Here is what you do not want to hear first thing in the morning: “Mom, the cats left the freezer door open all night.”
“The cats?” I said, not hiding the incredulity in my voice.
“Yeah, it must have been them, because, uh, it wasn’t me.”
Me, thinking. “Hmmm. Didn’t you get a pizza out of the freezer for me last night?”
“Oh, yeah, but I told my brother to close it. I said, ‘Hey, close the freezer!'”
Only, his brother did not. Nor did he. (They blamed the cats, though, so you have to give them points for creativity.)
So, today? Meatballs, a lot of meatballs, are in the crockpot, cooking with barbecue sauce slathered on them. And in the refrigerator? Halibut thawing! And for breakfast? Waffles, waffles for everyone because, hello, did you see the thirty thawed waffles? (Costco, how I love your super-sized packages, until, of course, they thaw in a household accident.)
Lucky for me, the freezer was rather empty. I did have to toss two unopened packages of Skinny Cow ice cream bars, purchased on sale. And quite a few melted popsicles, a giant package of vegetables, two pie crusts and a couple of frozen dinners. The whole chicken and packages of salmon and cod were still pretty much frozen so I moved them to the small freezer in the kitchen.
So, I spent my morning letting the freezer defrost completely, wiped it out and now it’s cold and ready for new frozen goods. See? I am industrious! I deserve a homemaking award. (Just move aside that laundry basket on the couch and step over those toys and let me wipe off that sticky stuff on the table and by all means, come in, come in!)
If the kids didn’t leave the freezer door open from time to time, I’d probably never get around to defrosting that freezer.
This afternoon, my daughter is leaving (again!) with her little friend. They’re going to run through the sprinkler at his house all afternoon. While she’s gone, I’m going to clean her room, using my secret weapon, the large, black trash bag. It must be large to handle the load, and it must be black to hide the stash! Otherwise, children will reclaim items they haven’t touched in approximately 67 weeks.
Now, I’m going back to my Diet Coke and the newspaper so I can mentally prepare for the bedroom cleansing.
Actual Unretouched Photo 
Oh Mel! One of my favorite things to do is wait till the first day of school and slink into the boys rooms wtih a very large, also black and non see-through, bag and I am usually giddy with delight at going through and throwing away and/or giving away the entire summers worth of things they will never miss. It takes very little to make me happy 🙂
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Those Skinny Cow bars are awesome. So sorry you lost them in the incident.
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Oh, I just cleaned out toys as well. I put them in a big brown box. We have boxes everywhere right now so it blended in and they were none the wiser. It felt soooooo good!
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I love it. One of my Mom’s favorite stories to tell is …when I was little my Dad was an architect, he had a drawing board in the living room. Well one time Dad came home to some “extras” on his “drawings” and Mom said “Who drew on Daddy’s drawing?” (you see Daddy was tooooo angry to ask me, and at the time I was an only child). And with all the honest in my face, I looked up and said “Daddy did it Mom, he made the crayon marks on his drawings”. Well by God’s grace, I really don’t know what happened after that. But at least they can laugh about it now =))
But the cats did it? That is hysterical!! I just have this vision of little cats clawing their way into the freezer. Ha!!
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I’m very accustomed to finger pointing but so far not at our assortment of cats. Hysterical.
We clean their rooms the same way you do. What they don’t see, they won’t miss. I do the same thing when we switch from summer to winter clothing. Sort while they’re gone and we try on what’s left.
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I have to actually load the black trash bags on the truck and take them on to the landfill. My industrious kiddoes have been known to search through those trash bags and rescue long lost treasures.
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The cats did it. Too funny. Makes me want to go check our little freezer that sits in the garage. I hope you know that means I have to shuffle my bonbons and laptop out of the way, crawl out of our wonderful bed, find my beautiful silk robe with matching slippers, lined in mink. Put on my brand name sunglasses just so I can walk to the garage & look to see that the door better be closed.
And a happy Saturday morning to you. {grins}
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I laughed outloud at your secret weapon for cleaning. I do the same. Oh, that’s funny.
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You have some very clever kitties to be able to open a heavy freezer door!
When my son was very little he snuck into the kitchen for some left over ham in the middle of the night. When the plate of ham fell and his Dad and I went running to the kitchen to see what was going on, here is this sweet little 3 or 4 year old redheaded boy standing over a plate of ham on the floor. When we asked him what happened he very politely says “I don’t know! I woke up cuz the ham fell out of the refrigerator.”
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Hard to believe while that cats were in there they didn’t take out the Halibut out themselves.
Mel, I really enjoying stopping by your blog for a visit. It always gives me a lift.
Thanks!
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My cats did it too! Actually, they really liked swatting at the blinking light on the answering machine (you know, the huge ones from the late 80’s) and would listen to messages and from time to time would step on the “delete” button…
The black garbage bag is awesome. I do the same to my 11-yo daughter’s room… she’s a worse pack rat than my gramma ever was (and that’s saying a lot!). Thanks for the giggles! 🙂
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