Kitchen progress..

So yesterday was the start of the big kitchen deep clean (gods, my life is almost as interesting as yours, black_faery !). We started by me tidying the dining room (so we'd have places to put stuff while in transit) and with Jamie doing all the washing up (so we'd actually have surfaces in the kitchen to put stuff on). Yesterday we achieved:

bottom three cupboards on the cooker side - emptied, cleaned and refilled with kitchen gadgets (I feel all grown up, I have a whole cupboard full of gadgets) and pots and pans. The cutlery that was in one of those cupboards (my kitchen has no drawers) is now in the big drawer on the sideboard. I also now have a drawer for tea towels!

I also threw out all the ancient food that was hiding in the freezer, emptied the fridge (god bless the mini-fridge in the living room, its currently full off butter and jam and pesto and milk and cheese. The eggs are hiding in a cupboard. Then we emptied all the shelves and drawers from the fridge-freezer, and unplugged it. Left the door of the freezer open last night, with a teatowel draped over the floor in front of it. Now there is no ice, and a very wet teatowel!

This morning the priority is the fridge-freezer, as we have to clean it inside and out, pull it out and clean all around it, and get it back into place and cooled down again by the time the shopping arrives this afternoon!

We've moved everything off the top (the microwave, tons of tupperware, cereals, and a huge load of pens for some reason) and I've just spent a very entertaining ten minutes pulling off all the fridge poetry. We only have one set - the naughty one - and for the most part nothing's been done with it. I found one rather entertaining sentence:

"guarantee an orgy - see man penetrate gorgeous housewife on your bed" which I think was a joint effort between Jamie and myself.

The only other coherent phrase gave us reason to ponder - who had written it? Conversation went something like this:

Me: Huh, look at this: "Could you understand or ask me to cry, if I walk apart from others by choice"

Jamie:  Did you write that?

Me: No, did you?

J: No. That only leaves us with two choices... it was either Andy, or..

Me: Mr Fidget!

J: No, Ros, when she's been over before.

Me: Oh yeah, that would make sense.

J: amazing how she's managed to make up a whole mini-poem without using a single rude word...

Kitchen progress 2

So, I have a sparkling clean fridge, and its full of tasty food now the Sainsburys man has been. It amazed me actually, how quickly the thing cooled down again once we'd plugged it in. It was a lot of hard work though. Jamie spent ages bent over the bath cleaning all the drawers, shelves and so on with the shower hose, while I scrubbed and scrubbed to get the main bits clean. The front of the fridge was covered in grease (probably from the time Jamie exploded hot oil all over the kitchen), and the inside was just horrible. However, its all done now.

Here is a glimpse of the horror I had to deal with today - this is where the fridge came out of:
( see the horror... )

Have powered our way through most of the work now, stopping only for lunch (which was a lazy takeaway from Mr Cod round the corner, was very weird, felt like we were in the middle of moving in and having to eat takeaways because of a lack of cooking facilities). We've just removed the useful things from the shed that we needed (the 12 dinner plates bought for LARP, spare cutlery and the blankets which are supposed to be covering the armchairs in the living room), and now we have to tackle getting the crockery into place inside the sideboard. Then all thats left is the food cupboards above the work surface (a quick empty them out, clean them, fill them back up again job) and the cupboard under the sink, which is full of cleaning stuff. Then the last jobs are the oven/hob, and around the washing machine, which looks similar to where the fridge was, except we can't pull the machine out. And then mop the floor. And then its done.

Also, having been out in my very autumnal looking garden (the huge sycamore is dropping all its leaves at the moment), I spotted the gorgeous blue and purple berries on the climbing plant over our fence are out, so I took some pictures. Thought you might like to see them!
( picture here )