Catzlover’s Cooking

Organizing Wednesday!

After bemoaning my lack of progress last week, I was determined to accomplish something this week.

I have a desk drawer/junk drawer that had become a catch all for all sorts of miscellaneous items. I finally cleared it out and put it in some order. Enough so that I can look in it and find the stapler and the scotch tape.

Something I have found to be both fascinating and disturbing is all the beads we have. I have two daughters and my older one was quite craft minded. Now it seems that everytime I clean out a drawer or a storage container I find beads.

Last summer I finally got smart and designated a storage box to the bead finds. Now when I find beads in a drawer, I put them in a sandwich bag and into the storage box they go.

It’s funny how it’s not the big things that cause the most clutter in our house. We don’t have a pile of chairs sitting in the living room or a shelf full of beds in the bedroom. It’s the small things that accumulate. The beads, the safety pins, the thumbtacks, the buttons, and so on. Someone with a lot more intestinal fortitude than I might just throw these things away. I can’t quite get there yet so I just gather them all together in one place. The good thing is I will never have to buy another safety pin or thumbtack for the rest of my life.

If you are under forty you can skip the next section.

My other big accomplishment for the week was finally clearing out the tampons in my bathroom cabinet. Early next month will mark the end of that phase of my life i.e. I am officially in menopause! Okay, I kept four of them – just in case – but the rest are gone and my bathroom cabinet is a little less cluttered. Now, my question is what can I do with the tampons. Does anyone take tampons that are wrapped but not boxed? Would my daughter want them? Do I suck it up and throw them out? It is back to my Organizer’s Guilt!

Oh well!

Sandra

I’m interrupting my Organizing Wednesday since, frankly, this was not a week of progress.

I was thinking recently about how we all seem to gravitate towards schedules. Especially Stay At Home Moms (or Homemakers, or Domestic Goddesses, or whatever term you wish to use).

Back in the day we had Wash on Mondays, Iron on Tuesdays, etc. etc.

Now we have Menu Plan Mondays or Mommy Mondays, Tackle It Tuesdays, Wordless Wednesdays or Vegetarian Wednesdays, Inspire Me Thursdays, and Frugal Fridays or Friday Funnies.

(I almost chucked the whole idea of Organizing Wednesday, but since I am not going to be wordless and I am vegetarian every day I think I will keep it for a while.)

I read a whole organizing book once that even focused on the concept of schedules via a card file. There was supposed to be a card for every day of the week and cards for all the chores that needed to accomplished that day. Just follow the cards and you will be organized.

While I am not psychologically prepared to follow a card file every day, I think I appreciate schedules. It is way too easy to get up and check email, and blog, and putz with a little of this and that, and clean up after cats,and run some laundry, and cook dinner, and then – oh my! where did the day go!?!

So I have my own little self imposed schedule so that at the end of the day I can look back and say – well, I got that done.

Of course, the best thing about having a self imposed schedule is that you can chuck it all at any time and just enjoy your life. And that is what I plan to do today.

Sandra

Did you get any worthwhile organizing accomplished this week?

The cold and less daylight can be real energy drainers. But, I have noticed that getting a put-off job finished can be a lift.

One thing I kept putting off was organizing our VHS tapes. We don’t have too many left since we switched to DVDs, but the ones we did have were tossed into a cabinet with no rhyme or reason. I took them all out and sorted them into categories (drama, science fiction, comedy, and so on) and placed them back in the cabinet so that the titles were clearly visible. A simple change, perhaps, but one that will make it much easier to find what we want to watch. And it took all of ten minutes!

So many helpful hints about organizing talk about alphabetizing things like DVDs and spices and books. If this works for you, great! For me, however, I find it makes more sense to organize by categories. My spice cabinet, for example, looks like this:

On the left side, I have Italian/Pizza herbs on the bottom, Chili powders next, Indian curry spices and Cole Slaw fixings next, and on top are the herbs I don’t use often like tarragon. Also on top is spare salt and pepper for refilling shakers. On the other side are baking supplies starting with measuring cups on the bottom and ending with muffin papers and colored sugars on the top.

(Did you know, by the way, that you can make cheap colored sugar yourself with plain sugar and a drop or two of food coloring? You can get even more vibrant color if you use cake decorating paste colors.)

In addition to having less clutter, being organized help me find stuff faster!

My miniature sorting is still coming along. Definitely, a two week project.

Sandra

I made a resolution to do one organizing, clearing out, put off project a week. I decided to report on my progress on Wednesdays. So here is the first of my Organizing Wednesdays!

Something I managed to finally get done was list two tubs (!) of old craft supplies on Craig’s list and get them sold and out of the house. I also sorted through a basket of old pot holders (my older daughter was a prolific pot holder maker at one point) and put the ones I will never use in an Amvet bag.

When my kids were young, we were a serious bunch of crafters. I made the decision a while back to pare down all the vast amounts of ribbons and wreaths and material scraps and so on and so on and so on that accumulated over the years. My new criteria when I look at old supplies is ”Am I ever going to do this again – really?”. If the answer is “no” then out it goes.

Does this mean I have gone cold turkey on crafts? Hardly!

I did pare down quite a bit and decided to return to an old passion – miniatures. I became interested in dollhouse miniatures in college (of all things!). Over the course of the years my interest has waxed and waned depending on what else was happening in life and how many cats were in the house (cats and miniatures are not always compatible – dollhouses have the best sleeping cubbies you know!). But, I have returned and my project for the next week is to organize twenty years of kits, furniture, components, and accessories.

Twenty years worth! Okay, it may be a two week project.

Any other crafters out there?

Sandra