clinical depression?

Or just your average run-of-the-mill slovenliness?

That load of clean laundry has been there since the weekend. And that blanket too. The blanket has been wrapped around my teenaged son every night for a couple of months now, and when I told him to strip all the sheets off his bed so we could wash everything it came out into the hall too.

If you know anything about teenaged boys then you know without further explanation that at this point the blankie can only be politely called "ripe". It doesn't have a fabric care tag and it was a gift from my beloved and I don't want to ruin it by washing it but since it's now basically ruined anyway I might as well just wash it and see what happens, right?

So that pile of stuff has been sitting there for going on 4 days now. I have stepped over it multiple times, even while cleaning (I had to get to the trash can there last night to empty it because today is trash day). I look it at, I know I should fold/put away the laundry and make some sort of definitive decision about the blanket, but it just seems so...well...hard. There is also lots of schmutz around the washer and dryer and all over the hallway carpeting because I haven't vacuumed it in weeks. Because that also seems hard. Because in order to vacuum I'd have to go downstairs and get the vacuum and drag its heavy self up the stairs and unwind the cord and use the attachments and first make sure the desk is cleared off and dusted (so that I don't  just make the vacuumed carpet dirty again) and all the papers are taken out to the garage for recycling and all the other stuff that collects on the desk is sorted and delivered to their rightful spots all of which also requires lots of decision-making. Then actually do the vacuuming. And then untangle and rewind the cord and carry the heavy vacuum back down the stairs and put it away in the coat closet. Doesn't that all sound so hard and difficult and like such a huge job?

No?

That's why I wonder if I am clinically depressed. Because to me "tidying up and vacuuming the hall" sounds like the kind of job I ought to get some kind of prize or award or medal or other significant recognition for doing.

An hour later and it's done. And although you can't tell (because it is a photograph) the washer and dryer are churning away drying the clean blanket (so far so good) and washing a load of white towels (because we've been out of clean dishrags and washcloths for days). I dug in and got it all done and now it looks like civilized people live here. I do feel marginally better and somewhat accomplished which is a minor miracle:

weekly goals

I went back and looked at the last list of weekly goals I made and I'm here to report that I didn't get it all done.

So, this week I'm keeping it simple. See the mess up there in the picture? There is a bit more than is visible there but I don't have a panorama setting on my camera, and you can get enough of an idea of what's going on in the room from the picture.

To clean it up is my goal for this week. I do have other ideas floating around in my head about things I'd like to do and undoubtedly will do, but my one and only real goal for this week is to take care of this mess in that room.

goals for the week

I had some productive days this week.

Things I've accomplished:

• Cleaned up a few little piles of stuff that I had made of things I wasn't sure what to do with. They had been there so long that I'd forgotten what was in them. I've sorted, made decisions, and then filed, shredded, put away, and otherwise dealt with everything in those piles. I also went through my "regular" piles of stuff and did the same thing; these two piles - by the telephone and on the desk - are a sort of holding area for things that I use all the time like my address/telephone books and temporary things like coupons, school notes, business cards and other bits and bobs that I might (or might not) need in the near future.
• Went through two desk drawers and pulled out and shredded old bills and insurance documents that I no longer need to keep.
• Found a place very near my home that accepts plastic bottles and cardboard for recycling. (The recycling bins at our elementary school across the street only accept paper.) In the true spirit of recycling and frugality I have turned sturdy, waxed cardboard boxes into recycling bins for paper/cardboard and plastic bottles. I have yet to create a system/routine/habit whereby I actually take these items over there in a timely manner, but it's still a tiny step forward. The goal there is to not turn the garage into a hoarded-out trash heap propped up by good intentions.
• Made some delicious but simple meals out of ingredients I had on hand, which was good because that instantly freed up some room in the budget to get the big, acorn-laden oak trees in our front yard trimmed.
• Searched for and printed out recipes to use up some of the things in the pantry that will otherwise never be used. I've realized that although some of the responsibility is mine, other people do play a part in this by buying items for themselves that they don't have a plan for or never get around to eating, or by people outside my family giving food items to us as gifts that I don't know how to use. It is my responsibility to eliminate food waste coming out of my own kitchen and at the same time not become intolerably controlling of the other people I live with or an ungracious receiver of thoughtful gifts from people who care about me.
• Kept myself caught up on daily tasks like laundry, dishes, and tidying up. It really is true that when you have fewer things you have less mess to clean up at the end of each day.

