– We’ve gone a week without air conditioning. Weather was nice enough and having the house open that long did wonders for getting rid of the random weird smells that build up in a house. Now if we can just get the kitty boxes to not smell, we’ll be doing great. Anyway, we had to turn the AC back on to deal with humidity. The carpets were starting to feel a bit too damp.
– The 3 movies, unlimited plan has the best ‘dollars per movie’ ratio at Netflix. You would actually come out a dollar and change ahead if you had two people, each with the 3xUnlimited than getting a single 6xUnlimited account.
– Downloading a new podcast’s catalog of ~40 issues at 3-40 minutes each eats through hard drive space fast. Especially when doing it on four new podcasts ‘just to try out’. Makes me happy to have a larger Ipod.
– Speaking of Ipods, I enjoy watching movies on it. On some mornings (weekends), Aleah will wake up if I get up… and promptly fall back asleep once I’m carrying her around. She’ll wake back up if I put her down, and repeats the process. So I’ve taken to watching a movie on the ipod while she sleeps on me. I’ve watched more movies in the past week or two than I have… um… in a few months.
– I should really keep away from camera lens reviews when I know there is a tax refund coming our way soon. So many other things that the money can get used for instead.
– Some days I think it would be cool to do a massive house cleaning, then hire a cleaning service to come out and do the detail work I usually don’t have time to get done. (baseboards, fans, mirrors, windows; that sort of stuff) I think that’s just about the only way we would reach that ‘really clean house’ goal these days.
– Pursuant to the above, I have way too much stuff for the amount of storage we have. Time to get a ladder and check out the attic!
It’s frustrating, isn’t it, when you move into a house that is big enough and then fill it so it isn’t. We are always amazed that 2 people can share as much space as we have and not have enough room. Good organized storage will help, of course.
Be CAREFUL in the attic. Do not misstep and put a hole in your ceiling! It is difficult to repair and not have it look like it has been repaired. Luke cut plywood into 16 inch wide strips which made it possible to take it up the attic access. Then he nailed it down to make a floor around the access. At least to that…. and Be CAREFUL!!!
On hiring a house cleaning service. I did that recently… twice. The first time i was pretty happy with what they did. The second time not so much. The second time the same 2, plus one more cleaned with far less care. For a week or 2 after i kept finding streaks where they wiped a surface but did not clean it, corners that had not been dusted or mopped or whatever, and, annoyingly, one damaged mini blind where i am very sure the girl cleaning (moving too fast and doing a barely adequate, streaky job) broke an inch off the end of one slat.
The service I hired likes to send 2 or 3 people out at the same time. It makes the cleaning time much shorter and they can take care of more houses with one car. With 2 (the first time) it was not impossibly hard to keep an eye on what they were doing, but with 3 it was very difficult.
Also… cleaning services have a set routine they like to do. They like to come every week (or 2 weeks or month) and wipe, dust, sweep, and mop to make the house look like it has been cleaned. They will do “deep cleaning,” of course, but it costs a little more and they still want to follow their cleaning pattern. It seems to throw them off if you want them to skip the vacuuming and do specific jobs that are different from their routine.
What i would really like is to find an individual i could trust, someone i could hire occasionally to do whatever i wanted done, who did not want so much to sweep and vacuum, but who would get down on her knees and take a brush to the corners of the kitchen floor or really scrub the tile in the bathtub… or whatever i wanted done. It has been hard for me to find someone like that….