15 Minutes

So.... I'm trying something new (as always).

Over the past couple of months I have come to, once again, truly fall in love with Writing.  Of course, as with any relationship, we have our ups and downs.  There are days we go without speaking to each other.  There are times where we aggravate each other to no end.  I sometimes want to kick Writing out of my life forever.

I actually thought I had.  I thought I had kicked Writing to the curb, after many years in school, and doing almost nothing but writing.  (A Bachelors in History requires a LOT of writing.)

Now I'm having to come at it from a completely different angle.  When I was in school, I didn't have kids, and I was single.  It was so much easier then.

Now I have kids, a husband, a house, and everything that entails, which is a LOT.  A lot of responsibility, a lot fitting things in.

So, now that I have taken upon this new career as a ghostwriter, I'm trying to fit something new and different into my already hectic schedule.  It hasn't been working so great.  I hadn't been able to find the balance needed to accomplish everything, until I read this really great article.  And now, I'm actually trying it.

At first, I thought "Oh cripes.  What am I going to write about in my blog for 15 mins?"  Well, since I'm trying a new schedule, I can certainly write about that, right?  Yeah.  

I'll admit it, I was going to start yesterday.

That didn't go quite as I had planned it, but what does these days?

I slept through my alarm, woke up late, had to get the kids ready for school with barely enough coffee in me to get my eyes open.  So, the whole "get up, get dressed, and write for 15 minutes" was SERIOUSLY not going to happen.

My breakfast was nonexistent. I know I was busy doing something when I should have been eating breakfast, but I can't remember what it was.

And then, instead of spending a day toiling away in front of a computer screen, I spent the at my kids' school, helping out at the Christmas party, which was a lot of fun, but really productive, writing-wise.

And then the nap monster attacked me when got home.  And then household chores took over once I woke up.

But you know what?  I'm not beating myself up over it.  I figured all I could do is try again.

So here I am, on a Saturday morning, when I could be sleeping in.  Instead I'm trying to get myself on a productive schedule.  We'll see how it works.

If I can spend 15 minutes every morning writing in this here blog, though, I think I'll be making a good start.

Will the schedule listed in the above article work for me?  Who knows?  But I'm willing to try, and work with it until it is perfect for me and my family.

Until tomorrow, keep it imperfectly perfect!

The Year Challenge

School has been out for over a month now, and it has been HECTIC.

This year, the end of the school year means one thing:  The One Year Challenge

The challenge was thrown down by one of my friends, and because I can't seem to say no to a challenge, this is what I'm doing for the rest of the year.  My house is on the verge of becoming painfully cluttered and disorganized.  Really disorganized.  I have one year to get it cleaned up and straightened up and stuff gone that I don't need anymore.  Thank goodness there is enough to do that I can keep switching off jobs, and I won't get bored. 

There are bookshelves to go through, clothes to be sorted, painting to be done, floor tile to be replaced, furniture to be re-done, furniture to be thrown out and replaced...... Well, you get the picture.  And all of these things need to be sandwiched in between gardening, canning, dental appointments, visits from family, and the kids' summer activities.  Plus, planning for the new school year, which starts in just over a month. 

Yes, it's less fun than a vacation.  

However, I think I will find it MUCH more satisfactory.  If I went on vacation now, I wouldn't be able to relax, because I would keep thinking about the horror that is my house.  We're planning on going on vacation next year.  This year, we're concentrating on getting our house cleaned out and organized in one year.  

So far, we have managed to blow through sorting out the kids' clothing (a HUGE job), and a small section of my clothing (an even bigger job!).   I organized my canning supplies already, so that was a big job out of the way, and by organizing those supplies, I was able to organize my pantry a little more.  Or at least find space for most some of my empty jars. But I swear these things multiply at night, when no one is looking.

I have a list of things that need to be done.  It's an ever-growing list.  It's probably never going to end.  I'll just keep adding things as they come up.  I've actually started to hum a little song to myself whenever I add things to it:

The more it grows (tiddly pom) the more it goes (tiddly pom) the more it goes (tiddly pom) on growing.  

And nobody knows (tiddly pom) how long it grows (tiddly pom) how long it grows (tiddly pom) there's no knowing.

I'm looking forward to this process, actually.  A lot of people deem it necessary to try to find a schedule, and stick to it.  My life is constrained enough.  I need the freedom to be able to jump from one project to another, and not feel like I'm doing it in the wrong order.  Some days I'm ready for dealing with clothing.  Some days I want to work in my kitchen.  Some days I want to paint.  Some days I want to be a handyman and do repair work.  As long as I get one thing done a day that needs to be done, I'm okay with that.  It might make things kind of chaotic, but I'm okay with that too.  My life is chaotic.  It probably always will be.  But that's what makes it perfectly imperfect.