Goals for next week:

• spend time each day with Jake discussing algebra and the Spanish language.
• clean up the pine needles out of the flower beds and rain gutters.
• organize and contain our camping gear. This includes trying to get the musty, mildewy odor out of the family-size tent.
• get everything out of James's closet and put painter's tape around the shelves and trim in anticipation of painting the walls in there.
• Organize and contain more efficiently the items that James has kept.
• work on handmade Christmas gifts for extended family members.
• order supplies I still need for other handmade Christmas gifts.
• call a couple of dear friends and set up a time that I can visit with them.
• stop dilly-dallying about whether or not I should continue with a nasty book I've been reading and just throw it away.
• finalize the menu for our Thanksgiving dinner, study the sales circulars and shop for the ingredients, prepare as much as possible ahead of time, and make meal plans that use up the leftovers.
• make and pressure-can stock with the turkey carcass on Black Friday.
• make a Christmas card list and start collecting addresses.

Sorting

About a month ago I went away for two days and while I was gone there was a leak under the kitchen sink. The mopping up of which precipitated a powdered cleanser spill. Consequently everything came out of the cabinet and without me here to supervise the putting back of it all I haven't been able to see/reach/get to the cleaners I use on a daily basis.

So today I pulled it all out and vacuumed, wiped down, did a bit of de-cluttering, and reorganized. Which turned into a whole morning spent doing the very same thing to all my lower kitchen cabinets and my extra pantry shelf cabinet. I did some serious decision-making in my baking pan cabinet and chose to keep only the things that I use more than once a year. I hope this means that it will be easier to get things in and out of this cabinet now that there's more room. I've seen racks that are meant to hold baking pans in a straight instead of tipping vertical position but I wonder if they are more trouble than they are worth, or if there are ones that cost a bit more but are more efficient and sturdy? I may check into that, because I can't deal with fiddly and troublesome in the kitchen even if it looks cute while it's not being used.

While I was down on the floor with a bucket of hot water and some rags I decided to wipe out the inside of the oven as well. I read a tip online months and months ago that you can clean up sticky, baked-on messes in the oven with baking soda and water. Which may be true for some people but not for me. I was left with an even bigger mess and gave up on it and have lived with the slowly browning baking soda crust in the oven ever since. It did come up pretty easily today with plain old hot water so maybe the tip I read is meant to take a long time to work. The oven looks pretty good now and I'm not wheezing and choking from overpowering oven cleaner fumes so that's good and as they say, all's well that ends well.

(I also heard a tip for cleaning the oven racks which I am trying right now and will report on later. I heard that if you put your oven racks in a big trash bag with some ammonia and seal it up and let it sit for a few hours, that the fumes from the ammonia will clean the racks and the baked on orange-brown flecks on the racks will wipe right off. We'll see.)

Also de-cluttered and reorganized is the kids' bathroom closet. I try to keep things in there that visitors might need but I think there is still quite a bit more of that than we will need in a year or so, and not enough of the things that the little boy who lives here will need in the next year.

So I have started a box of items that will live in my coat closet that are up for grabs. Stuff that is still good (like dishes and baking sheets) or brand new (like cleaning products, candles, and men's body wash which my Little Friend with his sensitive skin will never use). Whenever my friends or family visit they can look through the box and pick what they like and take it home.

You know, my own Grammy used to have a box like that. There really is a circle of life.

Empty space

One of the things I love about our home's main living area is that there is empty space available to look at. Not a lot, but enough. When I look through/under/between the chairs and tables I can see corners, walls, carpet, baseboards, etc.

It's restful.

I love keeping my bathroom counter cleared off too. For the same reason.

staying at home

It's kind of nice when you get mildly sick - not so sick that you can't think straight but just sick enough that you should stay home and not infect everybody. A sore, ticklish throat, some mild chest congestion, headache, earache, and feelin' kinda droopy.

Yesterday and today I have been just enough sick. I pressure-canned 12 pints of sugar pie pumpkin for pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, and today I worked my way through to the bottom of the mending pile. It feels good to have some of my work done.

I saved some of the seeds from inside the pumpkins to plant next spring. Maybe they'll grow and next year I'll have free pumpkins to can. Wouldn't it be cool if I didn't have to buy food to can? If I just grew some in the backyard instead?

The Desk

Do you remember that one of my goals was to keep my desk cleared off this year? Remember how piles of clutter disrupt my mental and emotional equilibrium and over-all sense of well-being? It's here, and here. My desk is, obviously, a trouble spot for me.

Ugh.

