A Sunday That Never Ends

Sundays have become my busiest day of the week.  We wake up, run around getting children ready for church, walk (or sometimes take a ride from friends) across town and sit through the services.  Then we walk over to our pastor's house where our life group meets (a small study group that focuses on one specific topic; our church has several of these) and have lunch and then do our study.  Then we walk home.  We're never home before 4pm, and sometimes it's closer to 4:30.

Today was busier than usual because we had a potluck lunch at the pastor's house and so David and I had to make a dish and arange for it's transport so we didn't have to carry a giant casserole through town.  We also tried to tire out Samuel by having me walk him to church, but since David's parents are with us right now he rode with them to show them the way.

On the walk Samuel said some adorable things.  He asked me what a building was at the end of a street.
"That's a grain elevator"  I told him.  "Oh.  A grain elevator.  They bring cows up and down?"  "No, they bring cow food up and down."  I said.  It's so funny the things he thinks.  Later on the walk he saw a tree in someone's yard that had had tar put on the cut branches making them look like holes.  "What's in those holes?"  "Maybe acorns, or squirrels, or leaves?"  I said.  "Maybe sunflowers!"

I feel a little bit guilty every week at church because I put the children in the nursery.  I don't feel terrible, but I do feel a little bad.  Samuel likes it a lot, despite telling me every week that he doesn't want to go; he makes a craft, sometimes gets time in the gym playing with balls, has a snack.  Clara is in the infant class and I know she is in good hands - the workers even give us a pager that will buzz if they need us.  Still.  I feel like the children should be with me even though I know from experience that that makes the service awful for all of us.

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Today's big task; hanging up all of the clothes in the children's bedroom.  I know I've complained about this before, but honestly clothing maintenance takes up so much of my time.  I don't know why this is.  Either I'm just no good at it or else everyone else's children are very unlike my own.  I recently purchased a bag of really nice, barely used 2T-3T clothing for Samuel, including new church shoes.  Almost every single piece of it is either stained beyond use or completely outgrown already.  All of the shoes are too small.  I have salvaged a few pairs of pajamas, two pairs of boots (that I think may just fit for a few more months) and maybe two or three sweaters and a pair of slippers.  His body is the strangest shape.  He's a 2T, except in torso length where he's a 3T, and then he's a mix of 2T - 3T in pants, except that his waist is really more of a 24 month size.  How does one dress a child like that?

Clara may be even worse off.  I have done nothing but accept clothing for her for months and months, and yet I look at what's in the closet that fits her and it's pathetic.  Random pants that match nothing, a few 'church outfits', some sleepers...I get depressed every time I go to dress her. 

I'm really not sure what the solution to this is.  I spent $5 on 40 clothes hangers the other week thinking that maybe if everything was just hung up it would be easier to figure out.  So far, this doesn't seem to be the case.

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David and his parents are re-watching a video we got the other week: The Bible vs. Joseph Smith.  The music is lovely in it.  We get a lot of videos like this from Firefighters For Christ.  It's a free resource and you can download their stuff as MP3s if that's your thing; we tend to order hard copies.

I wish I knew of more places I could get free Christian DVDs from.  Ideas?

Cleaning Ideas

In honour of the cleaning and decluttering I’m doing around here this summer, here are a few ideas for keeping on top of stuff around the house:

1)      Pick one ‘Never Get Around To’ task, and one ‘Big Project’ task to do at a time.  The NGAT should be literally something annoying, small, fixable in minutes, but just…you know, never gotten around to.  For example, my thyme plant, which needed desperately to be trimmed of dead growth and that I had steadily ignored for weeks, but still allowed to get on my nerves every single time I looked at it.  In contrast, the BP is something that you are working on over the course of possibly several days.  Washing the walls in the house would be a BP.  This seems miniscule, but if you did 1 NGAT a day, you would complete 365 of them a year, and 1 BP a week would result in 52 of them in a year.  I can’t even think of 52 BPs in my house.

