Today I Tried Something New: Folding Fitted Sheets!

A couple of months ago, I blogged about how my house appears to be clean, but actually I hide all my junk in closets and cabinets.  I've been trying to tackle those areas over the past week or so. It feels really good to accomplish those little jobs.  Our closets and cabinets are not that big, so most of these jobs are things I can squeeze in during part of an afternoon.

Today's goal was our upstairs hall closet.  I should have taken a "before" picture, but I didn't. It is a small closet that holds: dog paraphernalia, toilet paper, kleenex, towels, hand towels, wash cloths, thank you cards, bubbles, batteries, candles, swim goggles, sheets for our bed and the guest bed, reward stickers, glue sticks, childproofing gear and a whole bunch of other small homeless items.

Most of this job was easy for me. I weeded out items for the garage sale tub. I put some things in their new "rightful place". I filled a bucket with all of the random crap and will be organizing and weeding that stuff out right after I finish doing this!

The stumbling block came with the sheets.  I have long since used the organizing method of putting the sheet set inside one of the pillow cases so that it stays together. Only I do it like this: carefully fold the 2nd pillow case.  Carefully fold the flat sheet.  Fold the fitted sheet in half and then jam it into the pillow case. My pillow case organizing solution ends up with fat, round balls of sheets, instead of the space saving and visually attractive version you see here:

http://www.unique-vintage.com/wordpress/?cat=51

So, today I set out to learn how to fold a fitted sheet. Naturally, I turned to Martha Stewart.

OK, lie. I googled "how to fold a fitted sheet", got a ton of results, scrolled down a little and then figured, "Martha Stewart probably knows how to do this." 

I watched this video.

I am not familiar with Martha Stewart's tv show. I have never watched it. I only know her reputation as being super creative, organizing and skilled in all things homemaker-ish.  

First, how condescending is she at the beginning of this clip? "Some people, hee hee, can't tackle simple tasks like... folding a fitted sheet!" She might as well roll her eyes and point at the lady. Or me. 

Then she calls the lady's sheet "pitiful"!!! Twice!  "You just can't have a nice linen closet if you put that... pitiful THING in your closet! Shame on you!" (OK, that was me inserting what she was actually thinking instead of what she was saying.)

So then they bring in the sheet folding lady and practice folding sheets.  Here Martha becomes more humble because she isn't doing this without flaw.  And that poor lady!! 

I watched the video. Honestly, I watched 3 of the 4 minutes of the video and then I turned it off. 

I have to say, I feel like I did a little better than the "I can't fold my sheets" lady. But my end product actually did not look much better than her first, "pitiful" version. I didn't care. At least they were more flat than they were before I watched the video.

Hopefully Martha Stewart will not show up at my house and inspect my closet. I wouldn't want to feel her wrath. And what would she say about my towels?? 

****

Update, a little later....

Finished!!!

The Mystery of the Missing Backpack

Subtitle: The Irony of Organizing
Alternate Subtitle: Career Day Causes Chaos! 

Since realizing my house is a cluttered and disorganized mess, as I do about 3 times a year, Eric and I have been decluttering and cleaning like fools this month.  He spent the weekend sorting junk in the garage. I cleaned Big Girls room a week or so ago and spent my weekend in the mess that we call our playroom.  Tonight I tackled the deceptively deep hall closet. Things are looking good! The next goal is the upstairs linen closet.

Big Girl has managed to keep her room clean for a whole week! Mostly because she hasn't been playing with the toys now that they are in clear storage tubs, and instead lays around on the couch in her pajamas sucking on her 2 fingers and whining that she wants to watch Cupcake Wars. (To Big Girl's future husband: I am very sorry. I am doing the best I can!)

Today kicked off National Lutheran Schools Week. For those of you who are lacking insight in the world of Lutheran schools, it is essentially "spirit week" from public school.  There are theme days and the kids dress up. There are some special events like book fair and science night.  Today's theme was "Career Day", so last night I spent time with both kids figuring out clothes to go with their career.

No surprise, Little Man wanted to be a "worker man". But I couldn't find the "worker man" shirt he wore at Halloween (when he was also a "worker man"), so instead he was going to wear his fighter pilot dress up outfit. And bring his red guitar. ("Because I want to play guitar in the airplane.")