Here's what's on my desk this morning that doesn't belong here:

1. Lists #2 and #3 of items that I will need to compose 72-hour kits for my family. This means list #1 is missing.
2. 1 giant box of baby wipes
3. 1 Michael's coupon
4. 1 pink comb
5. a roll of double-sided tape
6. a box cutter
7. 3 recipes that I printed off the internet
8. my Primary binder
9. the water bill
10. 2 Walmart receipts
11. two 1-cent euro coins
12. one 3-cent euro coin
13. one 5-cent euro coin
14. 1 rubber band
15. 1 packet of fairy portraits
16. 1 gas card bill
17. 1 mortgage statement
18. 1 wedding announcement
19. 1 scrap of paper with an important phone number/address scribbled on it
20. 1 receipt from an internet order of sewing supplies
21. 1 empty 3-ring binder
22. another recipe
23. 8 pages that I photocopied of handwritten notes I took during training meetings
24. 1 blank sheet of cardstock
25. 1 printed out email
26. 1 family home storage center order form
27. 5 pages of receipt/rebate info for the new cell phones I ordered over the weekend
28. 18 empty page protectors
29. 1 Fire Safety merit badge workbook (Am I the only one who finds this ironic?)
30. 2 bank statements
31. 1 check re-order form (Uh, hello. I might want to take that over to the bank today. It might be important.)
32. 2 church bulletins from 2 different weeks (which may give you an idea how long my desk has been cluttered)
33. 1 velcro-strap thingy to hold electronics' cords together
34. 1 freebie mass-mail magazine that lists all  of some unknown person's best-picks for home service providers
35. another gas card bill
36. 1 plastic packet of some metal pins that hold bookcase shelves up
37. a bobby pin
38. a Student Diet Modification Form that I should probably fill out and return to my Little Friends's school
39. a Home Depot pre-approved credit card offer
40. Mr. Dub's YMCA key chain tag
41. some dust
42. something sticky that's been smeared.

Once just a couple of things begin piling up my desk it becomes a dumping ground for everything that anybody (but mostly me) can't spontaneously and immediately figure out what to do with, or that is "momentarily" placed here to be put away later in the place where it actually goes.

The sweet, peaceful after:

31 Days

I've seen a few blogs the last few days that are doing some variation of a 31-day challenge. Like 31 days of lame excuses, or 31 days of writing for 31 minutes each day, something like that.

I like the idea. Here are some things I've thought about for a 31 day challenge:

• exercising 31 days in a row
• blogging 31 days in a row
• really studying the scriptures 31 days in a row
• and other things that are equally good for me

but after much reflection I've decided that I'm not in a good place to do something that will take a lot of additional effort or time every single day for 31 days.

I decided that my 31-day challenge will be to make my bed. Every day for 31 days, starting today on October 1, I will make my bed. They say it takes 3 weeks to make doing a thing a habit, and while I do make my bed semi-regularly there are lots of days when it never happens and I (and my good Mr. Dub) get into a rumply, messy bed at night.

Reasons why I don't always make my bed:

1. Both of us like to lay down on the bed after getting out of the shower. We live in a usually hot, always humid climate and laying down on the bed under the ceiling fan helps with cooling down/drying off like a towel cannot. Unfortunately a shower doesn't always happen first thing in the morning. Since I don't like it when I (or other people) lay down on the bed after it's made, I like to wait till we're done with showers before I make the bed.
2. People laying down on/messing up my bed after it's made is a pet peeve of mine.
3. Related to reason #1 is I sometimes wait to take a shower until I have to go somewhere, and then I might be in a rush to get out of the house.
4. Once the day is in full swing I just don't think again about making my bed.
5. Sometimes it seems like so much effort for such a small thing when it really only takes about 2 minutes and makes a big difference in my attitude/feelings about my house.

Because bed-making time varies for me from day to day I don't have a lot of hope that it will become an ingrained habit after a month of doing it.

I'm doing it anyway. I feel like the queen when my bed is made and fancy and beautiful, and like some sort of grubby scrub when it's not. Also, I wanted to pull the coverlet up over me last night because I got a little chilly and it was all balled up at the end of the bed. That is not fancy.

Mess

Isn't it amazing how stuff makes itself into a mess? Last week I went on a search and rescue mission to the very back of a kitchen cupboard looking for my Food Saver. I knew it was back there, and it was, but on my way there I found ever so many things:

• A little slip of paper with my neighbor's email address on it. She gave it to me months ago and I was supposed to send her a link to the Bountiful Baskets website. But I set it on the counter by the phone and then it disappeared. Apparently it went to the very back and bottom of a cabinet that is across the kitchen from the counter by the phone.
• A post-it pad.
• An opened package of "purse packs" of Kleenex. I knew I had them...somewhere.
• A small piece of adhesive plastic that you would use to repair a hole in a pool floaty. Which thing I don't happen to currently possess, and therefore makes me wonder how many years has it been since I really cleaned out this cabinet?
• A padlock with its prongs (prongs? What is the right word?*) threaded through a pair of child's safety scissors. This object could be the focus of a whole post all by itself. It raises some questions like "Who?" and "Why?"**, and  "Where is the key to this padlock?" and "Are you sure this is the kind of 'safe' we're worried about with this particular pair of scissors?". Without a key these scissors are so safe they are virtually worthless.
• The operating instructions to my new handheld mixer. The mixer is in another cabinet, and the directions to all my other things like that are upstairs in a file drawer.
• Some other similarly random flotsam.