2)      If you aren’t working outside the home, plan to make housework something that takes 2 hours per day.  If you’re lucky enough to have helpers this, I’m sure, could be cut down substantially.  I’m saying 2 hours because I think you’ll need 1 hour of maintenance cleaning (your daily jobs, like tossing in a load of laundry, washing dishes, etc.) 15 minutes of daily decluttering, 15 minutes of work on your current big project, and 30 minutes of extra time.

3)      Don’t focus on one area at a time.  If Monday is ‘bedroom day’ make sure that you don’t spend your full cleaning time allotment there or else the rest of the house will fall apart over those 24 hours.  It’s much better to split your days into sections that pertain to multiple rooms.  Monday might be ‘window day’, where every window gets cleaned, Tuesday could be ‘carpet day’ and you vacuum all your rugs, etc.

4)      When you get to the end, stop.  Do your task and move on; don’t get sidetracked by other tasks.  If your BP for the next few days is to clean the fridge, for example, spend your 15 minutes on it and don’t decide that “hey, I should start a grocery list!” or “This pickle jar is almost empty; that reminds me that I wanted to rinse out the recycling”. 

5)      Declutter with a purpose.  If you give yourself 15 minutes, utilize a timer and bring a garbage bag.  Make quick decisions and finish your section, don’t try and do something that will take an hour.

Why I feel better when my fridge is empty

Here's my fridge, and it clearly isn't empty.  But, here's the thing - it's a lot emptier than it used to be, and the change has been a voluntary one.

I used to hoard food, thinking that somehow it made me thriftier, when in reality it made me crazier.  I was one of those women who debated saving the water their vegetables were steamed in to use later when making their own broth.  This saving food compulsion was born of a thrifty childhood, nurtured by some long, lean college years, and finally blossomed and bore a lot of fruit after David and I got married, had a child, and firmly slipped into a pretty low economic class.

Not only that, but our discovery of healthy eating (aka - skip the Ramen noodles every night and buy something labelled 'fruit' on occasion) led me to believe that I had to scrimp and save nutrients constantly.  Don't throw out bones, because bones have calcium and, um, 'good' stuff, whatever that means, and they should be boiled to extract it and the reduced liquid should be frozen...or something.  It was becoming an obsession.

I also noticed that the more I fell into this mentality, the more two things happened.  The first was that I was actually LESS likely to make and eat food.  Food had become a huge chore, requiring lengthly prep time and exhaustive research to be delicious.  I would make it, and then be loathe to toss a Tbsp of leftovers and instead let them molder away in the back of the fridge.  Half of the produce I bought, I tossed.  Half of the healthy stuff I made, required a ridiculous amount of time.  Not to mention space.  My fridge and freezer both were crammed with food.  Little labelled bags of stuff.  Can't throw out that half a calcified lemon, since it was organic and all, and cost the earth.

The second thing that happened is that we all lost out on the joy of eating, as well as the supposed financial benefits of doing so in a healthy way.  Who wanted to eat Mama's lentil casserole three days in a row?  No one, that's who, including Mama.  So the casserole sat there and Mama, exhausted from the two days of prep work it took to produce a healthy, entirely homemade lentil casserole, ordered a pizza.  A delicious melon, or some perfectly ripe apples, supposing I hadn't forgotten them and left them buried under mounds of food in the back of the fridge somewhere, got pushed aside again and again in favour of convenience and 'food planning'.  I couldn't give Sam an apple because those were the 'special' apples I was saving for a pie, which I couldn't make because we weren't buying piecrust anymore, just making it, and I was too tired to make piecrust.  So let the apples sit.

So what changed this?  To be honest, it's still changing, and the change is slow.  I still hoard food.  I still buy a bunch of 'excellent deals' at the grocery store and then throw them away.  I still save bits and pieces.  I have a peeled ginger root in my freezer as we speak.  Yesterday my husband threw out a pumpkin that I had been holding onto in cold storage since before Hallowe'en, and to be honest, if he hadn't thrown it out I wouldn't have.  I would have kept it.

But, I'm a lot better.  To start with, we've all noticed that if there is one food option, then when you're hungry that's what you'll eat.  If you look at that picture above, that big bowl on the second shelf is the roasted pepper soup I made yesterday - and we'll have it for lunch today.  Because that's what there is for lunch.  The top shelf holds some stuffed pasta shells, and David will take those to work for his supper today.  Because that's what there is for supper.  When I went to the store yesterday, I bought exactly what I needed for ONE intensive recipe - in my case, a roasted portabella mushroom soup.  I bought three onions and whipping cream - you can see my onions in one of the crisper drawers.  You know what else you can see in that drawer?  Nada.  There's nothing else there.  On purpose.

There's enough food in that fridge (and my freezer, and the fruit bowl on the counter, etc.) to feed us for a few days only.  Then I will have to go shopping again.  I have a loaf of bread on the counter, but only one, and then I will have to make more bread.  I have some homemade energy bars wrapped up, but only half a dozen, and then I will have to make more.  I have three apples, a kiwi, a banana and a cantaloup in my fruit bowl - this means that in about two days, I will need to buy more fruit.  These small, manageable amounts of food tend not to go to waste anymore.  If you only have three apples, and they're all visible, then you'll eat your three apples.  When they're done, you'll buy more apples.  Simple.

I've found myself not only saving on tossed food, and therefore money, but also on stress.  It's stressful to look in a fridge and have no idea what to prepare for a meal, and it's equally stressful, for me at least, to prepare this elaborate meal plan every week that I cannot hope to achieve.  I don't want to spend two hours every day in the kitchen, making food.  I like food, I want to eat food, I want to serve healthy and delicious food, but I don't want to use up my life preparing food.  I can tell you right now what we'll have in the next couple of days without a meal plan.  We'll have apple pancakes for a meal.  We'll have portabella mushroom soup.  We'll have a cheese souffle.  And then at some point in the next few days as I run low on fruit I will also pick up some vegetables and we'll do a stirfry, and then an omelette.  Then we'll be down on eggs and so...you get the idea.  I don't need a meal plan, I can look at the dozen items in my kitchen and tell you right now what you can expect to eat if you arrived for supper.

The storage room...not quite there yet.

Man, am I ever n.e.s.t.i.n.g.

I have N.E.S.T.I.N.G. (Never Ever Sit unTil It's New or Gone) syndrome bad.  Yesterday I went out and bought two more giant Rubbermaid containers, bringing our total purchased up to, man, maybe ten?  Ten 72L containers.  I've been attacking the storage room like a woman possessed and I'm doing pretty well.  I posted on Facebook that I think I'm probably about 2/3 done organizing that room.

My goal is that everything will be out of cardboard smush-able boxes (some of which entered our lives about 8 years ago and I'm willing to bet have never been opened.  I discovered one box that I remember packing, because it was the contents of the pile of papers beside my bed in our Toronto apartment that I just dumped into the box in last minute panic - and we left there three years ago.  I just shuddered and closed the lid again.) and into hard plastic containers.  Labelled, on both the top and the side that shows into the room so I know what's in them, and grouped together, and hopefully filled with 'like' items.  All the VHS tapes together.  Yes, we still own those.  All the Christmas decorations together, and that alone will be a first.  Oh, to never have the conversation that starts with "honey...have you seen the other leg to the tree stand?" ever again!  The joy!

The part I'm NOT looking forward to is the boxes of paper.  There are at least three or four of these in there - bits of 'stuff'.  A plastic container full of cards we received for baby showers and our wedding.  Toss?  A bag full of wedding decorations.  Give away?  David's school notes from his diploma of a decade ago?  Ummmm. 

But, once it's all done and the door is shut (and opened again repeatedly just to look at the neatness again) I think THEN the baby can come.  Because everyone knows a baby only comes when your storage room is organized and you've washed behind the stove.  Sheesh.

Amy’s guide on how NOT to organize your new baby’s clothing.

1) As soon as you and your husband begin discussing having a child, immediately ‘accidentally’ wander into baby sections of stores and buy things ‘just in case’. Hide them like crack in the back of your sock drawer in a plastic bag marked ‘cat stuff’.

2) Once the stick turns blue begin upping the ante by asking people where they got their adorable baby outfits, causing them to ask when you might be expecting to expect something little of your very own. (Pshaw all of these suggestions while flirtatiously convincing them that you are, in fact, preggers and counting down. If done correctly everyone will know you’re pregnant waaaaay before 12 weeks while still enabling you to tell your husband that “you SWEAR you didn’t tell anyone”.)

3) At the 12 week mark, wake up very early. Call everyone on the mandatory ‘call me first or I’ll kill you’ list. Then put on the shirt that makes you look fattest and head outside to tell absolutely everyone else you know. At this point people will ask you two things: 1) How far along you are. 2) Regardless of the answer to #1, whether you know the gender.

4) Anytime between 12-19 weeks the offers of clothes will start to come in. Because you ‘need to be prepared’ and ‘it’s better to have too much than too little’, accept everything. Even if you are handed a bag of dirty single handknit socks, they are baby socks, and therefore precious and need to be squirreled away somewhere until you have time to accept the horror of your addiction.

5) At random points during the day look through some of the bags that are arriving weekly in your life. Start ‘culling’ the clothing by removing the worst stained offenders or stuff that is truly ugly. Convince yourself that all little girls look amazing in boxy rugby jerseys with teddy bears sewn on the front. Bundle 99% of the clothes back into the bags and tell your husband you’re ‘almost there’ with the organizing.

6) At some point realize that things are getting out of control. You have 82 identical white shirts and have had to clear out your own closet floor to stack boxes of bibs. At this point, even if you have clothed a child previously and therefore can be expected to know what you’re doing, completely freak out about how much is too much or too little. Lament that Valium is not recommended in pregnancy and book an entire evening to ‘go through the clothes once and for all.’

7) Wash everything. Dry everything. Be picky. Make multiple piles. Debate whether organizing according to season or by size is more logical. Silently curse whomever decided that every single 3-6 month outfit should fit a completely different-sized child. Cry a bit.

8) Get exhausted halfway through the task and fall asleep. Repeat this step over and over again because you’ve forgotten what you’ve washed, you’ve come across new information about how many shoes an infant needs, someone tells you that THEIR babies only ever wore ‘X’ and therefore ‘X’ is absolutely the best thing ever, or because your toddler, in a bout of ‘helping’, touches all of the white stuff with cupcake hands.

9) Towards the end of your pregnancy: start making lists. The lists will serve no purpose whatsoever and will get lost in the shuffle, but you’ll feel a lot better about the clothing if you have some. Remember that your previous children ALSO had baby clothes and maybe you should use some of those, too. Pull out of storage every Rubbermaid container you own, causing your husband to say inexcusable things under his breath when he comes home.

10) Despite having gleefully accepted these bags of clothes from your friends, neighbours and complete strangers, discover that NO ONE will take anything from you. You know that the clothes are ‘too good’ to waste, so start your campaign to find them a ‘good home’.

11) As your due date nears make up a stack of ‘stuff they can wear right away’ and agonize over it. Debate the pros and cons of bringing your own sleepers to the hospital or using their baby gowns. Pack three different ‘coming home’ outfits in case the weather turns out to be amazing, terrible, or a hurricane. Pack three different bunting bags because you might get that nurse who thinks a child can’t wear anything thicker than a cotton tee shirt while sitting in a car seat.

12) Toss everything else into ‘organized chaos’ and leave for your mother to do something with while you’re giving birth.

A very frugal master bedroom makeover.

Oh.  Oh, my I cannot believe I'm actually posting this video.

This is our master bedroom:

It is very shabby and outdated and so on, and there are reasons that it looks like this.  They are this little person:

And this even tinier person:

both of whom get the majority of our time and attention.  Our bedroom, (in fact, anything that is specifically ours) plays second fiddle.  Or maybe fifty-second fiddle.

Not to mention the fact that money is something you use to buy food, and pay bills, and save a little of so that if the cat vomits blood or someone breaks a bone or the dryer mysteriously 'stops working' you have money to fix the problem.  Money is not something that I feel comfortable spending on myself, or my husband, and especially not in such a frivolous way as 'prettying up the bedroom'!  But, I realize that something needs to be done.

If you'd like to suggest what that something might be, keeping in mind my very miserly mindset and lack of decorating savvy, I've stolen the idea of starting a Pinterest board for people to pin ideas to from my friend Cari.  (Comment on here or on Facebook to get added to the list.  You'll need a Pinterest account for me to add you.  If you don't have one, I can send you an invite to get one, and then add you.)  Her bedroom looks quite nice.  Her bedroom looked fine to me to begin with, but it also looks nice now, so that's what I want, too.  I want the nice bit. 

P.S. I should mention that I bought bedding today.  Now, it looks like this:


This picture is taken in terrible, nightime lighting.  The purple and yellow is actually quite pale and vintage looking.  We bought white muslin sheets to go with the quilt, and have yellow brushed wool blankets and white pillowcases with yellow embroidery on it.  So, the bedding is set.

 I'm not saying it's 'done', but I certainly think it's better.  I'm pretty unsure about throw pillows, but maybe this is where they'd come in handy?

P.P.S.  Also, we rent.  So I cannot paint the robin's egg blue walls, change the carpets, paint the woodwork, etc. etc.  On the other hand, I don't really care about all of that, anyway, since what I'm looking for is a bedroom that would work in a hypothetical off-white room that will happen sometime in our future.

Attacking the laundry at the source.

Have you read this post yet at Keeper Of The Home?  Well, if you haven't, I think you should, 'cause it pretty much snapped me out of my lethargy today!  I've been bemoaning the laundry issue for months around here.  Samuel has so many clothes that his closet is stuffed half full (the other half is MY clothes, which don't fit in my closet because that's where David has all of HIS clothes...just wait, we'll get to that bit in a minute) he also has a five drawer dresser full, plus the chair in his room is covered in folded clean clothes that have no where to go, and then there's whatever is in the laundry.  Oh, and that's just the stuff that's out in circulation.  He also has a steamer trunk full of 'too big' clothes and at least one huge tupperware container in storage of stuff he's grown out of and I haven't given away.

Then in this post a few months ago I tackled my closet, pairing down my clothes pretty substantially, but looking at them again I realize I need to pare down even more.  Like, a lot.

And David.  Ah, David.  He has, as we speak, a huge four drawer dresser STUFFED with clothes, including about 40 t-shirts, plus our large master bedroom closet all to himself.  And none of this is including outerware, which takes up part of our storage room and a whole set of hooks on the wall inside the door.  And shoes.  Lots of shoes.

I do laundry constantly.  I could literally do a full load of laundry every day, for two adults and a toddler.  How is this possible?  Even with cloth diapers, how is this happening?

So today, ruthless woman that I am, I'm tackling my clothes again, and then I'm dealing with Samuel's, too.

Stay tuned.

The 'One Thing' project pt. 2

Yesterday I got rid of a stuffed animal from the livingroom and a ball of yarn I'd always intended to knit with and yet...you know how it is.  But this is movvvvving soooo slloooowwlly.  In a moment of genius I decided I would try the 'set a timer' method of decluttering. 

See, how I've been doing this so far is to sort of wander through the house waiting for something to 'speak' to me and tell me it wants to leave.  Then I debate for a bit.  Then I decide whether I'm throwing it away or giving it away, and usually I'm giving it away.  At which point I come up with the perfect person to give it to, except that they're not here right now, so I have to keep it, naturally, until I can get it to them!  And then I walk away.

Clearly this isn't effective at all.  The timer gives me a short burst of concentrated 'getting rid of stuff' time.  Also it combats my biggest problem with clutter - I'm just so tired all of the time.  But even I, the queen of exhaustion, can manage to work solidly for 15 minutes.  And the best part of this is that 15 minutes can be found almost anywhere in the day.

I tried it this morning for the first time.  I chose a top cabinet in the kitchen as my victim and went through it.  I know for a fact that there are jars and jars of preserves up there that have been sitting for years.  Years.  Like, more than I feel comfortable eating after sort of years.  But I've never thrown them away because they're pretty, all lined up up there, and it's throwing away food, which is a sin.

I pulled over a chair and started emptying out the cabinet and as I did I wondered why I had it arranged this way.  All of my 'nice' china cups for when non-existant company comes over were all easily accessible, but if I wanted to reach the honey for Samuel's toast I threatened a cup of toothpicks.  I had Ziploc bags filled with bits and pieces of breast pumps, bottles, sterilizers etc., (none of which I've used for at least 6 months) but I didn't have one complete sippy cup anywhere to be found.  (Eventually I found one, under the cocoa powder).  An idea dawned on me so revolutionary to my way of thinking that I think I shall call it Amy's First Rule of Organization.

Amy's First Rule of Organization:  A family's home should be constantly changing as the needs of the family change.

That cupboard was a mix of 'pre-baby life' and 'immediately post-birth life'.  And neither of those realities is us anymore.  And so I moved the glasses down to the bottom shelf, and I carefully assembled all of the bottles and stored them on the top shelf, beside the containers for pureed food.  And  I decided that the teas I had and almost never used would be up on the second shelf and so on.  And now I'm off to work.

The 'One Thing' project

It isn't going to surprise anyone who reads this blog how obsessed I am with having space.  I firmly believe that your physical surroundings influence how you feel, how you breathe, how you...well, just about everything!  And my surroundings are weighing me down.  The culprit?

Too.  Much.  Stuff.

After The Great Closet Purge of 2011 I felt such relief, but it was short lived, I'm afraid.  I'm pretty much right back where I began with that.  And I just have so many things, and they aren't making me happy.  And I keep making great, exciting plans and elaborately constructed ways of fixing the problem, and they just don't work.  I'm too tired, or David is, or Samuel is, or whatever.  I can't manage it.  I get halfway done and it turns out the project needs more time/money/expertise than I have and it lies unfinished for months.  Sometimes longer.

What to do?  I'm throwing stuff away.  But I'm not doing the all-or-nothing approach, because I've tried that and it doesn't work.  I'm just decluttering as I go.  Every day, I'm getting rid of something, tossing it or selling it or donating it in some way.  It's outta here.

Not a fancy plan, but hopefully a do-able one.  A good start.  And what did I throw out today?  A styrofoam container from my cupboard that I was saving to use as a paint tray, and several random pieces of paper off my fridge.

The Family Closet

{This is the 200th post on the blog...wow.  I don't have anything planned to mark such an exciting occasion, just my scheduled post on family closets, but I thought I'd mention the 'big day' anyway!}

The Duggar's Mega-sized family closet!

I had never heard of a family closet before I saw one in action with the Duggar family, which I think may be the case with a lot of people.  If you haven't seen the need for a family closet in your daily life, you've probably never peeked into one!  In my never-ending quest to organize our little home to hold the things we need I've been thinking long and hard about whether a family closet might be an answer to at least some of our storage problems.  And with that in mind I'd like to share what I've discovered in my research.

One of my favourite blogs right now is Keeper Of The Home, and wonder of wonders they were my first 'real' look into a family closet.  In fact they even had a video blog about it!  It was so inspirational to see a closet that wasn't gigantic, but so well organized.  I couldn't help but wonder if this was an idea that might work for us.

Lotsof Kids.com was the next useful site I came across.  This article I've linked to was actually very helpful and what's more, it looked do-able.  That's a big thing for me; if I look at your amazing blog photos and fantastic decorating and floor plans I'm unlikely to be overcome with jealousy, but I am highly likely to be overwhelmed by what work it would take to turn my space into anything approximating your space.  Michelle Lehman wrote in the article that "It has been one of the best things we have ever done. There is more room in the house, since there are no dressers. Bedroom closets can be used for other types of storage."  The bedroom closets as alternate storage sounds very appealing, as does the idea of being rid of dressers once and for all.  In our space we each have a dresser, and they are worse than useless.  Samuel's especially, because as a 'baby' dresser the drawers aren't deep enough to really accomodate toddler-sized clothing and everything just gets hung up or thrown in one of two big Tupperware containers that I fill with clean PJs and underthings for him, and then have to rummage through every time I need another white sock.

