How To Clean the Kitchen: A Soap Opera in Three Acts

ACT 1: The Slippery Slope

I stepped up to the kitchen sink one morning a couple of weeks ago and my foot came down on something gooey and slippery. I looked down and saw a white-ish gelatinous mass right at the hinge corner of the under-sink cupboard door.

Puzzled, I thought perhaps my spouse had been pouring something into the grease can and missed – but when I grabbed a dampened paper towel and started to wipe at it, it foamed.

“Did we spill some liquid dish soap down here?” I asked (diplomatically, I might add. Notice the “we.”)

“Not that I know of,” he said from the table where he was munching his breakfast bagel. “Why?”

I opened the door to throw the soggy paper towel into the trash, and spotted an equally gooey pile of the stuff next to the trash bin. Taking a step off the foot mat, I found myself sliding across the floor.

“We have a problem,” I reported. I took off my house shoe and limped to the bathroom, where I washed it in the sink and set it aside to dry.

We had just put a new gallon-sized bottle of liquid soap under the sink. It had sat on the garage pantry shelf for some time, and had not exhibited any leaks. However, Gary pulled it out and we put it on a tray, and sure enough it drooled some soap. We found a very small split in the bottom. Somehow it had been set on something that poked a hole in it.

I had been saying for weeks that we needed to clean out under the sink again – the liner was getting wrinkled and soiled and we hadn’t cleaned to the back of the cupboard for some time. So Gary took everything out – which included unscrewing and removing the slide-out trash bin and drawer, and it got a thorough cleaning.

Be careful what you wish for!

ACT 2: Melt-Down

I had also been saying that I needed to clean out the side-by-side freezer-refrigerator.  So last week we invited some friends about to depart the country for a few months for a bon-voyage supper. We started out with some wine and snacks, and then as I reached into the freezer for a final item in my supper preparation, I saw that the ice compartment was dripping. I poked a package of frozen veggies and discovered that it was getting soft. Uh-oh.

                                                      An image from an altered book.  

I didn’t want to upset the dinner party, so I maintained silence about the drips, but I found myself growing more and more anxious as the evening wore on. As soon as we had wished our guests bon voyage and shut the door, I said:

“We have a problem.”   

                                                                                                                                                                              

Investigation revealed that the freezer was not working and we rushed madly around to save the food. Of course I had been to the store that morning – the one where I can save a lot of money on certain things, but it’s at quite a distance from home so I go about every two months and stock up, putting a lot of things in the upright freezer out in the garage. So we crammed what we could in there. Fortunately, we had kept the fridge in the downstairs kitchen that was my mother’s before she passed away – it has become the “beer and backup” refrigerator so we filled the small top freezer in that.

We retired around midnight, hoping that the refrigerator side was still working.

Morning light, and I checked the refrigerator. Nope, the chill was departing from the fridge side, too. I stuck my head into the bedroom where Gary was still snoozing, and said:

“We have a problem.”

There was another rush to remove the beer and sodas from the downstairs fridge and load it with stuff from the kitchen. (Needless to say, I pitched things from both the freezer and the fridge as we unloaded our malfunctioning unit. Nothing had yet grown legs, but some of it was iffy.)

Gary made a call to Sears for a repairman, and obtained an appointment made for the following day. I had already been online checking out new refrigerators, and after some discussion we agreed that we should go check some out “just in case” we had to replace ours.

In fact, we found one that we liked on sale – a French-door bottom freezer unit that looked much more accommodating than the current one. After a good deal of discussion over lunch, reciting our previous appliance repair experiences in terms of both money and time, we decided to just buy the new one before the sale was over (the following day in fact) and let them haul away the dying monument to arctic failure.  

So OK – it was an expensive way to clean out the fridge. Be careful what you wish for.

ACT 3

I have been saying that I need to clean out the kitchen pantry. Nothing has happened yet, but I have a feeling I should get to it before it experiences spontaneous combustion or before something in there takes on a life of its own. Meanwhile, I’m holding my tongue, careful for what I wish for.