Keeping the momentum going...

 
As usual, I forgot to take the before photo till I had already started clearing out.  
Terrible photo, but the hallway is very narrow.

I have gotten so much done during the past few days, and I've taken great pleasure at marking each task off my list as it was completed.  Since my post last Thursday about what I got done in that one day, I have kept at it.  I swear I have done more laundry in the past few days than I have in the past few months...I stopped counting at eleven loads.  And every single load was immediately folded or hung up and put away

I've cleaned out the refrigerator, then refilled it after planning the week's menu and ordering groceries.  

I have cleaned and descaled my countertop ice maker.

Both guest rooms have fresh linen, and are somewhat guest ready...if you consider that anyone who spends the night in my house either loves me enough not to care about a little clutter or can feel free not to return.  :)

I've completed my Cologuard test and shipped it back.

I've filled up the car with gasoline.

I've emptied the linen closet.

I moved all of its content to a clean guest bed (and a chair which isn't seen in the photo above), and went through every single item and filled two large boxes with things to donate...mostly sheet sets I didn't remember having and were not needed any longer, a number of sets of pillowcases still in their packages, a factory-made quilt that I only used for a Christmas tree skirt on occasion and even then didn't love, and seasonal kitchen towels that I always forgot to put in the kitchen during those seasons.  I've dropped off the donations at Goodwill.  

While I was there, I picked up five polo shirts for Carey that have front pockets (his preference).  Ones with pockets are hard to find new, but I found five in his size (including one from LL Bean and one from Land's End) that all looked nice and only very lightly worn, and were marked $6.99, but when I got to the register they were each $3.  Yay!  

Oh, from the linen closet I also found three packages of 100% cotton cloth napkins.  When I went to Kasey's for Mother's Day dinner, I took two of them with me, and talked with my grandchildren about how earth friendly cloth is over paper.  These were very well made, can just be tossed in with a load of towels to launder, and will basically last a lifetime.  Both sets were snagged by grandchildren.  

I also found cloth diapers that both of my children wore 40+ years ago, along with a few baby washcloths, and bibs that were my favorites as a mom.  I'll wait a few years before we have another talk about eco-friendly and sustainable products for babies before I offer these up.  :)

As if these items weren't enough, I found one additional item that came as a complete surprise!

We've lived in this house for fourteen years now, and neither Carey nor I had the least memory of there being an electrical outlet at the back of one of the shelves!  As seen above, I plugged in a lamp, and there was power.  I already have a new plan for this shelf.

I only got all of this accomplished, because Carey was away from home.  These are the kinds of projects that I used to do while he was away at work for a week at a time, and so not around to see the "worse before it gets better" parts of the projects.  Though I still have some final work to do in the linen closet, he missed all the chaos.

I'll show the closet 'after' photo eventually.  This week is going to be a very busy one in other ways.

Making a Mess Monday...

A few weeks ago Kasey came over to help me work on reorganizing the craft room/office (or let's be real, there was no 're' about it, it has never been organized).  At the end of the day, when we left off it looked like this...which from this angle does not look too bad...I mean comparatively.   But then I had a week of appointments, and a week of work, and it was today before we got back to it.

 Unfortunately, and as usual, things got worse before they can get better.  

 And it looks like it threw up all over the guest room...and to be honest, the kitchen, the dining room, and living room.

Kasey filled every square inch of her trunk with books and other donations to take to the Salvation Army.

 And I listed 1 file cabinet for sale.

And two small ones I listed for free.  And I will be listing other things for sale or free eventually.

Kasey starts her new job in a couple of weeks, so I am so appreciative of her willingness to spend some time helping me out.  I guarantee I would have given up already if I had been on my own in this.

I hope I can show you an 'after' photo before TOO much longer.

I'm exhausted...

Today is Tuesday...

This was supposed to be a 'making it Monday' post, but c'est la vie.

Just tellin' it like it is in this belated-birthday card I made a little while ago.  I will go put it in the mail in a bit...if I can psych myself up to walk to the mailbox.

Pretty much the only other thing I've been making lately is a giant mess!  I have the office/craft room torn completely up...to the point that it has spread to the kitchen and dining room...and then I twisted my knee yesterday which just slows down the process more.  ugh.

(Why, oh why, can't I just wiggle my nose and have everything neat and tidy?!)

I am trying to be brutal towards downsizing my book collection.  All those reference and how-to books are filled with information that can now be easily found on the internet.  The gardening books were pipe dreams, since I have never been a gardener, and their info, too, can be found online.  I kept a few very practical ones for Carey to choose from (he says that he may have a vegetable garden if I ever let him retire), and a couple of practical home remedy types...you know...in case TSHTF.  Fiction I haven't read thus far, and don't particularly have a strong desire to, are going.  I am keeping only ones I have read and love and could read over and over...again, in case TSHTF and I ever have to live without electricity or Kindle.  

I need more shelf space to put fabric on, so that it is easily found and accessed.  Then I need to rearrange the room so that I can have my sewing machine set up and usable at all times.  I need to get the clean up and organization finished and the machine in high gear!  I have a lifetime supply of fabric and a family to supply with quilts.  You may ask how I plan to sew if I have prepper fears of life without electricity?  I'm keeping my old treadle for my back up!  LOL

Sitting on the computer is not getting any progress made toward these goals.

Last closet post...I promise...

Well, at least till the next time it needs a major clean out.  :)  These posts are mainly for me; so I can refer back as needed as to what worked and what didn't.

Before:

 Half way there...before moving the hanging rods:

 After:

I love having the rods on the back wall of the closet.  Work clothes, long items (dresses and robes), and jackets on the right.  Casual tops hang on the top left, slacks and jeans hang on the bottom left.

 Right side:

 These cubbies were moved from the back wall to side wall at front of the closet.  I stacked them for vertical efficiency.  I ordered some bins online so I can use them as a dresser and they look neater than having the contents on view.  I still need to add labels so I can remember what is in each 'drawer.'

Left side:

The jury is still out on the shoe cubbies.  The openings are a little too small for a pair to slide in easily.  If they don't go in easy, I'm likely to leave them on the floor in a jumble, so it will take some self-discipline to keep them put away properly.

Its top makes a nice location for my jewelry box.  The hooks (top left) that were there when we bought the house make a good spot for necklaces to hang tangle free, and handy to see and grab.  I also had Carey leave the rod in place on this side of the closet, specifically to hang damp 'delicates' till they are dry and can be put away...no more leaving them hanging above the dryer in the laundry room where a drop-in guest would see them on entering and exiting the house.

It feels so good to have the wardrobe culled of things I never wear.  And I can't tell you how good it feels to be able to actually walk in to my walk-in closet.  It doesn't feel like a scary dark tunnel anymore.  :)

Closet clean out progress...

Last week I said I was going to be cleaning out my closet...again.

Straight off, let me tell you that this first photo was the 'before' photo from a couple of years ago when I did a previous closet clean out.  One of the things that drove me the craziest was the little cubby type shelves on the back wall...the ones the big white arrows are pointing to.  Uh-huh...didn't see them back there did ya?  The tall one in the center is built in and it's okay, but the little ones I brought with me from another room in another house, and they just were never accessible due to clothing hanging in front of them.  

 In fact, they weren't really even visible except when the closet was empty.  LOL

Work has been slow on the closet.  I had a headache all weekend.  And I had a little girl come spend the afternoon with me on Saturday.

This is the closet so far.  I have moved the four small shelves off of the back wall, and they now are installed just inside the right-hand door.  I also stacked them, so now they make two tall shelves instead of four short ones.

On the left, just inside the other door, I stacked two shoe cubbies.

When Carey gets home, I'm hoping that he will relocate the hanging rods for me.  He has promised awhile back that he would, he's just been waiting for me to make some working room for him.  

Instead of the rods hanging parallel to the side walls, I want them to hang across the back wall on either side of the tall shelf unit.   I think I have reduced my wardrobe enough to fit on shorter rods across the back, and I think **hope** that with the clothes hanging at the back I won't get that claustrophobic tunnel-like effect that I abhor.

While taking a break from my closet clean out, I was viewing an article on closet organization where I found a link to Project 333.  It is a minimalist fashion challenge to limit your wardrobe to 33 items or less for 3 months.  Apparently the 33 items do not include workout clothing, underwear, sleepwear, or outerwear; though I would imagine anyone participating in the challenge would cut back on those items as well.  Interesting concept.  I don't think I'm down that far, but I do think I donated about as much as I kept.

In the same article, I found a link to an interesting read on The Science of Simplicity which discusses decision fatigue.  Apparently when repeatedly faced with making numerous, albeit irrelevant, decisions, one's productivity suffers.  You may or may not have noticed that some very successful people have taken the decision of what to wear out of their day-to-day routine and simplified their everyday wardrobes to somewhat of a uniform.  Some of these include President Obama (he wears only blue or gray suits), Mark Zuckerberg (gray t-shirt, black hoodie, and jeans), Vera Wang (black top and jeans), and the late Steve Jobs (black turtleneck and jeans) and Albert Einstein (gray suits).

Maybe a properly simplified wardrobe/closet will spur me on to greater productivity!  One can only hope.

Chaos here, chaos there, chaos, chaos everywhere...

As if my entire house were not in enough chaos, what with the kitchen remodel and having to cook in the laundry room, it now looks like my closet has exploded all over my bedroom.

My closet has been beyond insanity inducing for way too long.  I never have found an adequate arrangement.  You can see my last clean out here.  I was happy with it for awhile, but still it just wasn't a comfortable fit.

I had to work today, but when I got home I decided to take advantage of Carey being gone for a few days, and I just started emptying it out.  I'll finish clearing it out after work tomorrow.  Then on the weekend I will sort through everything before putting a drastically reduced inventory back in.  I am going to donate the majority of my 'work' clothes.  Now that I'm only working sporadically, usually never more than 2 or 3 days in any given week, I do not need to have as many different outfits as when I was full time.  

And of my casual clothes, I am only going to keep what I really like.

There.  It's written down.  Hold me to it.

Kitchen prep...

I've hinted a little, but I'll come right out and say it.  We are about to begin a kitchen remodel.  They've measured the kitchen, and we've chosen the cabinets.  We will hopefully put the order in later this week, after which there is about a five-week wait for them to be delivered.  After they are installed, we begin another wait time for the counter tops.  I haven't chosen those yet.  In the meantime, Carey will begin removing the current cabinets and appliances.   We could be without a kitchen for a LONG time.

I don't want to spend all that time eating out.  Luckily we have a sink in the laundry room.  So my plan is to put the microwave and the slow cooker in the laundry, and have that be my interim kitchen space.  There's not a lot of counter top in there, so cooking from scratch wouldn't be all that easy.

Like a good little prepper, I have begun preparing meals ahead.  Last week I cleaned out and defrosted the chest freezer.  (I've been trying to use up things from it for awhile, so everything left fit in the refrigerator's freezer section.)  I also planned exactly what I would be cooking to fill it back up and made a shopping list.  Friday I did a gigantic shopping trip.

I filled up all the pantry staples.  Do you cut the cooking instructions off the package and put them in the canister so they don't get lost?  My mother taught me that handy tip an eon ago.

So far I've made 3 batches of Beef and Vegetable Soup.  We will just have to open the bag, pour it in the slow cooker, and add a large container of V8.

I've also assembled and packaged:

3 batches of Jambalaya Casserole

2 batches of Jalapeno Lime Chicken (thanks for the suggestion on that one, LB).  

6 batches of cooked rice to accompany main dishes

5 pounds of cooked ground beef for later use

Tomorrow (and Thursday) I have to work, so I won't be back in the kitchen until Wednesday.  I've still got so much to do!

For good measure...

Today is the family Sunday dinner at Kasey's, and I am baking.  

My current kitchen is SO hard to work in.  It is pretty large, but the cabinets and their arrangement were decided on by someone who never cooked a meal in their life.  Hopefully we will remedy that someday soon, but until we do, I am always looking for my tools that get stashed in illogical places (my husband is a great helper around the house, but I hate it when he unloads the dishwasher!)

I'm not much of a gadget person.  I would rather have a good knife and cutting board than I would a cabinet full of choppers, shavers, or slicers.  I want the smallest, simplest tool to get the job done...less to wash and less to store.

Over the years, I have tried and discarded measuring cups and measuring spoons that didn't make the grade.  The green one above is my ALL TIME favorite!  It is silicone, and its four sides include a Tablespoon, teaspoon, 1/2 teaspoon, and 1/4 teaspoon all in one piece!  No searching in the drawer for the right size...I just grab the green one and know I have whichever I may need.

The stainless steel spoon behind it is actually one of my newest set of measuring cups.  The one pictured is a 1/2 cup scoop.  Each of the set fit through the opening of the jars that I keep flour, sugar, etc. in, and they are easy to level.  They also have long handles that allow me to reach deep into the jars.  

The matryoshka dolls are also a set of measuring cups.   They make it a little tricky to find the one you want...you have to keep opening dolls to find one of the smaller sizes you might need...but they are so cute that I keep them out on my kitchen windowsill instead of hidden away in a drawer.  I use the stainless steel scoops more often, but the matryoshkas make me smile.

Relocated and re-appreciated...

This is my laundry room.  I love the size.  I love that it has a sink.  And that's about all.  

What aggravates me is that this is the first impression everyone has of my house, because no one EVER uses the front door.  When anyone comes in, on the left they walk first past the water heater (not in photo)...then the water softener (also not in photo)...then the small chest freezer...not to mention the washer and dryer on the right.  It's an appliance alley.

I also have an antique hall tree parked in here, because there isn't really an appropriate spot for it elsewhere in the house, and my husband thinks he should actually get to use it...imagine!  I think it was my gift to him on our tenth anniversary.  It looks completely out of place in here, and so that aggravates me too.

The laundry room looks a little better than usual  tonight though.  Why?  Because this morning there were shelves there that made it look even messier.  They were there when we moved in, and they were nice and sturdy, but...

This is where the shelves were this morning when, on my way out the door as I left for work, I mentioned in passing to my husband that I would really like him to move them to the guest room closet sometime.  No hurry. 

I wonder if I was out of the driveway before he had the tools out?  Sometime I really need to do a blog post about the theory that opposites attract, because that man is a do-it-now dude, and I am a procrastinating Pearl.

When I got home tonight, I walked right through the laundry room without even missing them.  He had to tell me that they were already installed in the closet...see?  Awesome, huh?

I am tickled pink to have a space that is less public to use for organized storage.  The closet already had the tall built-in shelves in the center and up high on each side.

And it still has plenty of room to hang out-of-season or guests' clothing.

So one last look at the laundry room:

I'm thinking it needs a makeover in the near future.  Maybe I should mention THAT to my husband.

Stay tuned.

Paying bills...

I just finished paying bills.  I hate paying bills.  Does anyone like to?

The photo above is of a checklist I created a few years ago.  I tweak it at the beginning of every year.  (This is a blank version.  My actual one is filled in up to April, but I felt weird about showing the actual payments.)  I used to actually print out a hard copy and fill it in by hand.  This year I just save it on my desktop and fill it out on the computer.  It's not perfect, but it keeps things from falling through the cracks.

Since I left full-time employment at the beginning of the year, I've had cash flow on my mind.  I was kind of worried about it.  But I've been home one week, and I've already been booked to work seven days (basically as a temp in different branches with my same company I've been with for 12 plus years).  I've accepted each assignment, because I never know when the next request will come along.  But I am needing to get some big tasks done around the house, so if the requests slow down for awhile, it would not upset me at this point.

A very productive weekend..

A five minute post, and yet another closet.  Though the Christmas decorations have been down for a month or so, I didn't want to pack them all away in the same haphazard way they were when I took them all out, so they've been sitting waiting for some organizing.

The new tree purchased a couple of years ago didn't fit in the nice, permanent storage box that the previous one did.  So for now this tree is still in its over-sized cardboard box.  Which meant that all the storage boxes that worked before didn't any longer.

I had been wanting to separate and pack more carefully anyway, and get rid of a lot of the unused decorations and  cardboard boxes in the process, so after measuring and planning, I bought multiples of stackable plastic storage boxes this afternoon.  All blown glass ornaments in one, all handmade felt ornaments in another.  The Christmas village and the creche are on the tippy-top shelf not seen in the photo.  

The shelving seen on the right side of the photo now has a season's decorations on each shelf: Easter, summer, Halloween, and Autumn/Thanksgiving.

It's not perfect, but it's much better than it was.  And I am THRILLED with all the projects completed, the chores that got scratched off the old To-Do list, and the CARLOAD of donations that were taken out of the house this weekend!

Out of the closet...

When we were house shopping, and toured this house, the closets scared me.  This is my closet.  Carey's is exactly like it, and right across from it.  Each of the other two bedrooms have a single closet which is slightly smaller, but with the same tall shelf and hanging rod arrangement.

What's so scary you say?  If you were to combine Carey's closet and my closet, together they would be about one-third the size of the closet we shared in our previous house.  I figured I could adjust, so it wasn't a deal breaker.  But it is rather...close.  The width is 5 foot 8 inches (173 centimeters), the depth is 4 feet (122 centimeters).  

The small shelves were ones I used in my craft room at the old house, but couldn't use them in the same way here, so I tried them in the closet, and they fit to within a fraction of an inch.

Today I found myself with no appointments, no obligations, and no excuses not to get busy around the house!  So I decided to work on what has been bothering me every time I open the closet door.

You must have guessed by now that I had some kind of nightmare to show you, so here it is.  It's not really, REALLY horrible, but there is quite a bit of stuff that doesn't belong that had found its way in there.  And my shoe storage definitely was not working for me.  Plus there was just too many clothes crammed in there.

Just for fun, here's a peek at Carey's closet.  Sometimes I hate him.  But to be fair (to me) his work clothes stay at work.  And to be really fair (to him), I have to admit that if he brought them home, he would still have room to spare.

Meanwhile, across the way I set about emptying my whole closet out.  I took out every stitch of clothing and every pair of shoes.  I moved the linens to the linen closet which, truth be told, needs a makeover of its own.  

I moved a decorative hanging shelf that had been taking up space in there for FAR too long.  And there were some other decorative items that had been stored there 'temporarily' that needed to find new homes.  There were some curtain panels (still in their packages) on the shelves, and some curtain rods standing in one corner.  

I took out this hanging sweater stack.  This is the second and last one of these that I'll invest in.  They just don't work for me.  They always just seem to collect messy piles of junk.

Everything was placed either on my bed, or hung on a portable laundry rack.  Finally it was as empty as the very first time I saw it, and I vacuumed and dusted.

I sorted out, and filled two big boxes for Goodwill.  I threw away anything with a hole in it.  I tossed packaging and cheap plastic hangers that things had come home from the store on.  Then I put everything worth keeping back in.  

For comparison, here's the 'BEFORE' again.

And now the 'AFTER.'

Ahhhh...  SO much better.  All work clothing on the right, and everything else on the left.

And look at all the empty hangers!

I'm seriously considering getting rid of all my work outfits and buying five white tanks, five blank tanks, and five pair of black slacks.  Then only keeping/purchasing jackets that can be worn over them.  It would surely simplify storage, laundry, and outfit selection.