least ten household chores I abhor, but recently cleaning the refrigerator climbed onto the top of my list. Usually, I do a “sniff-n-toss” round every Sunday. You know, where I tentatively open every Rubbermaid container, give it a cautious sniff, and toss it if there’s even a hint of spoilage. I do a good job of remembering when I served something and can judge the exact moment when something must meet the garbage disposal. I don’t consider this weekly ritual really cleaning the fridge, though.

         Cleaning the fridge involves taking out every single item from every self and bin, and then scrubbing down the interior. I check for expirations dates, throw out anything that’s resided too long, and reorganize everything into better categories. Currently, I have hot peppers, pickles, relish, and jellies standing next to each other one door cubby. I don’t know why, but it works for me.

         Cleaning the fridge includes emptying the freezer compartment. This task daunts me, so I drag my feet when it comes to doing this. Off-and-on for years, our freezer insists upon dumping water onto the floor. This is the first signal that there’s a clog. If I ignore this warning, the water begins to pool back in the freezer where it becomes a plate of ice, adhering the basket in my freezer to the bottom. Usually, my Type A personality jumps onto this aberration immediately, and I defrost the ice. The cascade of events over the last few months forced me to look the other way, and the thin sheet of ice grew daily until the entire basket filled with ice. Our freezer looked like we’d had a block of ice delivered!

         Last night, armed with heat gun and a pile of towels, David tackled the task of melting our giant ice cube. He added a screw driver to his arsenal and eventually pried the basket from the freezer. While I cleared the basket wires of ice, he cleaned every tube and plug he could find. He muscled the fridge away from the wall and attacked the dusty backside with the vacuum, a chore I’ve neglected for doing for, well—months.

         Now our Admiral sits neatly organized and gleaming inside and out. I tell myself that I’ll keep “on top” of this chore and won’t neglect it again. I promise myself that if I notice a little ice forming on that bottom basked, I’ll flush out the tube and clear out the clog. Yep. That’s my plan.

Copyright 2012 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

        

"Deep Cleaning"

 

At the end of every summer, I tear through every room and clean the house to the military standards of my childhood. My personal war against dirt requires vinegar, bleach, and Orange Oil. I break all of the attachments for the vacuum cleaner, gather my feather duster, and pull out the steam mop. I muster all of my energy as I attack each room for a floor to ceiling assault.
            I don’t simply clean the rooms. Every drawer and closet receives personal scrutiny. I spend hours checking all the pens in the desks, sorting through papers scrunched into drawers, and make the executive decision:  KEEP, GIVE AWAY, THROW-AWAY. As I sweep from room to room, I swap out knickknacks to freshen up an area. My teapot collection migrated from the kitchen into the family room several days ago. That movement means each pot goes through a thorough washing before finding a new perch. This assures everything gets cleaned.
            My closet gets special attention during this offensive against dirt and clutter. I dump all my clothes onto the bed, a seemingly insurmountable mound, and begin the process of KEEP, GIVE AWAY, THROW-AWAY all over again. The clothing I keep, I check for missing buttons or pulled hems and take care of any small mending. I find an excellent movie on television, angle the ironing board in the perfect spot, and iron or press every item of clothing. My obsessive organizational oddities kick into full gear at this point. I don’t simply rehang my outfits into the closet. I decide on my strategy for order for the next few months and regulate my closet to that standard. Some years, my clothing becomes color and fabric coordinated. All red tops and blouses lined up neatly ranging from t-shirts to long sleeve silk. The blues, purples, whites, blacks all grouped neatly together. Following the tops are my skirts, then suits and finally pants. I organize them in this fashion because the floor of my closet has a cubby for organizing my shoes and I want clearance for easy access to that area. My shoes receive similar inspection as I decide to KEEP, GIVE AWAY, THROW-AWAY once again. I rotate summer flip-flops back into boxes, keeping out only one pair as I pull out dress sandals. All white shoes will shift back into boxes by Labor Day—another leftover rule of childhood. My deep cleaning stops only when I complete the garage. Then all of the items I’ve put into the donate pile get loaded into the car and taken to Goodwill.
              Year after year, I’ve run through this drill as the last cleaning spree before I returned to school or work. I do a similar cleaning over the Christmas holidays because I’m redecorating every room, and a smaller raid through the house over Spring Break. This year, however, my cleaning strike appears more hit-n-miss. I started in the kitchen and family rooms instead of my bedroom. I haven’t opened a drawer or assailed my closet. At the end of last summer, the obsession to deep clean even though I wasn’t returning to work nagged me into my routine. The realization that I’m actually retired—and can do this type of cleaning anytime I want sank into my consciousness a few days ago. I don’t have to conquer my entire house within a few days. I know I won’t shake off the deep cleaning bug just because I’m retired, but I can select a different schedule than sweating out the August heat to clean the garage!

