Olivia is one of my best little helpers. She loves being useful around the house and doing chores. She also helps with laundry and cleaning up her toys.
Showing posts with label home keeping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home keeping. Show all posts
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Mommy Scam
Not only did I just pull off a great deal, I think I just pulled off the best Mommy Scam ever!
Amelia and I have been "trying out" vacuums for weeks. To keep her close to me as I shopped around, I always let her try and push the vacuum back and forth and asked her if she liked it or not. Sometimes she would tell me "too hebby, momma"... or she'd keep on pushing it down the aisle until the cord yanked her back. All in the spirit of keeping her cheerful and involved while I was trying to decide, I asked her opinion on colors, sizes, you name it.
So when I finally picked up the funky purple vacuum with a ball that makes the vacuum pivot last night, she was really tired of vacuums and wanted to go home. SO I said, "tonight is the night we buy your favorite vacuum! Mommy's buying you a vacuum cleaner tonight!!!"
To which she replied, "Oh, OK!! LET'S GO!!!!!!"
Seriously. She said that.
So off we went and came home with it. She was jonesing all today for me to open it up and when we finally did she was dancing around, singing, "YAY YAY!! MY BAKUME CLEANER!! " She could hardly wait to vacuum. And she did - the whole front hallway. My sweet two year old... brought a tear to my eye. She was so diligent! I was helpful too... I kept pointing out spots she missed and WAHOOOO if she didn't go back and get them.
That makes it officially worth every penny. If I can just keep this up until she's out the door to college, one of my dreaded chores will be just a distant memory. hee hee heee
Amelia and I have been "trying out" vacuums for weeks. To keep her close to me as I shopped around, I always let her try and push the vacuum back and forth and asked her if she liked it or not. Sometimes she would tell me "too hebby, momma"... or she'd keep on pushing it down the aisle until the cord yanked her back. All in the spirit of keeping her cheerful and involved while I was trying to decide, I asked her opinion on colors, sizes, you name it.
So when I finally picked up the funky purple vacuum with a ball that makes the vacuum pivot last night, she was really tired of vacuums and wanted to go home. SO I said, "tonight is the night we buy your favorite vacuum! Mommy's buying you a vacuum cleaner tonight!!!"
To which she replied, "Oh, OK!! LET'S GO!!!!!!"
Seriously. She said that.
So off we went and came home with it. She was jonesing all today for me to open it up and when we finally did she was dancing around, singing, "YAY YAY!! MY BAKUME CLEANER!! " She could hardly wait to vacuum. And she did - the whole front hallway. My sweet two year old... brought a tear to my eye. She was so diligent! I was helpful too... I kept pointing out spots she missed and WAHOOOO if she didn't go back and get them.
That makes it officially worth every penny. If I can just keep this up until she's out the door to college, one of my dreaded chores will be just a distant memory. hee hee heee
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Texas Hallway
This is our Texas Hallway... That quilt was made by JJ; that mirror was a wedding present from Nana; the book on the chair was a gift from one of my chef apprentices; that's my gardening hat that I bought when we were stationed in San Diego at the Farmer's Market with one of my best friends, Kim; and I have no idea where that chair came from!
You can't see it but there is are two pieces of American Indian art in the hall, around the corner. Eventually I plan to have more pictures of Rafe's family along the walls. I have a framed picture that I took of Rafe and his dad that I will put up there.
Recently I realized I take pictures all the time, but never actually print them. So the only pictures I have in frames are my sister's kids because she prints doubles and gives some to me. That will change as I get more organized. I have some great pictures of Grandma Willie's farmhouse that I want to put up there, along with other family pictures. I have one that I took of all of Rafe's family together that I want to put there. I need to find some "texas" style frames that don't look too cheesy. I'm as terrible at decorating as I am at organizing.
I think the place needs paint. But then I'd have to paint it over again when we move, so I'm not sure.
Surprise!
Rafe, I am so excited you are coming home!
I know you like to anticipate good things, so this is for you!
The tape is for Amelia. We usually watch a movie on Sundays, and I got tired of telling her she was too close to the TV every five minutes. I realized she had no clue what "too close" was, so I gave her a visual. She's really great about not getting past that line when she's watching.
Short Daddy and Tall Daddy
The tape is for Amelia. We usually watch a movie on Sundays, and I got tired of telling her she was too close to the TV every five minutes. I realized she had no clue what "too close" was, so I gave her a visual. She's really great about not getting past that line when she's watching.
Short Daddy and Tall Daddy
(Amelia's description - she asked me to put them there)
Rafe, click on this one so you can see it better. It's a little dark.
This normally only looks like this during the day when Amelia is playing. We clean it up each night. It's not as much as it looks like; it's just all contained in one spot. The rest of the house is pretty much toy free. Plus lots of those toys are baby toys still; I need to weed them out.
Rafe, click on this one so you can see it better. It's a little dark.
This normally only looks like this during the day when Amelia is playing. We clean it up each night. It's not as much as it looks like; it's just all contained in one spot. The rest of the house is pretty much toy free. Plus lots of those toys are baby toys still; I need to weed them out.
Monday, October 27, 2008
The Price of Disorganization
$10,000.
Ten.Thousand.Dollars.
That's a VERY conservative estimate for me in actual dollars lost over the years due to disorganization.
That money comes from overdue or late fines, missed bills, missed deadlines (and the resulting fees), misplaced drivers license and resulting tickets, missed check refunds that went past their expiration date. It comes from the lawyer's fees sometimes incurred when trying to rectify above situations, and a few times bail bond fees and once, a plane ticket fee to go back to the town I had left because otherwise I would have missed yet another court date because I forgot about it.
It comes from not maintaining property (cars, etc) in a timely fashion and then having to spend a lot more when things broke down.
Buying things that didn't work and then never returning them, even though I "meant" to. Buying things more than once because I couldn't find the ones I bought previously.
It comes from working so many hours that instead of cleaning and doing laundry, I went and bought new clothes because that was all I had time for. I didn't even have time to try them on; I just bought a few choices and took them home, wearing the ones that fit. Meaning to return the ones that didn't, but never doing so. Not shopping for bargains, but going to stores and walking in, grabbing something and leaving in about 10 minutes. I used to buy new underwear and socks ALL the time when I was working as an Exec. Chef on my way home - I'd zip into Walmart for groceries and pick up a few more socks.
That figure could easily be doubled or tripled when you take into account that I never organized my future or retirement and instead of saving for that, often gave large chunks of money away randomly (by large, I mean between $300 and up to $1000) on an impulsive moment and a misguided attempt to do the one right thing that would turn someone's life around forever. I actually still have the impulse to give all my money away, but I don't do it anymore. I think about it all the time, though. I think it helps that it's not really "my" money anymore, but Rafe's. I stopped that when we married. What's really crazy is that I helped almost complete strangers to me but not my family, and I have no idea why. The impulse would happen and BOOM, a check would be written. I did that even when I didn't have money to pay my own bills, but I didn't worry because I wasn't organized enough to see what a mess I was in. I never worried about money or my future. I haphazardly invested in retirement.
Disorganization has cost me a lot in relationships also. I think about my friends and people I love all the time. All the time. I am one of those people who would be much happier living on a big compound with all my family in houses scattered close by, big Sunday meals with everyone together. But for some reason I can't seem to reach out when I'm not in physical proximity. I lose addresses and phone numbers over and over again. Until this year, I had to call my mom or my sister every time I wanted to talk to one of my brothers because I lost their phone numbers on the scraps of paper I had written them in. I bought organizer after organizer and would lose them, or not use them consistently. I've lost touch with dear friends and became too embarrassed at not contacting them or missing important dates (once even a wedding). I failed a friend who ended up in jail and asked me to pay his bills for him. He gave me a $400 check to do so - in 1998 - and I just found it two weeks ago. I also found the list of addresses of people he had asked me to mail and tell of his predicament.
It kept Rafe from feeling comfortable about inviting people to our home when we first married. It kept him from feeling peace in our home because of the psychic noise that clutter and disorganization creates. It kept us from going out and enjoying ourselves sight seeing new places we lived because we stayed home on weekends cleaning and going through things, again and again. I turned down invitations to go places and do things because of clutter and disorganization. People who are organized don't feel comfortable in unorganized spaces. I'm sure that before I married, I probably lost a date or two with that as a factor.
I was/am late to things regularly looking for stuff. I lose my keys all the time because I can't focus on where I put them. I get distracted so easily that I can go into one room to clean something or get something and forget why I walked into the room by the time I get there. I make lists upon lists and often read them, only to realize that by the time I got to the bottom of writing the list, I had written something again that I wrote at the top of the list... totally forgetting I had just written it! When I'm stressed out, this happens more often.
My clothes don't match much of the time because I could never find what I was looking for in the overcrowded closet. I just grabbed and went.
Sometimes it is extremely hard for me to focus from one moment to the next. Ideas jumble around in my head and I start projects all the time but never finish them. Ironically, what I can focus for long periods on are things that both interest me AND require intense concentration at the same time. My daughter, my husband, reading, cooking. Sometimes the problem I have is with too much focus - I zero in on one thought and simply lose all other thoughts, no matter how important. I'm usually reminded of the previous thoughts when a crisis happens and I have to deal with what I forgot about before.
Why am I writing this today? I wanted to be honest out loud. This is the area of huge struggle in my life. It causes me stress and anxiety, yet sometimes I feel like I'm swallowed up by the enormity of organizing. It's probably really hard for someone who is organized to relate to. But I also want to talk about progress. I stopped spending money like crazy a few years before I met Rafe. But I couldn't seem to stop collecting paper clutter. There is probably so much more that disorganization has affected that I haven't written about here. I am determined to change, and have been changing for the past few months. I worked on this once before, when we lived in Jacksonville. But the outside stress on our lives there made it slow going, and once I had started to get a handle on it, we moved again and it threw me into a tizzy. It is not something that comes naturally to me.
My goal is that our house is peaceful, comfortable, and a sanctuary for my family. To me, that means less clutter (MUCH less clutter), simple living. We really don't need much. Rafe has been my biggest motivation in this endeavor. I have changed so much for the better since I met him. It's one of the first things my family noticed about me after dating Rafe... just that I was more human, more down to earth, more grounded.
Ten.Thousand.Dollars.
That's a VERY conservative estimate for me in actual dollars lost over the years due to disorganization.
That money comes from overdue or late fines, missed bills, missed deadlines (and the resulting fees), misplaced drivers license and resulting tickets, missed check refunds that went past their expiration date. It comes from the lawyer's fees sometimes incurred when trying to rectify above situations, and a few times bail bond fees and once, a plane ticket fee to go back to the town I had left because otherwise I would have missed yet another court date because I forgot about it.
It comes from not maintaining property (cars, etc) in a timely fashion and then having to spend a lot more when things broke down.
Buying things that didn't work and then never returning them, even though I "meant" to. Buying things more than once because I couldn't find the ones I bought previously.
It comes from working so many hours that instead of cleaning and doing laundry, I went and bought new clothes because that was all I had time for. I didn't even have time to try them on; I just bought a few choices and took them home, wearing the ones that fit. Meaning to return the ones that didn't, but never doing so. Not shopping for bargains, but going to stores and walking in, grabbing something and leaving in about 10 minutes. I used to buy new underwear and socks ALL the time when I was working as an Exec. Chef on my way home - I'd zip into Walmart for groceries and pick up a few more socks.
That figure could easily be doubled or tripled when you take into account that I never organized my future or retirement and instead of saving for that, often gave large chunks of money away randomly (by large, I mean between $300 and up to $1000) on an impulsive moment and a misguided attempt to do the one right thing that would turn someone's life around forever. I actually still have the impulse to give all my money away, but I don't do it anymore. I think about it all the time, though. I think it helps that it's not really "my" money anymore, but Rafe's. I stopped that when we married. What's really crazy is that I helped almost complete strangers to me but not my family, and I have no idea why. The impulse would happen and BOOM, a check would be written. I did that even when I didn't have money to pay my own bills, but I didn't worry because I wasn't organized enough to see what a mess I was in. I never worried about money or my future. I haphazardly invested in retirement.
