Posts Tagged ‘things around the house’

It’s raining

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Well, we’re finally into March and we’ve started it out with a bout of social anxiety.  I got home last night and cleaned house instead of going to Zumba because just the thought of going out and being around other people made my head swim.  I couldn’t do it.  So I dusted and cleaned floors and tidied things up; Justin put stuff into the attic, shook rugs, and tidied the upstairs.  And when I had worked off enough agitation, we sat down for dinner and then cuddled in front of TV before going to bed.

Today, we’re following up with typical March weather – it’s dark and rainy.  It is, on the upside, the kind of rain that smells like it’s going to make the grass grow.  It’s a refreshing change from rain that smells like winter, gets into my shoes and makes me cold all day long.

We’ve had an interesting couple of days around here.  Friday, I was at work from 7:30 until 6:00.  On a day where I would normally work only 4 hours, a 10-hour day is absurd.  I was really irritated by the whole thing.  I mean, sure, overtime pay.  But my Friday!  I had plans for that afternoon!  All of which are now just sitting on my list of things to do and hoping that I have time to do them this coming Friday.  It isn’t looking good for that list.

For dinner on Saturday, Justin and I made “Jade and Ivory Pasta,” which is a recipe that came with my wok and we’ve made a couple of times before.  It’s fettuccini, broccoli, and chicken stir-fried in a sauce with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sherry (that we substituted with red wine vinegar), and a couple other things.  When we got to the end of the meal, Justin’s tongue went numb.  His throat swelled up a little and he felt about as miserable as a person with an allergic reaction could feel without needing to go to the emergency room.  And we sat there, waiting to see if we would have to go to the ER, because the last time this happened to him, he spent more than a week in the hospital.  He can’t take Benedryl because it reacts badly with his system, so all he could do was brush his teeth, rinse with Listerine, and wait.

We still have no idea what set him off, so I’m eating all the left-overs while he feels miserable.  His throat and tongue are still raw and sensitive, with the unfortunate side-effect of being completely unable to taste anything.  It makes me feel sorry for people who have ageusia and never taste anything, and their spouses, for whom it’s probably almost as frustrating.

But we’re very thankful that it wasn’t worse than it was.  Meals that don’t land one of us in the ER = success!

Anyway, that’s pretty much the excitement that’s been happening around here lately.  I’ll try to write about something more interesting soon-ish.

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Highlights of my weekend:

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

I didn’t go to work on Friday.  Instead, I luxuriated in bed for hours.

Someone finally came and towed away Justin’s old Infiniti, giving us $150 for it.  It would have been nice to get more money for it, but just having that parking space back is enough.

Beautifully sunny 50-something degree weather all weekend long with the windows open and fresh air blowing through the house.

Yoga class on Saturday morning.

Mail with boxes and cards and presents from my mom and brother.

Ordering my present and a few other fun things online and the excitement of anticipating all those wonderful boxes in the mail.

Going out to dinner for my birthday, even if it wasn’t exactly what Justin had planned, at a restaurant that I’ve wanted to explore for a long time, where we’re definitely going visit again.

Having such a great time singing at church that I almost sang my voice out and had to go home and sleep for an hour and a half to recover.

Watching a clever little squirrel perch on the top of the shepherd’s crook holding the bird feeder, climb halfway down, stretch across the space, push the top off the feeder, stick his whole upper body into the thing, and then go back up to the top to munch on what he had grabbed.

Watching that squirrel almost fall off his perch when a large bird shadow blocked out the sun, followed by a flailing leap into a nearby tree.

Justin fixing the laundry room light so we actually have full light in there for the first time in a year instead of this terrible flickering nonsense.

Watching a friend stand on the top of a ladder holding a broom with a dustpan duct-taped to the end trying to scrape sticky Halloween eyeball toys off their living room cathedral ceiling.

Chatting and laughing with my sister on the phone while her daughter hummed.

Curling up in bed and laughing with Justin until it hurt about funny things we saw on the internet.

And several other things, but I think I’ll leave it at that.

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Clutter

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

I just read an amusing article over at Unclutterer called “What clutter affects an unclutterer?”  The writer is an organizer, but she talked about the areas in her life where she has a hard time keeping things uncluttered.

I thought I’d drop in quickly and share a little bit of mine.

