I do the housework

There is rain, there are no new Archers podcasts and my tooth is sore. Still, there are other things to like, i.e. pals coming round for a barbecue (in the rain) with delicious panacotta that I did not think would work but  has, judging by the two dainty monkey teaspoons I have just tipped into my gaping monkey mouth.

They are not coming round for a while, the friends, so I will do my monthly 'housework'. The two are not related: I don't want other people to think I am actually dirty and/or smell (i.e., have things festering where they should not), but I am not one to dip the entire house in Lysol every time someone comes round.  My 'housework' usually involves a loose combination of the following: 

1. Dusting, i.e. taking a Swiffer on very long handle to the top of things and poking it through newell posts.
2. Hoovering. Take out the central vacuuming 'system', pull it around, lug it up the stairs, give up, listen to "women are bad at putting hoses away" in exchange for not having to put the hose away. Drink tea.
3. Micro-hoovering. Surprisingly entertaining. Attach tiny nozzle to end of gigantically powerful vacuuming 'system' and hoover up crumbs, dust, hair, old socks, mystery balls from behind washing machine, unidentified crusts in bottom of kitchen drawers, spider bodyparts from behind cookbooks, corpses of dead insects that usually gather in drifts 20 insects deep on my office window sill, human hair, cat hair, oats (that seem to be everywhere in the house, even in the bathroom upstairs),  etc
4. Cleaning loos. Involves at least 5 different cloths, some kitchen roll and the fervent wish that the septic tank could take bleach. 
5. Cleaning bathrooms. Spray cleaning stuff at everything. Get distracted. Stuff dries. Start again. Rpt. 
6. Cleaning the fridge out. I did this yesterday for the first time in a long, long time. It look over an hour and I flushed a lot of things down the loo, e.g. things in jars marked 'pickle' and 'gooseberry' (which were in fact I think 'mulled wine stuff' and 'marmalade') and some salad dressing from 1983.
7. Putting things in jars. I am very bad at opening packets of things, so prefer instead to decant stuff into jars which lessens the likelihood of 5lb bags of clumsily opened flour with massive rips down the side exploding onto my head.  Here, for your viewing pleasure, is one of two food cupboards; the other one is not as full of exciting things in jars: 

 I love jars, because putting things in them makes me feel like I am being tidy when in fact I am not; I just think everything looks better in a jar, including the cats and all of my shoes.   I suffer greatly from living in North America, because it is very hard to find Le Parfait jars here and they are jolly expensive when you do find them, so I have to make do with something vaguely similar from IKEA which are OK for storing things in, but no good if you want to preserve gigantic jars of tomatoes, etc, as they are not always water-tight, leading to explosions and seepages the like of which I would not wish on anyone (except Sting and Trudie).

Even more irritatingly, the jam jars you can buy in the shops here have those stupid 2-piece lids and stupid shapes of flowers and marrows all over them.   All I really want are jars like these ones: straight sided, with screw-on lids, that I can put my jam in when I make it and that I can put labels on that I make myself, but they seem to be as rare as unicorns. (If anyone in Canada knows where I can buy such a thing, will you let me know? You can buy them online but the cost of shipping is the same as the jars themselves so it isn't worth it.)

But that is quite enough of that. I have housework to do.  There is a chance I may become more interesting again but for now, there is dusting to do and breakfast to make.

Pip pip!

NWM