The Kitchen

The dreaded kitchen

Well the kitchen has always been my nemisis. I hate washing dishes; I suppose because I was an only child till I was 8 and it was some years after that before my sisters could do dishes. I was forced to wash dishes every night after dinner. I don't mind doing them so much now, and I dearly love it when my kitchen is clean and shiney. It just seems really hard for me to keep it that way.

The kitchen after one 15 minute session.

So I plunged right in and did 15 minutes in there. I know that it's hard to tell from this photo, but I did actually get a lot accomplished. It just happens to be all at the far end of the room and not all of it is visible from this end.

kitchen tonight

I did a couple more 15 minute sessions, mostly washing up dishes and putting some stuff away. That was a couple days ago. Since then I've mostly been trying to maintain to clean spots, keep the dishes washed up and put away some more stuff. So here it is tonight. I did manage to sweep the floor at the far end and put away most of the clean stuff. Some things I have to find homes for.

The Bedroom

The bedroom before

Well, to continue, after getting a lot done in the bathroom, I tackled the bedroom, 15 minutes at a time. Here's a before pic from the doorway. I couldn't tell you how many months it's been since I actually made my bed.

Bedroom before

I did three 15 minute sessions in here, there is still a good bit of dust, trash and junk in here, hiding on the other side of the bed, but at least the walk way to the bathroom is cleared, the feather bed fluffed up and the bed made. I put away most of the clean clothes (there isn't room in the dresser for the winter stuff and since I'll be needing it soon, no point to packing it away now! that's the pile on the floor next to the dresser) I got all the dirty clothes corralled in the hamper, it's been raining so I've gotten a bit behind on the laundry, tho one sunny day and I can catch back up.

Bedroom after

Bedroom after

I also vacuumed the open part of the floor in here.

After the bedroom I tackled the kitchen, but that's another post for another day!

Starting Over Again

Bathroom Before

Wow, I can't beleive it's been 9 months since I posted here! I thought it had only been 5 or 6! Time certainly gets away from me, and once again a lot of things in my life have been going on without me paying a lot of attention to them.

Recently I've been looking around and wondering how on earth did I get in the predicament? My place looks worse than an episode from Hoarders. The outside looks like a cross between a landfill and a junkyard. I will say in my defense that a lot of the stuff out there doesn't belong to me.

However, most of whats on the inside of the house does belong to me. And the inside is even worse than the outside. The inside of my house looks like somebodies overstuffed storage shed puked all over.

So, I'm starting over again. 15 minutes at a time. I know this works, I just have to do it. I just have to keep plugging away at it and keep going even when I'm tired and don't want to. So where to start? When everything is so overwhelming I like to start in the bathroom.

There are a lot of good reasons to start with the bathroom. It's a small room, even if you keep at it until every last bit of it has been scrubbed all over, it still won't take you that long. Most bathrooms are small enough that they can't accumulate too much junk to sort through, clean and put away. So here is the state of the bathroom at the beginning.

Bathroom, after

And here it is afterwards. I scrubbed the tub, the outside of the toilet, the sink, washed the mirrors, wiped down the worst of the shelves and the floor. Three cleaning rags, three trash dumps and 20 minutes later it is reasonably clean and sanitary again. Later I did a few more minutes and made a dent in the grossness on the inside of the toilet.

Having accomplished this much, I felt much better and more motivated to tackle some more of the house. But that will have to wait for my next post!

Happy New Year

Starting the New Year off right with a shiny sink!

Happy New Year! May you have a wonderful year with many blessings everyday! Like many of you I have a few goals for this coming year. And yes, of course one of them is to 'get organized'.

I am coming to think however, that to 'get organized' is not really the destination. I am beginning to wonder if it isn't more of a never ending path/journey. Where each day we make the choice of doing something that helps us accomplish our other goals or not.

For example, on a daily basis we choose to deal with the incoming mail, sort, toss, act on it. Or throw it in a pile and ignore it. The first scenario is the choice of people who are organized (at least in the area of taking care of the mail!) and the second one is the choice of those of us who are not organized.

I can see now why I've struggled with this issue for so much of my life. The idea is beginning to sink in, that it isn't about doing a huge amount of work and digging myself out from under the clutter, it's about dozens of small choices and actions through out each and every day. I choose to become a neater, tidier, more organized person over the coming year. Because I need to be organized so that I can accomplish my other goals, otherwise there is the risk that 12 months from now I'll be in the same shape I'm in right now.

I spent a little time each day this past week tackling just the obvious trash about the house, doing a bit of laundry and getting the dishes all washed up. I'm proud to say that I am starting out the new year with a clean shiny sink. Well, for a beat up sink that is pushing 70 years of age, this is about as good as it gets.

New Beginnings

Living room before I started

New Year's is of course about making resolutions. I'm not much for that, most of us will start off well and peter out before the end of the month. However I am taking advantage of the new year for a new beginning. There are so many things that I want to accomplish in my life over the next 5 years and to be able to do them I must be much more organized!

So here is what the living room was looking like the past week, leftovers from Christmas and things I brought home from cleaning out a store room at my moms. Yes, that is a drill press ;=0.

Living room after one 15 minute session.

So I did one 15 minute session and here is the result. Those little wall cabinets will eventually go in the studio to hold various small things. I think I will glue cork over the fronts so they can double as a bulletin board.

Living Room after a second 15 minute session

My second 15 minute session included transferring all of my seeds from a big plastic tub into the little storage table. Now I can get rid of the tub!

That space behind the storage table in this last picture is where my grow light set up will go. Since the living room is the warmest room in the house, this is where I start my seeds. When they are bigger then they go in the bedroom where it is a little cooler.

Make Do

The big crack around the back door

I have a great tendency to make do or do without. Sometimes of course I'm just procrastinating!

A long time back I got my new to me back door hung, but I never got back around to doing the rest of the work, like fixing the trim boards and putting in the doorstops and weather stripping.

I complained in my last post how cold my kitchen is, well a big part of that is the big draft from the crack around the door. So I finally decided to do something about it. I didn't really have what I needed to fix it properly so I scrounged around and thought about what i could fill up the crack with.

Big crack filled in

I just took some plastic grocery bags and stuff them in the crack around the door. That really helped stop the draft and it kept the kitchen at least 5 degrees warmer last night.

I know my younger daughter will call it "okie-fied" and it's ugly but it will do until I figure out what I need to do with it to fix it permanently. Took me less than five minutes! Why did I wait so long?

Gift Guides and Winter Weather

Snow in the garden, Dec 5, 2011

Well, it snowed the first weekend of Dec and even now a week later there is still some snow on the ground and ice on my front steps.

With winter weather comes new chores, like bringing in wood, making fires and cleaning out the stove.

I've not been keeping up with the house well at all because it's so cold. My kitchen has been 38-40 degrees at night. It's warmer inside my refrigerator!

I have been writing lots of new articles over on Squidoo, especially gift guides so if you are looking for gifts you might want to check these out:

Best Gifts for the Gardener-Cook has a lot of ideas for the folks on your list that grow their own food and preserve the harvest.

All Occasion Gifts for Artists has some different ideas for what the artists in your life might like since most people don't know what to get as far as art supplies go, this concentrates on other things artists could use.

 Gifts for Organic Gardeners has a lot of different gifts for the gardener in your life, not just seeds or tools!