Big Girl decided to be a teacher. This was iron clad because she wrote it on a handwriting paper at school which is apparently A VERY SERIOUS COMMITMENT.  Dressing up for career day as a teacher has got to be one of the lamest clothing adventures out there. Unfortunately we do not have a denim romper with an apple patch.  I gave her the choice between two jumpers and she seemed fine with that. (Equally lame is dressing up like a "mom". I'm not saying teacher and mom aren't good careers, I'm just saying if you have an excuse to dress up for school you should really go for it! But I guess the young ladies in question just wanted to be true to themselves. Yada yada yada.)

This morning we got up and I started my daily ritual of herding the kids around the upstairs repeating, "Put on your underwear. Get your clothes on. Did you brush your hair? I said put on your underwear. Get your clothes on. Did you brush your hair?"  Little Man started crying because he doesn't want to be a guitar playing fighter pilot anymore. He wants to be a "worker man". Thankfully, the missing "worker man" shirt was located and mom saved the day!

In the meantime, Big Girl decided she no longer wanted to wear the jumper she picked last night. She wants a different jumper, the one she can't reach that needs to be ironed. Done and done.

But then it is time to go to school and I can't find Big Girl's water bottle to fill up before we leave. Not uncommon, she regularly leaves it in her backpack. So I asked for the backpack. And...

It is missing!

Have you seen this backpack? 

I ask, how is it possible that in our newly cleaned and organized house the backpack is now missing? (Along with the water bottle I just spent $15 on at REI not even 2 weeks ago! And her folder. And my Burts Bees chapstick that she stole from me.)

I told her to look for the backpack and she came back with her other backpack. The one she got for this school year but doesn't ever use because it is a messenger bag (which she selected) and she doesn't like that it is a messenger bag. She was all, "It's ok, I'll just use this one."

But I am not as easily able to just let it go. I applaud her "roll with the punches" attitude, but inside I'm thinking, "You don't just lose your brand new fancy water bottle and not care about that!" "You don't just lose the backpack you have taken to school almost every day for 3 years and just say, 'On to the next, personal items be damned!'"

I have since looked around for the backpack. I sent her after school on a backpack hunt. Her Daddy even did a thorough search. No backpack.

So we now have a cleaned and organized house, and now somehow Big Girl's backpack is missing. Finger crossed that we did not throw it away!!

Queen of hidden clutter

I resisted New Years resolutions this year, but have been thinking about setting some "around the house" goals to get me more organized and make me feel better about our home.  Our house isn't regularly an embarrassing mess - I admit that I could be better about dusting and mopping, but we are pretty good as a family about not leaving tons of clutter and stuff all of the place. But, I have a hidden secret. Literally, hidden.

I am a cabinet and closet clutterer.

If you walk into my kitchen, it seems relatively clean and put together. Open a cabinet, however, and who knows how many pans, tupperware containers or paper cups may fall on you. Hutch? same. Hall closet? Same. Garage? same.

So, I am setting a goal for myself that this year I am going to organize my storage clutter around the house. And I'm not going to be grand and say "I'm going to do it in 1 day!"  I am going to try to do one location a month! Easy! These are the kinds of jobs where I quit before I begin because it seems like an enormous task, but really when you get into it, it doesn't take long. And it feels good to finish! And to open your kitchen cabinet and not have every pan you own slide out on to your foot! (Or your husband's foot)

Some areas that will be un-cluttered and organized this year:

* "stuff" baskets on the floating office shelf
* entry closet
* kitchen cabinets - ALL OF THEM
* hutch cabinet
* garage (though Eric will most definitely get to this one before I do since it bothers him more)
* my dresser
* playroom toys!!
* upstairs linen closet
* laundry room
* backyard storage container

And, while I'm at it, a few other around the house things I'd like to tackle this year:

* throw away this thing, which has been sitting in pieces in our side yard for about a year now
* build and actually use 2 raised planters from our awesome landscape design plan
* paint the playroom/guest room

Multi-tasking, in a "one task at a time" way

I used to be a great multi-tasker. It was, in fact, one of the attibutes that I was often praised for in professional settings. Give me a piece of paper to make a list and off I went... tackling tasks like, well, someone good at football tackles someone else - Brian Urlacher, maybe? Yes, I'm the Brian Urlacher of multi-tasking.

Except, now I'm not.

Mommy brain?

I have turned into a "one task at a time" person. This is almost as shattering to my self-image as when I discovered I was an introvert after years of being "zany and outgoing" as a teenager.  Suddenly the me I thought I was is a me I don't recognize. Mind blown.

Tomorrow is L's princess birthday party. I am doing last minute planning and cleaning today because I couldn't think about the party until this week. Before that, I had softball coaching related tunnel vision. Then, applying for the mission trip to Haiti tunnel vision. After the party tomorrow, the focus shifts to my mission trip minute talk at church, and the accompanying poster I have to make. And then, to the garage sale that is in two week to raise money for the mission trip.

The problem with this kind of task tackling, I have discovered, is that nothing is allotted more time than what I have between tasks. L's party gets a week and a half because that's how long it's been since I finished the task before it.  Minute talk for church gets one week. Garage sale planning, one week. 

It's not the best use of my time. And yet, if I try to push it into what really would be the smartest use of my time, it's like my brain just shuts off and I'm totally incapacitated. If "totally" means forced to sit on the couch watching Arrested Development (best TV comedy ever?) and eating junk food.

My commitment to overcommitting

I've been away for awhile. Living the busy life of a mom - sick children, sick me, busy husband, travel with husband (and kids) for school competition, training for a 5K, book club, etc. etc. etc.

Our family is now well into the 6th month we have been living here. Know what that means? Time for me to start committing myself to way more things than I can probably handle! Why? Because I like too many things and lots of people/groups need helpers with time, something that I have, at least in theory.

******
o·ver·com·mit (ō'vər-kə-mĭt')
v. o·ver·com·mit·ted, o·ver·com·mit·ting, o·ver·com·mits
v. tr.
To bind or obligate (oneself, for example) beyond the capacity for realization.
*****

I kind of like this definition because of the use of the word "realization". It calls to mind REALITY and REAL. As in, can I REALLY expect to do all of these things, in REALITY?

I'm currently playing with the idea of committing (overcommitting?) to two fairly large, but short term, responsibilities at our church/school: head softball coach for the middle school and Vacation Bible School coordinator.

Softball coach:
+ desperately needed, I love softball and have some skills (or at least I did 10 years ago when I last played!)
- problems with what to do with my kids during games and practices

VBS coordinator
+ in the past the church has apparently had trouble finding a coordinator for this, it's up my alley in the "organizing, planning" skill set
- I am totally unfamiliar with VBS and the amount of work scares me

In both cases, it would be cool to do something to help provide a good program for some of the BL kids and I'd get to know more BL families and moms better. And, in both cases, it would mean adding significant time to a new commitment when I sometimes feel like I'm barely holding it together as it is.

Thinking, thinking...

'Tis the season... for obsessively organizing!

Last year I had a minor nervous breakdown just after Christmas. Not an annual thing, surprisingly. But

two children of toy-receiving age + doting relatives and friends = lots of clutter - finding room for all the new toys and clothes

Did you see how I cleverly turned that into a math equation?

To be honest, I can't even remember what we did with all the toys last year, but I feel like we donated some of the older toys and handed down some things to friends. And even then, we stored some unopened toys in the garage to be reintroduced throughout the year. (One toy actually just made it's debut last month!)

I don't know if it is due to last year's angst or what, but this year the clutter and organizing anxiety has begun even before packages have started accumulating under the tree. Even before we HAVE a tree!

My current obsessive focus is the kitchen. Our new kitchen has lots of cabinet space. Much more than our old house. And we do actually have a pantry, which we didn't have before. But the problem is that while the pantry is spacious, it is akwardly shaped for food storage. The shelves are square, which means they are much deeper than a typical cabinet. They are the same depth as our refrigerator. Nice for cereal, oatmeal and dry staples storage. Not so nice for canned goods and all the little things that you would want to put in a pantry. So, it has been a struggle to keep it organized, and I'd love to come up with a system for utlizing this space better. (I've been half heartedly looking for lazy susans but everything I've seen is either way too small or just slightly too big.)

So disorganized feeling pantry has led to a smaller goal of organizing my dry staples so that I don't have bags of wheat flour, white flour, sugar, dry beans, grains, etc. thrown on to the shelf.

And now I have a secondary obsession - a distracting obsession from the first obsession: I can't stand our dirty and gross spice rack. (This actually started because of the clutter in the herb/spice/tea/hot chocolate/etc. section of our kitchen.) It isn't a bad spice rack, really, but it spins and there is something about how it is put together that makes it really difficult to clean it. And the spice bottle tops have a texture, which makes them hard to clean too, unless I want to empty 18 spice bottles into ??? and throw them in the dishwasher.  And I don't want to have a greasy and dusty spice rack sitting out on my cabinet for all the world (and myself) to see on a regular basis. Gross.

