Prepared for the New Year

Uh OHHH…

I goofed and see I posted this on the wrong date. I meant to have this post tomorrow. Sigh…

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We were a little behind on getting ready for the New Year. However, one of the chores we did get done was cleaning the refrigerators. Yes, we have two refrigerators. Many people in Hawaii do, because it's so warm and humid here. We don't turn on the air conditioners unless absolutely necessary.

Since we hate to throw out anything, our fridge gets rather crowded. So cleaning it out before the New Year is always something we try to do.

Yes I was wearing a cardigan. It was a cool 63 degrees F that morning.

Uuumm... There was a bottle of sesame seeds from 2021. It was probably petrified. I had to toss that. 

But what I really had to do was organize all the things we had to store.

One of the major things were all the treats we'd gotten from our very generous, excellent bakers and cooks we have for neighbors. 

There's also a particular friend who bakes the most unbelievably delicious, crispy Rice Krispies cookies during the holidays. They are coveted by everyone. We do not eat them all at once like somebody I know does (you 😂 know who you are). I freeze them and we savor them for a month slowly... very slowly.

We eat what we can of all the treats during the holidays and what can be frozen is dated and stored. 

Mom has also brought home a lot of treats from the Senior Center so I dole those out to her carefully. I have to watch her sugar intake, but the doctor told me that at 94, I should let her have what she likes within reason.

OK, the refrigerators are ready for 2024.

But then there's this sink caulking that's been bothering us for quite a while. The caulking between the counter and stainless sink has developed this black gunky moldy thing. When we had the sink installed some 15 years ago, they recommended this style because we were told you would not know what was growing beneath the counter if it was hidden. OK, now we know but it's rather unsightly to us.

What to do... what to do...

We decided to replace the caulk since I had a lot a latex caulk left over from the termite war. I'm not done with that yet, but anyway, I had the caulk available so I figured this was a good time to finally take care of this. 

Art warned me not to use a metal scraper because it could scratch the stainless steel. I happened to have a teflon knife so I used it to scrape out the yucky grout.

I looked online and discovered that you're not supposed to use latex caulk so there was a trip to Home Depot to get silicone caulk. Thank goodness for technology!

Once that was done, I used painter's tape on the stainless steel. I SHOULD have put it on the counter also. 🙄

Art then applied the silicone caulk which I smoothed over with my finger. Yuck!

The tube said 30 minute water ready, BUT you're not supposed to touch it for 24 hours. 😖

It's hard to do anything in the kitchen if you have to be careful about touching the caulk.

We told mom not to do anything at the sink, but we knew she'd forget so we taped everything up since she wakes up at 4:30 and might try to start cooking her oatmeal. 

I put up a sign saying we would be buying breakfast so she was very happy to wait for a McDonald's treat.

This was a much bigger project than I thought it would be, BUT I'm happy we're going into the new year with a mold-free sink.

For now...