Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Getting Organized

The disorganization of our abode has been bothering me for awhile. But I’m easily overwhelmed. To illustrate this fact, about nine months ago I started going through my clothes. The goal was to pack away maternity clothes and get rid of things I was just never going to fit into EVER AGAIN and the things I just didn’t like. Now, being a mother of very young twins (if I had to guess they would’ve been  7 months old) who works full-time, I can’t say I have a ton of extra time. This project did NOT get finished in the time allowed. And so for the past NINE MONTHS, piles of clothes and half-filled trash bags were everywhere in our already tiny room. And this mess has been driving me crazy ever since.

A month ago, DH went out of town and I decided I was going to finish this once and for all.  And it was such a great feeling to finally go through everything and get those bags out of the house! It felt so good I wanted to tackle other areas. Then I stumbled upon this fabulous blog about organizing – www.orgjunkie.com. She has this fabulous concept about tackling one problem area a week – 52 Weeks of Organizing! I know it’s not rocket science but it was just what I needed to break down my own personal barriers to getting organized.

Weekends are really the only time I can devote to things like this and we were out of town last weekend but I printed out the list and almost have a full column of problem areas. I’ll be able to do some items a few at a time but others may take more than one weekend. But I don’t even know if I had 25 so it shouldn’t even take us a half a year!

Our bedroom and the nursery were first. I’ve done half of the laundry/pantry area but need another weekend to finish it. A big problem for us is space. I’m not exaggerating when I say our house is tiny. I’ve lived in apartments bigger than our house – it’s around 800 sq ft! Add to that the fact that our twins are into EVERYTHING and can climb up on chairs, this further limits us as far as real estate for things like laptops, papers, etc. So finding a system that works us is a challenge.

Paper is an issue for us and I found this great post via orgjunkie about filing paper.

And I’m a huge fan of lists so I loved these free list printables. I actually use scrap paper but I love seeing the ideas for how to organize my lists!

What are your organizational challenges?

Monday, March 21, 2011

Menu Plan Monday

I’m linking up with Laura at orgjunkie.com for Menu Planning Monday. This is the first time I’ve done this so I’m a little nervous (weird, I know). Our Happy Box started up a couple weeks ago so we try to use all our fresh produce at the beginning of the week. I plan 4-5 meals per week that are fairly flexible. So if we have any scheduling changes, we can flip flop meals. I also try to plan one meal that can be postponed if need be. We’ve learned this the hard way over time. No one wants to throw away (or compost) produce unnecessarily.

  • Salad with baked salmon
  • Omelets – Sean’s dying to try the new trick from OrgJunkie. 
  • Azuki Bean casserole (Lisa's Kitchen) this is a new dish for us
  • Roasted cabbage (Kalyn's Kitchen) and chicken breasts with sautéed mushrooms and green peppers, Swiss, jalapeno salsa and pineapple (this is a dish DH's boss created)
  • Greek Salad Sandwich from Everyday Food (p. 95) with frozen barley and vegetable soup – I called my sister to get the name of this recipe and she had the same one bookmarked on her Nook! Spooky

We started planning our meals shortly after we got married. I couldn't handle DH calling me at lunch time and wanting to discuss what's for dinner. I have trouble coming up with meal ideas on the spot. This is one area where I'm NOT spontaneous!

No Shampoo - Day 2


I hadn’t planned on blogging about this so early in the process but I really want to share my thoughts thus far. We went away over the weekend and I something planned tonight so I wanted to wash my hair last night so I wouldn’t have to deal with it after getting home late tonight. When I remembered I was out of shampoo and conditioner, I suddenly regretted my decision to ditch the shampoo. I was feeling particularly lazy after a bad night’s sleep with two 17 month old toddlers in a hotel room and a 3 hour drive home. I didn’t want to take the time to mix up my baking soda/water and apple cider vinegar/water. I realize just how lazy this is because let’s face it, how hard is it to mix up a few things?

But it wasn’t just laziness I was struggling with. I was also dealing with the fear, however small, of what my hair was going to feel like and behave. My hair is very fine but I have a LOT of it and it’s down to the bottom of my shoulder blades. I kept envisioning me trying to detangle my mop instead of doing other important things. In the end, it was the first blog post I wrote that kept me from digging through the closet to find some shampoo/conditioner. I had already committed to doing this…in writing. I had to follow through. I also want to prove a few people wrong. I want to show them you don’t NEED shampoo and conditioner to have clean, healthy, manageable hair.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the whole process. As I knew it would be, it was easy to mix everything up. I used the bottles from my beloved Herbal Essences for my new mixtures. And while my hair wasn’t as easy to detangle as it is with my conditioner, it wasn’t as bad as I imagined it would be. And for some reason, I kept expecting it to tangle up as it dried but it continued to stay nice and smooth as it dried. I was happy with how it was today too. We’ll see how it is tomorrow on day 2.

Barring any catastrophes, I plan to stick with this for a minimum of six weeks to see how it goes. I mentioned it to a coworker and asked him if my hair looked any different. He said yes. When probed about what was different, he said it was flatter than usual. While this may be valid, he’s a guy. Can they really be trusted to be a good gauge of anything related to hair?