Playing Ketchup

No tomatoes here! 'Playing ketchup'  'playing catch-up'. It's what I've been calling it since... high school. If I needed to catch up in a class (because of a trip or whatever, usually a concert band event) I'd write 'ketchup' in my agenda. And I still use that term today :)

Life happens, we get busy, and then the city decides to 'clean' the water mains resulting in lack of useable water.... and the dishes and other chores pile up. Time for ketchup!

Saturday is usually laundry day over here (because our electric rates get jacked up when you WANT to use electricity... but that's another story). So today, I decided I need to get things done.

Having a messy kitchen stresses me out. Weird, but true. So today, after breakfast (where I actually had to wash a pan before I could make pancakes :S) I put on a load of laundry and started in on the dishes.

I try to strategize when I do dishes, do you do that? I did the two china plates first, then I did my hard plastic cutting board, so I could 'protect' the china from other things piling on too much pressure with the cutting board. I like to clean the 'cleaner' things first, so I purposefully left the spaghetti sauce pan until right before I wanted to change the water in the sink. Because I had so many dishes to do, I used my large cutting boards to kind of make the walls of my drying rack higher (putting them right on the sides) and I even put a bunch of oven safe stuff in the oven to dry (then I turn on the oven at the lowest heat setting, just for 15 minutes or so, then turn it off again and leave it closed - speed dry!). I piled the plastic things high in the rack, playing tetris as I went and fitting in as much as I could. Eventually I had to stop and clear off part of the counter, so I could lay out some dish towels for the rest of the dishes (I had a LOT). Plus I flipped the laundry a couple times in there, also...

When I was finally done the dishes (except for two of the mason jars I picked up at a yard sale that need to be bleached), I took the coffee maker and coffeepot apart, wiped them down cleaned them out, put them back together, and it's now on it's second vinegar water cycle. Decided I should use the hot vinegar water for something, so I'm filling those two jars with it and will probably go clean the bathroom sinks with more of it.

This was an accomplishment for me, and it probably took less than an hour an a half to get it all done. I even called DH upstairs to see what I did and he was sweet enough to be impressed and give me some praise :)

The laundry just beeped at me. I'm going to go fold the laundry, use up the hot vinegar water for something productive, start a plain water cycle in the coffeemaker, to rinse it out, and start a new load of laundry. Then I can relax, until I get beeped at again!


So anyway, thank you for joining me, and I hope I can help you! It really is fun to be a Homemaking Diva!!

Please comment or send your questions to me at homemakingdiva@hotmail.com

Have great day!

Valerie :D