Cart For My Canning

Over the last few months, I have acquired a new hobby that is taking up a huge amount of space in my tiny little kitchen.  It's a worthwhile hobby, which is leading to other new hobbies for me.  The best part about these hobbies is that they will (hopefully) be saving my family money, in a lot of different ways.

The original new hobby is canning.  Yep.  I'm a canner and I'm not ashamed of it.  I'm slowly emptying out my chest freezer and canning everything in there that I am able to.  Money saving benefit of this is:  as I empty out my freezer, I won't need such a big, electricity hog, and will be able to invest in a smaller one.  My ultimate goal is to only need it to store milk, baked goods, and flat frozen freezer meals.  It's coming along.  However, I digress.  

The canning equipment is space consuming.  Canning pots (I have a water bath canner and a pressure canner) are BIG.  Really BIG.  They take up a lot of space, and that is space that is better used for food that has been canned, or dry ingredients, or just about anything else.  And then there are the towels, the funnels, the lid lifters, the lids and rings themselves, the jar lifters, the pectin, canning salt, citric acid...... The list is really endless.  And it took over my pantry space quite rapidly.  

Since I have been challenged by one of my friends to get my house cleaned up and organized before the end of the year, I figured this was a good place to start.  I had been on a hunt for a decent cart that can support a lot of weight (that pressure canner is heavy), and store a lot of stuff.  And it had to fit into an area that is about 30in x 25 in.  It had to be under $100.  It had to be sturdy and long lasting.  It had to look decent.  

TALLY HO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The hunt is on!!!!!!!!!!!!

After a couple of months of searching, something appeared at Overstock.com. (No, this is NOT a paid advertisement for them.  I'm not getting anything from them for mentioning them.  This just happened to be where we found the cart.)  Now, Overstock is not my usual go-to place for shopping (thrift stores are really more in my price range), but my mom pointed me in the direction of a really cool cart that just about met all my requirements.  

On Friday, it arrived (three days sooner than originally expected.  Awesome job Overstock!), and was put together.  

 It came with a handle, but I really didn't need it so we didn't put it on.  If there comes a time when I do need it, we still have it tucked away, and will be able to use it.  But it's just perfect handle-less.  

I also had that set of three clear plastic drawers tucked away in a closet, and had used them for some sort of craft supply, but I cleaned it out and am putting it to MUCH better use.   

The three drawers store my funnels, lid lifters, jar lifters, pectins of varying sorts, lid tightener, cheese cloth and jelly bag.  I'm probably going to replace the drawer pulls to something a little cuter, because that's how I roll.  

I also found two small crates when I was cleaning out, These crates are perfect for sorting my rings and plastic lids.  

I can now organize them according to size (wide mouth and regular) which will also speed up the process a little bit.  It was a troublesome having all the rings and lids in one box, and forever trying to sort through them.  Also, the crates aren't enclosed, so if the rings are still damp from being washed, they will be less inclined to rust, because the air flow is better.  Labels for these two crates are coming, and when the arrive and are attached, I will be showing them off.

I already had my lids (also known as "flats") sorted into plastic CD boxes I got from our local dollar store.  I sort them according to "Used" or "New".  The "used" lids are not used for canning, but kept on hand in case some sort of weird crafting bug strikes me, or I want a lid on a jar, but don't want to seal it.  I can use one of the used lids for that.  

I will be properly labeling the boxes later on.  These boxes are stackable, so when my supply of new lids gets out of control (and it will), I can have one box for wide mouth lids and one for regular lids.  

The top shelf is reserved for my "babies".  I actually took down all the large stock pots I use in canning and fit them into the large water bath canning pot on the right.  The lid rests on a pot on the second shelf.  Moving all my big pots to one location freed up space for my empty jars that are currently waiting to be filled with produce from the garden we are putting in (one of my other new hobbies, but that's a future post).  

I now have room under my pantry shelves for my 5 gallon buckets of bread flour and all purpose flour, which is great.  I also have an extra small bucket down there for empty bags or for berries when I get on a berry canning roll.  (It's easier to put unwashed and unprepped berries into the small bucket while prepping them for canning.  But more on that in a future post, when strawberries are ripe.)

So that's pretty much it.  It's a just another chapter in my perfectly imperfect life. I'm loving it, and it's coming along in an awesome way.

As Time Goes By....

I thought only a week had passed.  I didn't realize it has been much longer. 

 

See, this is what happens to me, and a lot of overscheduled people. It happens to all of us.  We live in this crazy world where we are continually being pulled in multiple directions at all times.  And no matter how carefully we schedule, if one little thing (or one big thing....)  goes wrong, everything seems to fall in on itself like a house of cards. 

Sometimes it doesn't need to be something going wrong.  Sometimes it's just saying "yes" to the right thing at the wrong time. 

Or a big old combination of all of the above.

On April 4, I accepted a challenge from a friend of mine to get my house cleaned up and organized.  I was excited and ready to roll with it.  I want my house clean.  I want all the extraneous stuff gone.  I was ready to move forward with it, and I was going to start documenting it here on my blog.  

