Sometimes I, and I am sure all of you, have great plans to get things done, but something keeps us from it. Sometimes it is the fact that some things we have to do are just plain disgusting to do or we don’t want to do them for some other reason. All of this leads to tasks being put off.
We had mice in our kitchen a few years ago and I have not finished cleaning up from them. Yes, a few years ago. I may or may not have mentioned this before. We had an exterminator come in and deal with them. I pulled almost everything out of the cabinets under the sink a month or so later and either soaked items in bleach and water mixture or tossed them. I did the same with the 2 small drawers we have in this cabinet area. I never got to the small cabinet below these drawers and the bread drawer next to them. Since the bread drawer was where we found the mice, I have not really been able to deal with it.
My husband told me that he when they had mice at the place he worked, clean up had to be done be done with bleach and water mixture wearing disposable plastic gloves and masked while they did it. This is part of what slowed the process down, in addition to the gross out factor of what I had to do, I have a problem with a face mask as I am small boned (fat, but small boned) and the masks do not fit me correctly. So I dealt with the mask for as far as I could back then and then stopped. I kept planning to get back to it.
In the interim the cleaning supplies which had been stored under the sink (and the containers were soaked in the bleach/water mixture when they were removed) and replacement purchases since, have been stored in 2 stacked cardboard boxes in our craft studio off the kitchen. (A lot of items were just thrown out if we deemed them too far gone to keep or easy and relatively cheap to replace.) The boxes long ago collapsed on each other leading to disorganization in them and there is less than a foot of space to walk between the boxes and furniture in what is a tight room. The studio was in the middle of being put back together from the bed bugs in 2009. This project had been stopped as we needed to replace a dresser used for storage and could not find one the correct size. Of course as soon as we found one, the mice came to visit. So the studio organization cannot be finished until the mice clean up is done. Sound familiar?
Last fall I went looking online to check about cleaning up after mice and found that the government instructions are to spray the area and items with Lysol. No mask needed. So I did that. I sprayed the 2 cabinets and the 3 drawers. A week or so later I went to work on the drawers. I pulled out the top small drawer (and I do mean small) and cleaned it with bleach and water. I had new shelf liner to put in it. I looked at the drawer and was still grossed out by the thought of putting my dish towels in the drawer (which is what was stored in this drawer before) even sprayed, cleaned with bleach and relined. I looked at the drawer and realized that it was just a small box with a front to match the cabinetry attached to it and that the front had not been exposed to the mice as it sat outside of the box front and the cabinet front. The drawer was also old - our house was built in 1949 and since then the cabinets were recovered and had new doors/drawer fronts put on, but the insides were the original cabinets and drawers. The wood the drawer was made of was definitely showing its age. Husband, in addition to other crafts, does woodworking and I suggested to him making new drawers, as it was a only a question of making boxes and attaching the decorative fronts. He looked at what I showed him and agreed. So we made new small drawers for and replaced the 2 small drawers using the old fronts. In the spring we plan to do the same with the bread drawer. We need warm enough weather for the finish to be applied and ran out of time. So, I now have a drawer for my kitchen towels again and no longer have to keep them in the studio and have them in the way there, as well as again having a drawer for a few of my lesser used kitchen tools. But that was where I stopped, short on time during the assorted holidays and, to be honest, avoiding what was a disgusting job.
Well, last week I decided it was time to stop putting the project off. I opened the doors to the cabinet under the sink and looked. There were 3 bottles of floor cleaner for the flooring that we had on most of the first floor of the house, 2 boxes of matches and a zipper bag with wicking for decorative oil lamps (for use in blackouts). I put the aluminum pan I had used before for soaking in the bleach/water in the sink and soaked the 3 bottles and washed them clean. I dried them with paper towels and set them on some newspapers to finish drying. I tossed the matches - cheap enough to buy new ones and how does one wash a cardboard box? I then tossed the bag that the wicking was in and put the wicking in a new bag. I, of course, wore disposable plastic gloves for all this. Now all was done under sink except the big job.
Yesterday, Tuesday, I finally did the job I had been putting off. We had previously organized the cabinet by putting a 2 wire drawer unit in a year or so before the mice and I did not want to take it out. I planned carefully. I put newspapers on the floor to hold the pan with bleach and water (in between using this disposable plan I keep it inside a knotted closed plastic kitchen size bag). I put newspapers on the floor to hold other items I needed. I pulled 10 sheets of paper towels off so I would not have to touch the roll while working. I brought the kitchen garbage pail over and opened it. I had disposable plastic gloves. I then mixed the bleach and water and sat down on the floor to start work.
I started with the pipes inside above the floor of the cabinet and then went on to the inside top edges of the cabinet and the walls of same. I then started at the back of the side of the cabinet which does not have the drawers, working my way forward cleaning the floor of the cabinet. It took several passes of cleaning in each area I worked on to make sure it was clean. I then ran out of paper towels. I took my gloves off, careful not to touch the outside of them and set them on newspaper. I pulled off another 10 paper towels, got my gloves back on without touching the outside and went back to work.
This was a little harder. I had to pull out the drawers to wash them and I also had to wash their frame and I did not want to deal with removing the drawers from the unit. With the drawers pulled out as far as they can be I had to reach around them to reach all of the floor to clean it - again repeating until I was sure it was clean. While working around the drawers I found a ripped open pack of mouse poison from the exterminator and picked it up with a paper towel and threw it out, then went back and cleaned the area of any leftover poison a few times using a clean paper towel each cleaning.
When I was done I threw out everything except the pan from the bleach - I still have items to soak in it - and put it back in its knotted closed plastic bag. I took the garbage bag out immediately to the pail and it will be picked up tomorrow at the regular pickup. (Of course I immediately put a new bag in the kitchen pail.) I left the cabinet doors open to let air in to help dry the floor. A major job that has been put off is almost done - and the worst part of it is what is done. Well, except for the overwhelming smell of bleach and Lysol which is still dissipating.
I am going to line the floor of the cabinet with shelf liner. It was never lined before, but I decided it needs to be done now. I actually was thinking of doing this tonight, but then remembered that I had not written a post for tonight, so I will get to it next week - I hope. I will then put back the cleaning items I have. It will be much emptier in there than before. I will also buy a new small plastic tray for the top drawer in the cabinet as I used to keep my sponges and such that are in use in a similar one - then the area around my sink will be a bit clearer.
Getting a job done that one did not want to face is an accomplishment and I am glad to have the worst of the job done. That leaves the small cabinet under the drawers to do and the new drawer to replace the bread drawer to make.
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