Maintenance

It has been a trial, for twenty-eight years—well, maybe for twenty-three or twenty-four years, to be fair...
...It has been a trial to keep the house clean pretty much since Michael was old enough to start messing the place up. Now that the kids are older, it doesn't get quite as messy as it used to, although we (even I) still leave things out of place. And the family is pretty good at putting things away when I ask them to. But "uncluttered" and "clean" are not the same thing. I've noticed that a room looks all right if there's not a bunch of stuff out of place, but it looks great if it's been dusted, and it looks AMAZING if the floors are clean (vacuumed, swept, mopped). That real cleaning makes all the difference.

A couple of weeks ago the family talked about at least doing an amazing cleaning job on Saturdays, so the house would be nice for Sundays. I think everyone was agreeable. But when Saturday rolled around they put off the housework until I was nearly driven to madness by the procrastination, and then they only did an "all right" job on it. (Kaylie did inform me that she dusted the shelves in the living room. There is that.)

So at the end of last week I decided to take the time myself, and really clean one room each day. I made it through the great room and the bathroom on Thursday and Friday afternoons.

Aahhh! I love the look and feel of a clean room!

Then on Saturday, the day before yesterday, I just got up and finished the amazing job myself. I admit, I felt pretty crabby about it. But the house did look AMAZING when I was finished four hours later. (And then I threatened everyone within an inch of their life if they should leave one single thing out of place. I told you I was crabby that morning.)

OK. Now my kids are tired of reading this. But here's what I wanted to say:

Maintaining a clean house daily

is much easier (and quicker) than

cleaning a dirty house all in one day.

While I spent four hours Saturday morning to get the house looking marvelous, it only took me one hour to get it up to snuff this morning. And that included washing dishes, spot-mopping the kitchen floor, and folding and putting away some laundry.

Before you close the page, rolling your eyes, kids, here's the next thought:

This is true of life, in general, too:

Doing the right things daily—doing little things to maintain or improve your health, taking small steps toward a big goal, reading scriptures daily to increase your faith, taking any small steps to achieve what you want, is much easier than trying to get those things done with one big, single effort.

And, even though a day, or a week, or a month of maintenance might be difficult, it's still easier than seeing a huge task that must be done now. (Yes, these are the words of a major procrastinator here, but that doesn't make them untrue.) And if you keep it up, you can be AMAZING! 

It reminds me of my favoritest quote that I found about a year ago:

"Righteous day-to-day consecrated effort

is better than occasional heroic actions."  ~Quentin L. Cook

And now there's time to relax. Ahh.

That's today's Wisdom from Mom.

p.s. You won't get off the hook so easily this Saturday, kids. ;-)

Framed!

...almost.

In 1984 my mom got me a subscription to Cross Stitch Magazine. (Or was it Cross Stitch and Needle Arts? Something like that.) And three issues had a set of gorgeous pictures that I knew had to be in my kitchen. Not my mom's kitchen, mine.

Of course I wasn't even close to getting married then.

Well, when we were working on closing our house in 2017 I decided it was time to stitch them up. So I did, working on them for a few months after we moved in. And then I set them aside for three more years. But, with the painting of the dining room, it is now time to put them on the wall. I washed my needlework, stretched it, and let it sit for another week or two until I could get a frame.

Now, when I say "get" a frame, I really mean "make" a frame, because it costs a boatload of money to get pictures framed! So I went to the hardware store and looked a decorative mouldings, and finally chose a nice, routed piece of oak. Then that sat around for a few days while I went to choose some mat-boards.

The nice man at the store helped me choose some really lovely colors—a charcoaly color, and one that's like the color of a cardboard gift box tinted slightly olive. He wanted to impress on me that it is difficult to cut mats the right way, without messing them up, and he did have me biting my nails a little bit. But when I weighed $34 for two full-size, 32x40-inch mats against the $96 he'd charge me to cut them to size for me...

I bought the boards and took them home.

Well, last week I built the frame. It was a little bit of a headache, but it turned out all right. And after that cutting the mats should be a piece of cake, right?

Well, it was. Measuring was the trickiest part. Once; twice; three times; four...  At last I was satisfied that I'd make my cut lines in the right places. I cut one mat last night and one this morning. (That is just the life of a mom; I didn't have the time to cut both of them in one sitting.)

This afternoon I mounted the embroidery on a board and set the whole thing into the frame to see how it looked. Lovely!

There it is, on my newly finished table.
(That is me, standing on the chair.)

But, the frame color...

It doesn't look bad—especially sitting on the table, and in a photo. But in real life, and on the blue wall, it looks a little washed out. So of course I had to put it into photoshop to try out frame colors. Here's what I came up with:

1. This is the original, unfinished wood color.

2. I darkened this one just a little
to simulate putting a clear varnish on it.

3. with a light, reddish stain
(or maybe a reddish-tinted varnish)

4. a slightly darker stain

5. whitewash
(or white stain?)

6. more whitewash (stain)
Can you do that? With two coats, maybe?

The differences from one color to its next-door neighbor are subtle, I know. But which color would you choose?

Who Cares?!

Awake at 2:30 a.m., and still unable to sleep at 4:37, I am cruising through facebook. Which is uninspiring. And then I see that someone's posted this "exciting" tidbit:

"Upcoming movies this year 2021!"

And I think, Really? Is this the best they can do?

Apparently so. Most of them are sequels, or sequels of sequels. (And there's one prequel. When did that become a big thing?  >cough, cough<  George Lucas). Most of them are comic book/action-type movies. So, basically, you can see the same plot-lines you've seen for the last ten or more years, with the same fighting and blowing things up that you've seen. Yay.

"Why bother to shoot this film? Why not release the old one
under a new title? You've seen one, you've seen them all."
~Cosmo Brown, Singing in the Rain

Wouldn't it be nice if Hollywood could come up with a movie that makes you think, or makes you feel? (Feel something besides a little adrenaline rush, that is.) Or even just something original?

But, no. It's like they took sixty-four old scripts, had their computers shuffle the lines of each one, and then reprinted them for reuse as new movies. In fact, judging by the looks of ...most of these movies, their computers will be providing most of the action and scenery, too. And we are supposed to be so excited about all of it.

Maybe the movie industry should continue to be on lock-down until they can come up with something better.

In the meantime, has anyone read any good books lately?