It's going to be a long day.

It's just before seven a.m. here. My husbands alarm went off right around six. I stayed up way too late last night reading (it was approaching midnight when I turned the light off.) I couldn't fall asleep right way and felt like I was tossing and turning forever. (I didn't look at the clock, though, that tends to make it worse. When I do that I start calculating in my head how much sleep I would get if I fell asleep at that exact moment and it is never enough.) I'm supposed to scrapbook tonight from 6-11 and I'm supposed to run a 15k run tomorrow morning at nine. It seems like on days like today Murphy's law is in full force. The last time I did this to myself with sleep I put a gouge in the side of my fridge while I was cleaning it out. Let's hope today will be an exception to that rule.

I started this post before I even got out of bed and had to come back and revise it. When I was brushing my teeth I saw myself in the mirror and my eyes are so bloodshot I don't think I'm even going to try to put my contacts in. I better start the caffeine IV.

Home Management Binder part 2

OK, I took my cute binders back to Target. I looked there and at Office Depot but couldn't find a cute binder with the features I liked. So, I picked this up from Target:
It has two inside pockets and stays open. Those are both features from my original binder that I was not willing to give up. (btw-I don't usually keep a Cinderella bookmark in my binder but I wanted to show the second pocket.)
It also has a feature that allows it to be opened with one finger and the ring is gap free. That's important because I hate it when the pages get stuck and don't turn smoothly. I use this binder every single day so something that seems insignificant, like how the pages turn, becomes something very significant.

I chose pink (because it's my favorite color.) I thought I'd put a piece of scrapbook paper in the front and spell out our last name or home management binder in solid paper. I saw it on another blog. I'm linking up to A Day in the Life of Sonya because this may be where I got the idea. Instead of being on the cover it's how she did her divider pages. If I find the post I'm thinking of, I'll add another link.

I looked in my paper and found these:


The stripes match the binder but I think I like the ladybugs better. I'm pretty sure I saw a green one that would look really nice with it. It looks like I'm heading back to Target.

Mommy, what's this?

My six year old just said, "Mommy, what's this?"



First, I laughed.

Then I realized, I'm getting old.

laundry

Every day I try to do a load or two of laundry. (I'm not sure where I heard the idea first flylady, sidetracked home executives, messies manual?) I used to have a laundry day but that doesn't work for my family anymore. I rarely have an entire day to spend washing, folding, and putting away laundry. So, the one to two loads a day works for me. That means I always have some dirty laundry. The way I used to do laundry meant all the clothes would pile up in a basket at the bottom of the laundry chute. I'd then sort the clothes in piles according to color and when my laundry was finished the floor would be clear until next laundry day. When I switched to doing laundry (almost) every day I would have piles of dirty clothes all over the floor in my storage/laundry room all the time. I looked into the fancy laundry sorters but none that I found worked for me. Some were too expensive, some were too small. None were just right. This is what I came up with:





The small wicker baskets are for undies (dark & white), the three plastic baskets are for our clothes and the blue bins are for towels (dark and light.) The plastic baskets are sorted by color category. Blue is for darks. White is for jeans and pants (really most things with a zipper.) Grey is for greys and lights. (Maybe it's because I used to teach PE but we have a lot of grey.) The plastic bins can stack together, the wicker baskets can stack together and the towel bins collapse. I got everything at Deal's (a dollar store) and the most expensive piece was $5. It is not pretty but it works for me.

I'm going to link to Works for Me Wednesday over We are THAT Family for the first time today.

Fridge clean-out

One of my January jobs was to clean out the fridge. I started on this last week after reading a tip on another blog. (Maybe Organizing Made Fun or clean mama, I'm not sure and couldn't find it again.) This mom said she cleaned one shelf at a time. That worked really well for a couple of shelves. Then I ran out of days in January and had to bust my tail yesterday to finish it.

I'm a little embarrassed to post the before pictures but my purpose in creating this blog is to show an honest picture of family life. So, here goes.

Before:

It doesn't look as bad in the picture as it did in person. The door bins were jammed. All the shelves were crusty. The drawers were gross. It needed to be cleaned bad.

Here's one of my first shelves.


Disgusting spills.

That blue is the tape that comes on the fridge when it is brand new. There was also tape on the drawers. I think we've had this fridge six years.

These are all the things I got off the door that were expired.

There are 13 bottles. They took up a lot of space in the door. I am always struggling for door space. We don't really drink here. Two of the beers are from 2008. See the three bottles of chili sauce? I make a dip with it that uses less than a bottle. I make the dip maybe once a year.

Here is the after:

You can't tell as much from the picture as you can in person but this is a clean fridge.

There was one problem with my fridge clean out. I gouged the side at some point.


I don't even know how it happened. I guess it was one of the drawers. Grr.

I moved my shelves around when I put them back in. Before I began, I think they were in exactly the same spots they were in when I got the fridge. When I was checking out other fridge clean out blog posts, I saw one that had the milk on top. I switched mine and liked the way the space worked out. I remember why I don't do that. My top shelf doesn't stay cold enough. My bottom shelf stays in the safe zone on my fridge thermometer while the top shelf sometimes hovers just above it. That's probably not good for any of the food but I feel much more comfortable having the milk where it's always the correct temperature. I'm going to fiddle with the temperature control again and see if I can fix it. But for now, the milk is back on the bottom.

January Jobs

Here is a list of my January jobs and how I did with them. These are seasonal (4x/year), biannual (2x/year), or annual (1x/year.)
Family room
clean sliding glass door-no
vac door curtain-yes
vac under couch and chair-yes
vac lamp shade-yes

Kitchen
clean burner pans-yes
kitchen walls-sort of (kids did)
wipe fridge top-yes
clean baseboards-sort of (kids did)
clean light fixtures-yes
vac fridge coils-no (but I will)
clean fridge-yes

Entry
wipe door-sort of (daughter did)
clean floor-yes

Even though I have a couple nos, I'm pretty proud of myself. These are all jobs that would never get done. Some never have been done. I've lived in this house for ten years and this is the first time I cleaned the oven. I must say that yesterday I was scrambling to finish the fridge because I knew it was the last day of the month. I'm ok with that because it still got cleaned out and looks good.

In addition to my January jobs I also cleaned out under my kitchen sink. I gave my mom all of my less green cleaners (she's going to use them anyway so I may as well give her mine instead of disposing of them.) I was able to get rid of seven large bottles from under my sink.

I'm linking up to A Slob Comes Clean for her January declutter update.

I hate the new binders.

I just moved everything back into my plain, boring binder. The two new binders just didn't work as well. My original binder has one feature I'm not willing to lose. It opens completely flat. The new binders didn't. I get into this binder every single day and it is much easier for me to use if it stays open like this:



I do like the two pouches on the front cover but the new 2" binder had a feature I would trade those for. This:


I would use a clip like this to hold my weekly meal plan.

Also, the bigger binders I've tried (this one and others I already have) aren't as easy to turn the pages in. As often as I use this, I need to be able to turn the pages easily.

Who would have thought this would be such a difficult part of the challenge? I'm not giving up on the idea of a cute binder, I'm just going to have to look a little harder.