Yeah.... This NEVER happens.

Guess what?  That draft is still sitting there, waiting to be finished.  Life, once again, got in the way.  Everything wound up getting in the way.  On top of everything else, two of my wisdom teeth that were in really bad shape were causing me so much pain, I couldn't concentrate on anything.  And I mean ANYTHING.  I already had an appointment scheduled to see my dentist, so I wasn't going to try for an earlier appointment. When I finally got to see him, it turned out that those two teeth had to be extracted that day.  So I wound up losing about 3 days of life, due to pain and pain medications.  I did some remarkable catching up on my sleep, and now my teeth are causing me a lot less pain.  Bonus!  

This is more like it.

However, in a perfect world, things would have gotten done, regardless.  Is this a perfect world?  Nope.  This is an imperfect world.  Dinner still needed to made.  Dishes still needed to be done, along with laundry.  Children still needed to be taken care of.  The house needed to be cleaned.  Basically, everything that I usually do still needed to be done.  Deadlines needed to met.  And I was two weeks behind on pretty much everything, or so it seemed, just because of two teeth.

So now I'm rushing to catch up.  Trying to get caught up on laundry, switching out clothes for the season, getting plants ready to be put into our plot at the community garden.  One day this week

, I have a contractor coming to take a look at our bathroom (which is needing some SERIOUS work done on it) and help us figure out which way we need to go.  Once the demolition on that starts, and the rebuilding of our bathroom, I know that my work is going to increase a lot.

I just can't seem to get back into a rhythm that works for me at this moment, so I'm plugging along, doing things as I see them.  And trying to figure out how to schedule everything, without completely exhausting myself.  

And it might just be me, but this seems to happen a lot.  In my world, anyway.  As soon as I get a good schedule going, and it's working for me, and I'm getting a little bit of free time, something comes along and clogs up the works.  

I'm learning though that taking things one baby step at a time, I'll get everything done.  I need concentrate on one task at a time, and not worry about the other 12 million things on my To Do list.  

Do you build time for problems and possible issues into your schedule?  And if so, how do you do it?  Let me know!

Spring Cleaning: A Time of Renewal, Rebirth, and Hope

I always used to chuckled when people would mention "spring cleaning".  I never did spring cleaning.  Maybe once or twice when the boys were babies, but never really since then.

This last year, I really started to take a look at my life.  My house, my family, our finances.... And I was disgusted.  We were existing, but not living.  We were struggling.

Cooking in our tiny kitchen was nothing short of a nightmare.  Storage in our kitchen was nonexistant.  Our dining room was turning into a catch-all room, as was our living room.  The living room was also my work area for my business.  And it was out of control.

Over the next month or so, I'm going to be concentrating on my "Kicking Butt Campaign".  I am eliminating things I don't want or need.  I'm going to utilize the great ideas I have given to other people,  and using them myself to regain control of my house.  I will reuse what I can, and get rid of the rest.  I'm going to make my house a home, to the best of my ability.  

The way I'm doing this is quite simple.  I take one small section of one room, figure out what I want it to look like, and then do my level best to make it look that way.  If I have to move furniture, I do it.  If I have to scrub down the wall, I do it.  Some of the stuff that won't get used gets thrown out.  I discovered that my public library is needing some supplies for their summer kids program, so I'm working hard on sorting out the supplies they will need, and packaging them up.  Some stuff is being donated to my children's school.  

Summer Library Program Donations

School Donations

I figure there is always going to be someone who will need some of my stuff more than I will.  So my spring cleaning regime this year is going to be several months long, and with a lot of stuff leaving my house, going to people and places that can really use it, into a yard sale box, for when we hold a yard sale this spring, OR into the trash, because no one in their right mind would ever want it.

How are YOU tackling spring cleaning this year?

 

Housekeeping is NOT My Thing

I might be a housewife, but I will fully admit that I abhor housework.
Seriously.  I really do.
There are so many more interesting things to do in the world.   Paint a picture,  read a book, bake, cook, crochet, embroidery,  take a nap.... oooh.  A nap sounds nice. All warm and cozy on the couch, under my favorite blanket...  oh.  Sorry.  I got distracted.  I'm back.

Housework. 

About once a month, I wind up reaching some sort of limit as to the level of mess I can handle.  At this time, I go a little nuts, and get a lot of cleaning done at once.  Once a month,  or thereabouts,  I wind up doing a mini deep clean on whichever particular room has reached critical mass.  I have to admit, however, that since I decided to close my business, I find myself concentrating more on my house.

Now when I move or clean off a piece of furniture, it stays cleaned off, more or less.   I find that I am more willing to throw things out.  I'm willing to part with more of the crap that has built up over the years.  I'm finding that I am more willing to take the time to organize and clear stuff out.  It's going to be a long haul.  Things like this don't change overnight.  But I'm glad it is happening, and I'm looking forward to sharing the changes with you.