Disorganization has cost me a lot in relationships also. I think about my friends and people I love all the time. All the time. I am one of those people who would be much happier living on a big compound with all my family in houses scattered close by, big Sunday meals with everyone together. But for some reason I can't seem to reach out when I'm not in physical proximity. I lose addresses and phone numbers over and over again. Until this year, I had to call my mom or my sister every time I wanted to talk to one of my brothers because I lost their phone numbers on the scraps of paper I had written them in. I bought organizer after organizer and would lose them, or not use them consistently. I've lost touch with dear friends and became too embarrassed at not contacting them or missing important dates (once even a wedding). I failed a friend who ended up in jail and asked me to pay his bills for him. He gave me a $400 check to do so - in 1998 - and I just found it two weeks ago. I also found the list of addresses of people he had asked me to mail and tell of his predicament.
It kept Rafe from feeling comfortable about inviting people to our home when we first married. It kept him from feeling peace in our home because of the psychic noise that clutter and disorganization creates. It kept us from going out and enjoying ourselves sight seeing new places we lived because we stayed home on weekends cleaning and going through things, again and again. I turned down invitations to go places and do things because of clutter and disorganization. People who are organized don't feel comfortable in unorganized spaces. I'm sure that before I married, I probably lost a date or two with that as a factor.
I was/am late to things regularly looking for stuff. I lose my keys all the time because I can't focus on where I put them. I get distracted so easily that I can go into one room to clean something or get something and forget why I walked into the room by the time I get there. I make lists upon lists and often read them, only to realize that by the time I got to the bottom of writing the list, I had written something again that I wrote at the top of the list... totally forgetting I had just written it! When I'm stressed out, this happens more often.
My clothes don't match much of the time because I could never find what I was looking for in the overcrowded closet. I just grabbed and went.
Sometimes it is extremely hard for me to focus from one moment to the next. Ideas jumble around in my head and I start projects all the time but never finish them. Ironically, what I can focus for long periods on are things that both interest me AND require intense concentration at the same time. My daughter, my husband, reading, cooking. Sometimes the problem I have is with too much focus - I zero in on one thought and simply lose all other thoughts, no matter how important. I'm usually reminded of the previous thoughts when a crisis happens and I have to deal with what I forgot about before.
Why am I writing this today? I wanted to be honest out loud. This is the area of huge struggle in my life. It causes me stress and anxiety, yet sometimes I feel like I'm swallowed up by the enormity of organizing. It's probably really hard for someone who is organized to relate to. But I also want to talk about progress. I stopped spending money like crazy a few years before I met Rafe. But I couldn't seem to stop collecting paper clutter. There is probably so much more that disorganization has affected that I haven't written about here. I am determined to change, and have been changing for the past few months. I worked on this once before, when we lived in Jacksonville. But the outside stress on our lives there made it slow going, and once I had started to get a handle on it, we moved again and it threw me into a tizzy. It is not something that comes naturally to me.
My goal is that our house is peaceful, comfortable, and a sanctuary for my family. To me, that means less clutter (MUCH less clutter), simple living. We really don't need much. Rafe has been my biggest motivation in this endeavor. I have changed so much for the better since I met him. It's one of the first things my family noticed about me after dating Rafe... just that I was more human, more down to earth, more grounded.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Thrift Store Bargains
It's getting chillier here, and Amelia is growing like a weed. Her little belly is showing (which I think is cute, but it's not very warm) on her long sleeved shirts. So I zipped into the thrift store the other day to look for some "new" clothes for her.
I spent a whopping $4.00 and picked up 16 items - all the children's clothes were 25 cents! Amazing! I found some good play clothes, nothing fancy, and some shoes in sizes 2T to 4T. I would say about 6 items she can wear now over the winter (shirts, a playjacket, 1 pair of play shoes) and the rest over the next year or two. But the other sizes were in such good condition that for a quarter I couldn't pass them up.
I love thrift stores, especially the ones that have a mission (like hospice, or CAPA, etc). I don't go in them very often, but I have picked up some needed things for Amelia at bargain prices. I have even found toys with a few pieces missing, or loved on, or something small broken, and picked them up. Mostly because with kids, they suffer wear and tear anyway. Although Amelia is actually really good with her toys and hasn't messed up anything yet; it is usually the other kids that come to play here that I have to worry about. One time I bought one of those play xylophones that was missing its "drumstick" that attaches to it on a string. It just had a poor lonely string. I bought it for $2 and went home and gave her some of her old baby spoons with the soft rubber coating to use as drumsticks. It worked great and she loved it! I've found puzzles and books that same way. I figure, if she was the 4th kid, she'd be getting hand me downs and torn toys anyway, so no reason to spend top dollar every time to get a perfect toy. Not to say that I have anything against perfect toys, but at this age....
I spent a whopping $4.00 and picked up 16 items - all the children's clothes were 25 cents! Amazing! I found some good play clothes, nothing fancy, and some shoes in sizes 2T to 4T. I would say about 6 items she can wear now over the winter (shirts, a playjacket, 1 pair of play shoes) and the rest over the next year or two. But the other sizes were in such good condition that for a quarter I couldn't pass them up.
I love thrift stores, especially the ones that have a mission (like hospice, or CAPA, etc). I don't go in them very often, but I have picked up some needed things for Amelia at bargain prices. I have even found toys with a few pieces missing, or loved on, or something small broken, and picked them up. Mostly because with kids, they suffer wear and tear anyway. Although Amelia is actually really good with her toys and hasn't messed up anything yet; it is usually the other kids that come to play here that I have to worry about. One time I bought one of those play xylophones that was missing its "drumstick" that attaches to it on a string. It just had a poor lonely string. I bought it for $2 and went home and gave her some of her old baby spoons with the soft rubber coating to use as drumsticks. It worked great and she loved it! I've found puzzles and books that same way. I figure, if she was the 4th kid, she'd be getting hand me downs and torn toys anyway, so no reason to spend top dollar every time to get a perfect toy. Not to say that I have anything against perfect toys, but at this age....
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Helping others (and myself) ... by organizing!
I'm clearing up clutter in the house and organizing. I've been donating most of my items to CAPA (Child Abuse Prevention Association). They have a local thrift store here called "CAPA's Closet" and they will come and pick up items FREE. All the proceeds go to help their programs.
WHEEEE!! It feels so good to have some of this stuff sorted and finally let go of some of it. Letting go is the hardest part. Lots of items have memories and I loved everything I had. But lots of it no longer suits me, or I have to admit I will never get around to "that project" after having passed it up so many times before. I've begun to take pictures of things that have meaning for me, but no longer have a place in my life for some reason or another. Now, instead of keeping the object I wasn't using and was boxed away, I can keep the picture and have a lot less clutter! The whole house is beginning to run more smoothly. I took a picture of all I'm donating today.
Our accountant gave me this great FREE website for listing what we donate. It adds everything up for you and stores it for 2 years, so you have it handy when it comes time to do taxes in one easy printout.
I also found a neat literacy project for donating old magazines. I just donated 178 (4 bags full) to CAPA, but I think I will try it the next time. I still have 19 boxes of magazines to go through. It's so hard to part with some of them - they're great reference. But I think as the house becomes less and less cluttered, I'll find it harder and harder to keep them as they will be messing with the whole "zen" feeling I'm trying to achieve.
WHEEEE!! It feels so good to have some of this stuff sorted and finally let go of some of it. Letting go is the hardest part. Lots of items have memories and I loved everything I had. But lots of it no longer suits me, or I have to admit I will never get around to "that project" after having passed it up so many times before. I've begun to take pictures of things that have meaning for me, but no longer have a place in my life for some reason or another. Now, instead of keeping the object I wasn't using and was boxed away, I can keep the picture and have a lot less clutter! The whole house is beginning to run more smoothly. I took a picture of all I'm donating today.
Our accountant gave me this great FREE website for listing what we donate. It adds everything up for you and stores it for 2 years, so you have it handy when it comes time to do taxes in one easy printout.
I also found a neat literacy project for donating old magazines. I just donated 178 (4 bags full) to CAPA, but I think I will try it the next time. I still have 19 boxes of magazines to go through. It's so hard to part with some of them - they're great reference. But I think as the house becomes less and less cluttered, I'll find it harder and harder to keep them as they will be messing with the whole "zen" feeling I'm trying to achieve.
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