Last week's deep clean! 2024

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“Throw Back Thursdays”

Abrams Family 1960s

            My parents didn’t take many pictures of us, and I suspect their limited budget kept them from snapping away. They had a couple of inexpensive cameras, but film and developing turned out to be a luxury. At one point, my father purchased an instamatic Polaroid that spat out a picture from its slatted mouth. I remember all of us gathering around in anticipation as the brownish square developed into a picture. These photographs didn’t stand the pressures of time, and most never made it to the nondescript brown box on the floor of my mother’s closet. You know the box I mean—the one where all pictures get tossed with the idea that “someday” they will be organized into photo-albums with neatly printed dates and labels. When my parents finally did arrange their few pictures, they couldn’t remember specific dates or names of various friends. They gave up the idea of a chronological order and instead created a binder for each of us kids and a hodge-podge file of their own lives “pre-children”

            I swore to myself that I’d stay on top of my own camerawork, so when David and I purchased a use Pentax K1000, I picked up an album along with the first roll of film. Whenever it looked like we neared the last pages of a folder, I’d buy a new one. Both of us love playing with the camera, and we coupled our picture taking with bike treks. For a couple with limited funds, taking our bikes down a back road and stopping for wildflower photo-opts filled endless weekend hours.

        

    Eventually, we designated the upper shelves of a closet for these massive volumes of memories. After Paul’s birth, we added more shelves. And although we had computers in our home long before many of our friends and family members because of David’s freelance business, we dragged our feet at converting to digital cameras. Our old trusty Pentax still took lovely pictures, and over the years we’d added lenses and filters. Technology eventually won out, and we bought a small pocket sized Canon that we used until we “inherited” our Canon  Rebel T1i from my son, who switched over to a Nikon D5100. I have to admit, I love grabbing my Rebel and snapping shots of budding Mountain Laurel, the dogs sleeping in bed, or a view from the Irish shore. I can simply plug my camera into my laptop, create folders, and organize to my heart’s content. Sharing my photography takes a simple click or two.

 

            I decided about five years ago that we needed digital back-ups for all of those thousands of pictures lining the shelves of that lone closet. So I began my scanning project. I started with my parents’ meager collection, figuring I’d keep a disc, give my sister a disc, and give my brother the originals. I managed to accomplish that task and had started on some of my own photographs when my mother’s care needs kicked into overdrive. My ambitious project fell into the background, forgotten.

            Until Throw Back Thursdays! The sharing of old pictures on Facebook nudged me into picking up my old project. At first, I thought I’d organize everything in my computer chronologically, but I soon realized that system would require us to remember which year something had occurred if we wanted a picture of a person or event. I decided to organize by category: Paul’s Firsts, Vacations/Day Trips, Christmas, Abrams Outings, Chapman Gatherings, etc. This method suits us best because we have more than thirty years of photographs to arrange. I’ve also made many executive decisions on which memories we need to scan, since we probably have more than 6, 000 pictures! I finally resolved that “one” of each would provide a good starting point. Completing this project will take time since David’s also taking the time to restore some photos to their original color and vibrancy. In the meantime, we’ll continue to share with our family and friends snippets of our lives together.

 

Copyright 2014 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman