Entirely Adequate

The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.

Day 70: Vacuumed the living room furniture. Even though I’ve discovered that Yin, who died back in September, was responsible for approximately 75 percent of the cat hair in the house despite his smaller stature, Yang’s still doing a great job of dusting the house with light gray fur.

Saturday, Day 71: I finalized my ScanCafe order online. Thus ends to saga of the latest box of photos cleared out of the closet for digitization.

Day 72: Sometimes, minor household emergencies lead unexpected organizational advances. I noticed a weird dark stain on the bottom of one of the pantry shelves; upon further investigation, I found that a can of Pam cooking spray had let loose and dribbled for no telling how long, leaving an oblong puddle on the shelf.

I cleared everything off of the shelf, sopped up the puddle and sprinkled baking soda all over the stain to try to soak up some of the spray. After I vacuumed up the baking soda a few hours later and started putting things back, I rediscovered a dirty little secret of closet and cabinet organization: Once you’ve completely cleared out a space, it’s hard to fill it back up. I tossed a couple of bottles of miscellaneous spice blends that I had been gifted with a couple of years ago, along with some bouillon cubes that had expired in 2007 (although, you might ask yourself, can bouillon cubes ever really expire?) and a few other items.

It’s pretty fulfilling, overall, to know exactly what’s on a pantry shelf.

Day 73: Repeated Day 72’s pantry clean-out protocol with another pantry shelf. This take-no-prisoners organizational strategy is totally working for me.

Day 74: Started prepping for the mother-in-law’s upcoming visit by purchasing duvet clips for the new duvet and duvet cover I found for the guest room last week.