5 January 2012 Spring Cleaning Continued minus the vacuum cleaner :(

Continuing with my Summer cleaning, I'm finding it's easier to keep on a roll once you have started and are motivated.  The amusing thing is that my children are hiding in case they are asked to help.  However, it turns out I can bribe them with lolly rewards, or computer time ;D

 This larger visitor scared the living daylights out of my daughter, who was trying to be very helpful and put some things in our recycling bin.  Perhaps this is our resident female who usually lives near the front steps of our porch and in previous years has sat on the steps in the sun.  She was a bit friendlier than the smaller visitor we had, but was still very skittish, which is probably a good thing in my opinion!

 We gave her some raw chicken, but she was very cautious of us, and rightly so!  Not all humans like blue tongue lizards, and some even try to kill them :(  They are very welcome in my garden though!!

 A bit random for this post, but I learned from my Mother-in-Law how to keep lettuce really crisp in your fridge.  My husband loves really crunchy lettuce, so he asked her exactly how she does it.  First, you remove the stalk with a serrated knife.  Fill the hole with water, and keep the whole lettuce under the tap for about 15 seconds (with the water running into where you just cut the stalk out).  Turn it over and give it a shake or two (there will still be a little bit of water in it - only a little), then into a Tupperware container it goes.  The lettuce stays crisp for weeks!

 Sadly, my vacuum cleaner has well and truly died.  It keeps turning itself off :(  I don't think it's worth repairing, and even though it's not really old (it's probably right on 5 years now), I have certainly gotten good use out of it.  It's a shame it died rather suddenly without any warning.  I'd love to get a Dyson next, but I'll have to start saving furiously when I begin teaching.  Hubby thought Dysons were a few hundred dollars.  Um...no.

 My current tools of the trade

 The current tools are doing a rather good job though.  My vacuum cleaner died before I could even vacuum properly after Christmas so out with the broom it was, and although it is a pain to have to sweep, it's probably no harder physically than having to push a cyclonic vacuum cleaner around. 

The blue rug had tinsel and bits of ribbon and string and, well, 'stuff' all over it, but the broom made light work of cleaning it.

 My kitchen floor not looking too bad either, thanks to the broom and dustpan.

 More Summer cleaning.  We got stuck into my son's room.  We washed his sheets, picked all the stuff off the floor and spent an hour cleaning all the paraphernalia off his desk.  We ended up with three garbage bags full of goodness knows what.  Shame I can't vacuum the floor for a bit though!

...but it is a very tidy looking floor!

:D