My dresser dilemma is not only mine, either.  The more I read the more I realized that almost everyone detested their dressers and the general lack of order that comes from using them.  Rosie at The Telling Mom wrote an article all about skipping the whole putting-clothes-away routine altogether and using laundry baskets on specially built shelves to store clothes.  How neat is that?

Some people seem to be using part of a room, while others have gone all the way and use an entire room as a giant family closet! 

Some other Family Closet posts:

*Michelle Duggar talks about the family closet on her blog here.
*Raising Olives has a post on the pros and cons of using a family closet here.

Although we currently only have three people living in the house and two bedrooms we do have a large storage room and I think, with proper tidying, that it could become quite a nice family closet and free up all of our current closet space for other things!  More room!

Take a look at our foray into eliminating clothes here...

Organizing Our Clothes - Mama's Closet

I'm not writing a Seven Quick Takes post this Friday because, well, I'm still stuck on a Seven Quick Takes I did two weeks ago - here.

And over the two weeks since I wrote that post about needing to organize and make some decisions regarding the stuff that's accumulated around here, more stuff has arrived and the issue has only gotten more pressing.  I feel claustrophobic!  And also faintly ill with material posessions, which I think drag a person down.  So today I though, 'what can I do, in one day, that will make a big impact on space in my home and also help me feel as though I have accomplished a significant step in decluttering?'

I came up with my clothes.  The thought terrified me but also sounded sort of exciting at the same time.  I remember reading a book once where the authoress discussed her wardrobe and how she had x number of outfits, hung together, so that her dressing was streamlined.  Well, I don't know that that's practical for me but certainly I think it's a reasonable goal to have my clothes be able to mix and match with each other.  And as I mentioned to a friend recently, I have got to stop holding on to clothing for some imaginary future or treasured past.  Right now, today, I need clothes that work for the meetings that I attend, church and mothering in all facets and that's it.  Plus, it's not like I can't buy it again.  That's always been a hard one for me; I'm so frugal it isn't easy to let something go if there's still the possibility that I could use it in the future.

But then I took about an hour (yes, it took that long) and I gathered up all of my clothing, and I folded it and put it on my bed, and it looked like this:



There were so many clothes I couldn't get them all in one shot.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  Is it something along the lines of there-are-people-out-there-who-don't-have-a-winter-coat?  Yeah, me too.  I was a little ill.

The first things to go were clothes that had stains that wouldn't come out or were in some way damaged and I knew, honestly, I wouldn't repair.  So the lovely black dress top covered in beads was going because some beads were needing to be re-stitched by hand, and as much as I would love to imagine myself as someone who beads by hand, I'm not.  And the shirt from my high school graduation was going because of a tea stain that rendered it unwearable except in dire strictly indoor circumstances.

Once that step was taken I got rid of anything that had seen better days.  Clothes that were faded, fraying or noticeably mended.  Anything pilled.  Anything that had pulls in it.  Anything that I wouldn't think was 'good' enough to give to someone but thought was 'good' enough for me to wear.

Next came clothes that had outgrown their stay.  I'm not pregnant so I put maternity clothes, things that used to fit, dresses for events I would never get invited to...you know you have these, too.

What was left I organized into 'everyday cool weather' 'occasion cool weather' 'everyday warm weather' and 'occasion warm weather'. to make certain I had enough of each to make up several outfits over the week and for church or some other event.

Here's the breakdown:

I started with...

17 sweaters, vest and sweatshirts
7 dresses
9 skirts
3 jackets
4 items of maternity wear
11 blouses and dress tops
8 pants
7 t-shirts
5 tank tops or shells
8 long-sleeved shirts

I ended with...

4 sweaters, vests and sweatshirts

3 dresses

4 skirts

2 jackets

4 blouses or dress tops

5 pants

3 t-shirts

3 tank tops or shells

5 long-sleeved shirts

I had to stop before I could tackle accessories (hats, scarves, etc.) shoes and pajamas, though rest assured those will be handled, too.  I feel so relieved.  Nice, stacked piles waiting for the Salvation Army and me, with my entire wardrobe that fits, neatly, into my dresser.

