31 Days ~Day 4

Welcome to day 4. I started this day trying to tease my boys that it's Star Wars Day (May the fourth be with you...) yeah, poor kids.

So today's challenge was timely~ To clean the microwave and oven, inside and out. Here's the story...

The other night, my hubby was being so sweet by baking a pepperoni pizza. This was great and it gave me a night off from cooking. Last night I made some white bean chicken chili and thought that corn bread would be lovely as a side. My 7 year old did a great job preparing the cornbread. I had the oven pre-heating as I was stirring the chili. Every time I walked over to stir the pot I thought to myself "why does it smell like a BBQ?" And at one point I thought "hmmm, smells like the neighbor is BBQing hot dogs or something." I did have the kitchen window open over my sink. But I haven't smelled any BBQ coming from that yard in a while. So it really struck me. Back to the cornbread. I opened the oven door to put the nicely prepared dish in to bake, when what did I see but a flame go WHOOF when I let the fresh air into the oven. There, on the bottom of the oven, was a chunk of pepperoni pizza, at least that's what it was at one time. Now it was a black piece of charcoal on the bottom of the oven, with about a 4" flame rising up. I closed the door, grabbed one small handful of baking soda, opened the door and found that to be an effective end to the drama. I reached inside with salad tongs and pulled the char out and tossing it in the sink where a bowl of water was ready to receive it. It was a great lesson for my son. He learned about fire and baking soda. Also, we're learning about the water cycle, so he saw steam come up from the 'pizza' in the bowl. We talked about that just today, in fact. Hey, you gotta take everything and make it a lesson when you homeschool, right?

So, today's challenge to clean the inside of the oven came at a good time. Other than that, the oven wasn't in too bad of shape. I had been wanting to clean the glass on the front anyway. So this was a good time to do it. While cleaning, the sink turned into quite a mess. So I worked at scrubbing that with a bit more elbow grease than normal. Then I cleaned the microwave and toaster oven. While I was at it, the top of the garbages looked grimey, it's what I get for buying white ones, yes? So I cleaned those. Then the door to the back yard looked sad, too. So it got a quick wipe down. A little ADD? Yup!

In addition, Wednesdays are my dust, vacuum, mop days. So I got all that done, as well.

The Mary challenge, I'm still going to have to work on. I haven't even had the time to consider it and honestly I'm about to throw a hat on and leave for the evening. What's on the ageneda? My hubby and I get to clean at his work tonight. I do walk on the wild side. :)

How is the challenge going for you? I found a great link today for the 31 Days to Clean calendar! This way you can post it and have it handy all month long. The only thing missing are the Mary challenges. But you can look those up in the book. Here's the link! http://www.4shared.com/document/8KtghJaP/31_Days_to_Clean_Calendar.html

Happy cleaning!