I'm taking my first step to tackle these issues, and Thank you, Cyber Monday, for your assistance! I did a little sale shopping online yesterday and have found the solution to at least part of my problem. I think step two will be to get some of those white wire shelves to divide the big cabinets up a little bit.

Anyway, my new kitchen "toys". Happy birthday to me, a few weeks early!

My dry staples will be so happy!

Spice rack-tastic!

Extra spice jars!

It's probably pretty obvious at this point, by my excitement, that I don't spend money on myself very often. I am really looking forward to having a well organized kitchen!

On Planning

I am a planner and occasionally find that, despite my planning - or maybe in spite of it! - things don't go the way I envision.  How frustrating, but also an excellent reminder that God has plans for me and our family and I don't need to sweat the details as much as I do.

A week or so ago, I wrote about feeling a little overwhelmed by Little Man's upcoming birthday, my dad's visit from out of town, and Halloween all happening pretty much at the same time. I organized and planned so that I wouldn't forget anything and things would go smoothly over that 4 day period.

Then, guess what happened?

My daughter (3 years old) suddenly came down with the flu. Thursday morning I had my normal, hyper and energetic daughter, and by Thursday afternoon she had a fever of 103F and looked like a zombie. And out the window went the plans! Halloween and my dad's visit (which also spanned Little Man's birthday) had to accomodate my sick child and doctor's orders that she not leave the house, not to mention taking steps to get her well and try to avoid everyone else getting sick!

And now the busy few days have passed, and we had a very nice time!, and I am reflecting back and feeling dumb for being so worried.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. -- Jeremiah 29:11

So here is a good reminder for today: don't spend energy worrying about how things will get done, or when! God has perfect timing and things will turn out exactly as HE plans, which may not be the way we think things should go, but is always a better way.

Box of disorganization

I am one of those strange people that actually really enjoys doing mundane paperwork tasks. I actually enjoy filing and organizing, grading worksheets, stapling and hole punching. You wouldn't know it if you walked into our office today. (Or, any day, really!)

We have a crate in the office that I am going to lovingly refer to as the "red box of disorganization".  There the crate sits, right next to our large filing cabinet. Inside: an astounding combination of necessary, important and/or sentimental documents. No organization, no order.

The original purpose of the red crate was supposed to be that we put receipts, bills, paperwork we need to keep into the red crate and then on Tuesdays when I pay bills, I can also file that paperwork in the filing cabinet. Instead, I throw papers in there and forget them. Or I take something out of the filing cabinet when I need it and then, instead of putting it away when I'm done, I toss it into the crate. So now the crate is completely full of all kinds of things: greeting cards and letters, medication receipts, our dog's vet records, copies of car repair bills, etc.

The sad thing is, if I just kept on top of the papers in the crate, it would probably take me 5-10 minutes a week to get those things filed and then we'd be able to access them easily. Instead, I haven't filed them since we moved here at the end of June! So, 5-10 minutes a week for about 15 weeks =... A LOT OF FILING!

Eric is gone this week, so my goal is to get all of those papers filed before he gets back Thursday night. We'll see if I can do it.

Update on my goal from a few weeks ago: A couple of people have asked whether my kitchen counter has remained uncluttered. For the most part, the answer is yes. The hiccup is that now that the counter is clear, L likes to sit there and color, so now there is a coloring book, notebook and big box of crayons that seem to have made their permanent home there. Not complaining - it's better than clutter and a good place for her to sit and color, especially while I'm cooking.

Junk pile, I banish thee

No matter how hard I try, I can not avoid having a pile of dumped junk on the counter in our kitchen. Before we moved, we had a junk pile that drove me crazy. The second it was clean, more things appeared.

I promised myself that after our move I would not allow the same thing to happen. We have a nice little kitchen peninsula with stools for the kids to sit while I am cooking. It makes me feel happy to be in our kitchen when that area is empty (except for a bowl of fruit or, like now, pretty squash and fall veggies). How often is the peninsula free of junk? Maybe 1/2 of 1 day out of the week. Sad. Right now in the pile: 2 magazines, 2 packages of childproofing locks for cabinets, 1 air freshener plug in with no air freshener, a handful of change from my grocery shopping trip, fly swatter, 1 of B's socks that he gave me while I was putting groceries away. All of these things have homes -- homes that are not my kitchen counter. Why? Why do they always end up there?

This week my goal is going to be to keep that counter free of junk. It will be one small step towards sanity.