It's time. I'm calling it...

...the kitchen is officially clean.

The vent still needs some scrubbing and the inside of the fridge needs a good wipe down, but other than that it's spotless. It took just over 16 hours in total, to get it from the way it was to the way I wanted it and it was totally worth it. I am very pleased.

In addition to the work in the kitchen today, I managed to get at least the front half of the place the way I want it. I scrubbed all the walls, doors, baseboards, blinds, and air vents with bleach. I moved every piece of furniture (that doesn't have a fish tank on it) and vacuumed under/behind/around it. I dusted and polished all the furniture. I cleaned the windows and outside of the fish tanks.

I also finished up most of the bathroom, now I only need to clean the mirrors and arrange the items on top of the sink.

I'm also totally and completely at war with the ants. I f*cking hate ants. I loathe their very existence. They are (for sure) at the very top of my annoyance list. And they are everywhere. Not like, in organized lines or trails. Not everywhere in the sense that I could determine exactly what it is they have come for or where it is exactly they are going, but everywhere in the sense that every damn time I turn around or let my guard down I find another one crawling across my foot. UGH! Last night ants haunted my dreams. At some point I became convinced that the bed was in fact, full of ants and began furiously swatting at everything within reach, annoyed almost to the point of insanity by meaningless little insects that may or may not have been real.

Today I woke up with a steely resolve to destroy them. Having already tried to annihilate them with RAID and various bates, I've now moved into phase two. I began my mission my boiling gallons of a vinegar and water mixture and pouring that over and into every single ant hill I could find within 2 apartment lengths of my door. I then scrubbed down my patio with a bleach and water mixture, washed the outside of the windows and doors with vinegar and traced around the outside of my little home with baby powder (including filling in the outside portions of my window and door tracks). For good measure, I also surrounded my bed with a moat of baby powder, that way at least I'll sleep better tonight. In addition, I put out about 30 ant traps all around my place. All those stray scout ants that have been meandering through my home looking for a food source are going down. I may look insane, but so help me I refuse to have a serious ant problem.

The house is almost to the point where I don't want to die when I think about it. The biggest obstacle for me right now is really the carpet. I think once I've gone over everything a couple of times with a Rug Doctor everything will be okay again. I'm very excited to get it cleaned. I'm going to start pre-treating it Friday I think, and then devote the weekend, in it's entirety, to getting it back to immaculate. (Or at least, as close to immaculate as apartment carpet can get.)

The following weekend I'm going to paint the living room. Once that's done I can work on cleaning out the storage closets and reducing the number of fish tanks I have to clean each week.


After I get the house under control (and am no longer overwhelmed by the soul crushing state of it) I can start hauling in all the fossils from the Trilobite Jam/Great Fossil Adventure of 2012 and actually do, you know, a proper write up of the greatest vacation ever.  I also have huge plans for some sort of giant fossil wall piece, but I still don't have all the specifics on that yet. It's more like a very hazy, vaguely amorphous concept of what I might, maybe, like it to look like. But for now at least, that's good enough.

Ugh. That is so all I know in life right now. I am being driven forward by the sheer will to see my house spotless again. I am so full of...life?...energy?...something, but it's all just super focused on the task at hand.

Clean. The. House.

I love you, more than life, Dear Friend, and I miss your face terribly. Clearly you should be here. It's all monsoon-y all of a sudden, and lovely. I'm not sure what the summer evenings are like up there in the land of trees and fog, but they can't possibly be as nice as they are here right now. Just sayin'...

Anyway, I've got to get back to work. So much to clean, so little time. <3