Saturdays

I try to keep Saturdays pretty free from assigned tasks. The only two tasks I want to be sure are done during the weekend is having everyone empty their shoes out of the shoe basket and a swish & swipe. That way if we have plans, I don't feel like I'm falling behind. If we don't have plans then I can tackle a bigger project, catch up, or just hang out. Sometime during the weekend someone in the family does a swish & swipe. The first weekend of the month it's my husband, the second it's myself, the third it's my daughter, the fourth it's my son. We have been doing it this way for a couple months and the kids have actually been really cooperative. My daughter, who is 6, does a pretty good job. I accept with my son that he probably won't do a very good job...yet. What I'm doing is allowing him to get a little practice. If I do it on Tuesday and Thursday of that week it doesn't matter if it's not done very well on Saturday. My husband has yet to swish & swipe but, to be fair, I only mentioned it once and either haven't reminded him on his weekend or he was gone.

Today I did my dailies but none of the weekend tasks got completed. The kids had a lot of extra jobs to complete (due to their horrible bedtime behavior this week) and I wanted to tackle a big job. The oven. I have never cleaned the oven in this house. I don't remember ever cleaning any oven. One of my favorite podcasts is Vicky and Jen. In one of the recent episodes Jen said she never cleaned an oven. Vicky thought she meant used the self cleaner. She repeated, she had never cleaned an oven. I thought, "Me either, is that a big deal?" About that same time some of the junk in the bottom of the oven actually caught fire. Yes, I had a fire in my oven. I realized I had to do something. Being the procrastinator I am, I didn't do it right away. Then I saw two blog posts on A Bowl Full of Lemons about cleaning the oven using this Shaklee product, Scour Off. I'm trying to be greener so this Scour Off product sounded like a good idea. Plus, Toni gives you free shipping on your first order so I thought, why not?

I got the product on Thursday and couldn't wait to use it. Today was the day.

You need to know that earlier in the week I had already worked on the oven a little. That means, believe it or not, it actually looked worse than this. Here are the before pictures:



The white at the bottom of the oven is the baking soda I used to put out the fire.



While the door looks bad here, it was worse earlier in the week. The window was much more covered.




This is the oven thermometer. It's very hard to read. I don't know how this happened, though. Nothing ever spilled on it. I guess the disgust from the rest of the oven just seeped onto it.

Here are the after pictures:




Not perfect, but much better.




My son said, I didn't know we had a mirror on there. (The window looks like a mirror because you can't see out of it as well as you can see in.)




This is the really impressive part. The picture isn't clear because I couldn't use my flash but you get the idea. I'm guessing my oven would have cleaned up much easier if the yuck hadn't been baked on for so many years.

My after pictures don't look quite as good as this from Clean Mama or this from A Bowl Full of Lemons but I'm just taking a wild guess that Toni and Clean Mama have cleaned their oven some time in the last ten years. Also, I ran out of Scour Off. I started applying on the sides and back, which I now know was a mistake. I should have started on the worst part first. Plus, I ran out of time. I had to leave before I was finished. I'm going to get some more and try to finish it up. I'm a little obsessive so while it was ok with me not to clean my oven for ten years, now I feel the need to get it spotless right away.