One of the places that I have the hardest time keeping organized is my desk.  I have a small little desk in my office that has three drawers on the left side and a pencil drawer across the lap of the person sitting there.  I have the hardest time keeping those drawers cleaned out.  What’s supposed to happen is that the bottom drawer has photography things – prints and frames and CDs and manuals.  The middle drawer holds office items like extra printer ink, note paper, clip-boards, etc.  The top drawer holds my address book and my Nintendo DS and my music box.  And the pencil drawer holds my pens, pencils, stapler, tape dispenser, etc.

It’s never as tidy as all that.  I’ve got papers in the top two drawers that I need to read and figure out what I’m doing to do with them, but I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet.  Justin’s transcripts from college are still sitting in my middle drawer from when I was trying to decrypt them back in November or so.  I don’t know why I’m holding on to the prints and whatever else is hiding in the bottom drawer.  I’ve got a whole box of photographs up in my closet, too, that I just need to send to a scanner and get put onto discs.  I’ve got more pens and pencils and scissors than I know what to do with.

What I really need to do is get rid of the desk entirely and work on a table that doesn’t have any drawers.  That way I can’t hide anything in there.

So, that’s my long-term tidiness issue.  My short-term problems are:

  • The bathroom, where I tend to drop clothes or whatever else was in my hand when I went to change into exercise clothes or pajamas.  I have a hook on the wall and the back of the door and they tend to get covered in clothing before the end of the week . . . if they make it there from off the floor and the counter.
  • The flat surfaces in my office, where bills, paperwork, and other things that should go in there somewhere just get thrown until I have time to go back and try to put them into the right places.  I have a desk, a table, a trunk, a filing cabinet, and a chair that are all good candidates for having things thrown on them.
  • The front door, where I throw sweaters, jackets, purses, lunch bags, shopping bags, and shoes as I come in the door.  I really need a set of hooks there so I stop throwing them over the shoe rack and the hamper.  Shoes are my biggest culprit.  I keep some shoes downstairs and most of my dress shoes upstairs, but by the end of the week, almost all of my shoes are downstairs.

I usually find time once or twice a week to clean up these problems, especially on Friday afternoons when I get off work early.  But they build up again in a few days if I’m not really diligent about it.  The kitchen could maybe go on this list, if it’s been a busy week and I’ve not felt up to keeping it clean, but the kitchen is an area where I sincerely try to keep it as clean as I can.

Anyway!  Some of my struggles as an organizer.

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Letter to my mom

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Hey, Mom!

I keep completely failing to call you and thank you for the encouragement cards! 

They arrived on Saturday, and then we were rushing all over the place trying to get the laundry done and errands run.  Sunday, I got to sing with the worship band for the very first time in front of the church, so we had practice from 8:00 until church started, and then after church, we were decorating the house for Christmas and making our Thanksgiving dinner (instead of being at 10:00 at night on Thanksgiving, we were a whole three days late!) and other randomness.  Monday, I started my day dark and early at 4:45 with my workout, followed by work, and then a chiropractic appointment, and then Zumba.  So I didn’t get home until after 8:00 and then I was SO TIRED that I pretty much collapsed.

But thank you!  They’re wonderful!  And they’re going to be SO HELPFUL on those many, many hard days.  :)

I’ve got a cold today.  Sneezing a lot, coughing a little, the back of my throat is really sore, so I’ve got some Chlorasecptic drops, a big box of Kleenex, and a mug of tea.  And I’m tired.  I was tempted to stay home from work, but there are only 14 days left of work for the year.  I’ve got stuff to get done!

So I’m sitting here wrapped in my zippered sweater that Grandma gave me for Christmas a couple years ago.  It’s WARM.  And I’ve got my space heater running at my feet.  My new coat is hanging on the wall behind me but I’m settling for just petting it now and then (because it’s so soft!) instead of wearing it (because it’s warm and just so dang cute!).

And my lead sat down a little bit ago and asked if I’d be interested in working my way into a position that’s higher up on the ladder than where I am right now and doing EXACTLY the sort of things that I enjoy doing.  Would I?  Oh YES, I would!

I can’t believe it’s already the 1st of December!  And I still don’t have tickets to fly north.  I’ve been looking at tickets since the beginning of AUGUST.  Difficulties with Justin’s work schedule, really.  But we’re doing it this week!  Maybe tonight?  SOON.

And I haven’t started doing my shopping!  And Justin hasn’t put up a wish list, but I know he’s been thinking about it.

I wish I could breathe out of my left nostril.  Stupid cold.  I’m not sure this box of Kleenex is big enough . . . .

I’ve got to run.  But I wanted to let you know that I got the cards and I think they’re great!  Thank you so much!  I hope you’re having a fantastic week so far!  And I’ll call you as soon as I know more information about our travel plans over the holidays.