Wednesday

There's a storm a-comin' my way, or so The Weather Network tells me.   Sometime today 15-30cm of snow is going to fall on us, and I'm battening down the hatches.

I spent the morning cleaning the livingroom, making soup and turkey barbecue and starting to deal with the stuff that I mentioned in last Friday's 7 Quick Takes.  Since David so kindly brought me home a couple of giant plastic storage bins with lids (2 for $10 at the hardware store!) I figured that the first thing on that list was going to be baby clothes sorting.

It really only took about an hour, but was surprisingly difficult to do.  I felt an emotional attachment to simply everything, even clothes that Samuel had never worn!  But it's done now; anything stained or impractical or made with rough-feeling cloth is in a pile to become rags or someone else's riches via the Salvation Army clothing drop-off.  Even so I filled one giant container to the brim, and I haven't even started to go through the clothes in his drawers that are starting to get snug.  On the other hand, and on a much more positive note, I'm now two worn-out cardboard boxes lighter.

Time to take a break, just in time for David to come home, to have a cup of tea and read my new library book, Welcome To Higby by Mark Dunn.  Maybe have some of that turkey barbecue.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

concerning a garage sale and waiting for a phone call

I have a book suggestion for every stay at home mom out there. Emilie Barnes's Survival For Busy Women is full of tips on how to organize practically everything around your house and I am using one of the tips today as I have officially started packing for the move. I know it's two months away, but there is plenty of stuff to get through and I'm determined to start early since this is my very first move with a baby. I also have four full boxes of garage sale flotsam, the usual vases and bowls and bits of stuff but also all sorts of books and games that I think will sell. My neighbour came over to help me price things today while the baby was down for his nap and I'm feeling very productive, I have to admit.

Of course, everything else sort of takes a back seat when you're handling a big task at home. Food is the microwaved version, laundry sort of hangs around a bit longer, as do dishes and I tend to stay up late trying to finish things. Suggestions on how to handle this a bit better would be greatly appreciated.

concerning soda

This post was supposed to be about French Pea Soup, which I made today after thinking about making it for over a week. Then is became about this amazing drink syrup that I didn't invent but am prepared to take full credit for...but something has overshadowed both of those things. Where do bills go? I'm serious, they make it through the Canadian postal system and my husband picks them up from our mailbox and brings them to me. I open them, I note the amount (I play a little game with my hydro bill...can I knock off a penny from last month?) and then I place them down somewhere and my best guess is they all get together at night to go hang out under the fridge because I can NOT find them when it comes time to pay. I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with the power company only to discover that the billing office was closed and no, they could not just tell me how much my bill was so I could go pay it even though we all know the number was RIGHT THERE on the computer. Then I blame the cat and blame the baby and go through my elastic and bread twist tie drawer for the fifth time and it still can't be found and I start to think "Was it about $90? Maybe $80? Okay it was definately under $100 maybe if I just put way too much on the bill that will do? But do I want to pay too much? Why won't they just TELL me how much I owe; surely, SURELY I am not the first woman to lose her hydro bill." Then I thinkperhaps when I did the filing this week I accidentally filed the current bill with the past bills and I pull out the file for hydro and start going through the paperwork....

oooo...I know you're cringing in sympathy and not disapproval for my slovenly record keeping.

And of course it isn't there, which is reassuring because hey, I like to know I'm not a complete schmuck. However it brings to light a truly frightening possibility that maybe I filed it WITH SOMETHING ELSE. As in, with the baby's paperwork, for example. Or with our health records. Oh please, Lord, let it not be in with our immunization records because I will just give up now. I will pay the hydro company $200 before I dig through our health care files. Or the vet bills. Oh no, could I have put it with the vet bills?

And you know the end to this story. I find the bill, of course. I find it with a pile of paperwork on top of a stack of DVDs next the tv. Where everyone keeps their bills, naturally.