wherein Liz deals with some household chores

It occurred to me this morning that if the mice get in to my kitchen cupboards via the water pipe holes, they might also be getting into the cupboard under my bathroom sink.

And lo and behold, they had indeed been doing so. There were tiny mouse droppings all over the cupboard floor, and one enterprising mouse had nibbled through the edges of two sanitary pads, perhaps with the intention of making a nest. Ugh.

So I cleaned the cupboard, threw out the ruined pads, and took the opportunity to put the stuff I keep there (menstrual supplies and joint braces, basically) into a pair of shoeboxes so they won't sprawl willy-nilly all over. I will also set a mousetrap once I buy another candy-bar this afternoon.

I cleaned under my kitchen sink as well, since that had both some mouse residue and some 'whoops, the faucet is loose and lets water drip down' stains, and reorganized its contents a little. I'm debating whether to put the kitchen mousetrap there or in the neighboring cupboard (where I store my cookie sheets and baking pan). I suppose it doesn't matter much in the long run.

...

I also vacuumed the apartment and moved a spider from my couch to the house's central entry/staircase. If I'm still feeling productive later this afternoon, I may tackle the pile of boxes and packing materials in my front room, which ostensibly are for presents but given how few people I actually send gifts to, I would like to dispose of at least 2/3 of the stack and move the rest to a less obtrusive permanent home.

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ETA, 6pm: Baited two mousetraps, one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom. We shall see how it goes.

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ETA, 2:30am: I heard a funny noise in the kitchen at about 2am, which I thought for a horrible second might have been my candle-in-a-jar exploding on the stove. But the candle was perfectly fine when I went to look, at which point I recalled that I'd set a pair of mousetraps a few hours earlier and they would certainly make noise if triggered...

Yep. Dead mouse number two, in the exact same location as dead mouse number one. It has now joined its predecessor on the snow-covered branch pile in the back yard, and I have once again sterilized the cupboard and trap.

I guess I need to buy another candy-bar in the morning.

wherein Liz defeats her housecleaning project

I defeated a housecleaning project this evening!


the regrettable pile of junk


I have, for a long time, been in the habit of saving boxes and packing materials, in case I needed them to wrap and/or mail gifts. The thing is, I don't exchange gifts with a lot of people, and in most of those cases I do my giving in person. The sheer amount of stuff I'd collected over the years was therefore somewhat ridiculous.

It was also very badly organized, and not what I wanted as the first thing guests see when they walk through my front door.

So I did something about it.


the now-tidy corner, yay!



the neatly organized packing materials (plus my air mattress and some linens)


The salvageable tissue paper is now folded neatly in the red bag (along with some smaller gift bags, and a bag of large bows). The large box to the right on the bottom shelf contains bubble wrap, and my box of ribbons, small bows, and labels. The two boxes beside it, one of which is hidden behind the blue sliding doors, are just boxes of boxes, because I couldn't make myself throw them all out. (Someday!) But I did get rid of about half the boxes, and all the non-pretty packing materials, the majority of which got broken down, folded, and squashed into the white box shown below.


box full of stuff to recycle


The styrofoam wrap is in my kitchen wastebasket, and a couple of the largest boxes simply got folded flat and stuck directly into one of the shared recycling bins on the front porch.

The box of Christmas ornaments didn't fit into the closet, so it's sitting under an endtable in my living room until I get around to organizing the boxes of junk under my coffee table. One cannot do everything in a day, after all. :D

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