Love you!

Kylene

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Organizing my file cabinet!!

Monday, October 5th, 2009

So this is the truly geekiness that is my love for organizing.  I spent almost my entire weekend (the last three days) organizing my file cabinet.

It’s a 2-drawer, double-width file cabinet.  The top drawer is active files or files that are important enough to have up top.  And the bottom is the archive space for things that need to be kept for a while but I don’t need to see, possibly ever again.  But it was a mess!  The last time I went through was probably this time last year.  Things seemed pretty organized up through September of last year in a lot of cases.

The big exception was what was taking up most of the bottom drawer.  Several months ago, we got a box full of paperwork from Justin’s mom—medical records, school loans paperwork, all these things that I’d been wondering where they were hiding and suddenly I had them!  Which was great!  But I didn’t have places to put them yet, so they got stuck randomly into folders and stashed away, with the plans of organizing them “soon.”

Friday afternoon I got home, paid the bills, balanced the checkbook, and decided it was Time to Tackle the Mess.

It’s amazing how something as thin as paper can make such a heavy mess.

Also, it’s sometimes really complicated to work someone else’s filing system into your own.

And yeah, it took me from Friday afternoon all the way through Sunday afternoon to finish it up.  But now that I’m done? Ooooooh . . . .  It’s a thing of beauty.

(Geek!)

Anyway, some thoughts about organizing and how I managed my project.  First off, I went through the active files to see what was happening there.  Mostly they were good.  There were a few that hadn’t had anything added for a while, either it’s someone we don’t use anymore or we’ve gone paperless or something.  If the file wasn’t used in 2009, I pulled it to put with the archived info.  And then I separated the data from previous years and paper clipped them together with a sticky note telling which year it was for.  This one thing is going to be a HUGE time saver later on.

And then I figured out how I was going to categorize the files.  I’d started to do this last time—I had a bills section and a loans section, each holding things that had to do with bills (water, electric, cable) or loans (credit cards, school loans, car loan).  Now I also have Automobile, Banking, and Work categories, and a few others.

I didn’t finish up on the top, though, before I hit the bottom.  I pulled out the things that were basically already organized first, just because I felt like doing the easy stuff first and then the harder, but that’s totally up to personal preference.  Again, I sorted out by year so I could see what was what, labeling with sticky notes for easy reference.  I also put sticky notes on the hanging folders so I could flip through quickly.  This one took me a while to figure out but after digging and digging and digging to find the stupid VSAC folders, I finally just put notes on all of the folders and saved myself much time and frustration.

Slowly, I made my way through old bank statements, medical expenses, pay stubs, and so many other things.  I had to take the papers from my mother in law and integrate them into my own system, which probably took me the longest.  Some of what she sent was duplicates of information I already had, some was integrated, but not duplicated, and a lot of it was totally new to me.  So I found what it was, how it fit into the scheme, and organized it by year.

And then I made up a label template on Word, typed up the labels for all the new folders, categorized into sections, naturally, and printed them off.  A little bit of cutting and labeling, and now my file cabinet is fantastic!

There are still a handful of things I need to address—like how long to keep a few things.  I’d assume I could throw them away, but I’m going to double-check it before I do.  Plus, it’s good research.  I didn’t go through one of the folders yet just because it was more than my brain could handle in one weekend, but I’m planning to get through it “soon.”  I promise!

But it’s absurd how very pleased I am with myself about this project.  I kept dragging Justin in to look at my progress.  I had papers strewn all over the floor of my office, stacks of full and empty folders on my trunk and the top of the file cabinet, and paperclips and sticky notes and pens everywhere.  But the files didn’t have paper popping out of the top and I could find what I was looking for and they’re all paper clipped together with sticky notes saying the year!

And did I mention that the reason that’s helpful is because at the end of the year, I’ll pull out the papers from this year, paper clip them together with a 2009 sticky note and put them in the archived folder, pull out anything past its expiration date, and be done with organizing for the (first half) of the year in less than 30 minutes?  Yeah.  That’s going to be sweet.

These are the kind of things that get me excited.

Pictures!

This is my file cabinet

This is my file cabinet

This is the top drawer.

This is the top drawer.

This is the bottom drawer!

This is the bottom drawer!

This is what I'm shredding so far.

This is what I'm shredding so far.

This is what I'm recycling.

This is what I'm recycling.

And for giggles, this is a paperweight.

And for giggles, this is a paperweight.

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