All that belongs in the cabinet where I found all this stuff is some bottles of water and a variety of small kitchen appliances like my Food Saver that I don't use very often. Sometimes I think there must be mini tornadoes whirling through my kitchen while I'm sleeping at night. I have no other plausible explanation for how these messes happen.

*I googled "parts of a padlock". Those prongs are called the shackle. I find that, in this instance in particular, to be both fitting and hilarious.
**I suspect the answer to "Why?" is "My children are bored and looking for trouble because they don't have enough chores to do". Which is a totally solvable problem.

40 Bags - bags #31-35

The garage. I worked pretty hard in there today, and got about halfway through. Since I also did the Spring Spruce-Up in the yard today too, with some help from my boys, I am thoroughly worn out, and saving the other half of the garage for another day.

I got rid of several "outside" toys, a leaky cooler, some trash, and quite a few old paint cans. The "donate" box is already dropped off at the Goodwill, the trash is out on the curb waiting for trash day tomorrow, and the hazardous waste (partially-filled paint and polyurethane cans and some old fertilizer) is waiting patiently for me to find out where to take it.

I swept up a lot of leaves, pine needles, and dead bugs. June bugs, spiders, and mayflies. I definitely need to get a bug man.

Since I'm not done with the garage there aren't any pictures to show, so here's a look at a beautiful red daisy in one of my cleaned-out-and-freshly-mulched flower beds.

product review

Bar Keeper's Friend.

Of course I have heard of this and have seen it in the store. I've always thought it was regular cleanser like Comet or Ajax which is what I've always bought for scrubbing out sinks and tubs.

The other day on a blog I saw where a lady had scrubbed the silvery-gray marks off her stoneware dinner plates with this stuff and I immediately thought of this:

See that silvery-gray ring around the bottom of the bowl? That's where my Little Friend scrapes up with a spoon the last few molecules of oatmeal every morning. Over time that gray ring has appeared on all the bowls that he uses at breakfast.

I wondered if Bar Keeper's Friend would work on the stains. I thought it was probably the same kind of scrape mark that was on the blogger's plates. Today I bought some, and sprinkled it all around my white porcelain sink. There have been the same silvery-gray marks there from silverware, pots and pans, specifically my aluminum pizza pan that is too big to lay flat in the sink so it has always rubbed against the side of the sink when I've washed it. I scrubbed with a brush for a little while, not too strenuously, but giving it a good going-over. I have done this many, many times with Comet and it hasn't helped at all. Then I used the brush on the bowl.

The bowl and the sink are clean! I will work on the sink a few more times over the next week or so. Some of those marks are 15 or more years old, but it looks pretty great, and the yellow onion-skin stain from yesterday is gone too! It's hard to tell in the picture because of all the reflections and shadows in the sink but I'm very happy with how clean and new the sink looks.

Here's the bowl:
Bar Keeper's Friend is definitely not the same as Comet.

What a difference

that tackling one small job can make!

The window above my kitchen sink* gets dirty so fast. Soapy water splashes up from the sink, and other unidentifiable bits get stuck there. It seems like a pointless job because as soon as I wash the window it gets dirty again. Which fact doesn't stop me from doing the laundry or the dishes, or vacuuming the carpets, or sweeping the floor or wiping down the kitchen table. Or washing my hair or my hands or making my bed or any of the other thousand things I do and re-do every day and week. Why this one thing - washing the kitchen window - qualifies as a pointless job and therefore not worthy of doing, I do not know.

I grabbed the Windex and a rag yesterday, dragged over a chair from the kitchen table, and went after it. A minute or two later and I had a clear view to my sweet boy playing battle in the backyard. It kind of makes me want to wash all the windows in the house. I'm hoping that the feeling will pass in a minute.

*This window doesn't have a covering. It's because this window, as well as the big window in our master bathroom, have tile that extends up from the backsplash to become the window sill and about 8" up the sides of the window casings. It's a dumb set-up because it makes the inside measurement of the window opening at the bottom different than the inside top measurement so blinds and shades don't fit properly. I've nixed the idea of curtains because they would get dirty as often as the window does for the exact same reason, and washing the curtains and rehanging them all the time seems like a lot of work. Doesn't it? I don't know and so the window remains uncovered and looking bare and in need of something.

What a difference

2 minutes and 20 seconds makes.

Actually, the fact that it only took a couple of minutes is the proof that I needed to continue on as I began. When you have less stuff and you pay attention to it once in a while, it takes less work. Because there were only a few things that had piled up on the desk (the largish pile of paperwork and lists of necessary steps to ensure that my Little Prince gets his visa to Argentina, paperwork from the termite inspection man who came on Monday, some papers from Taylor's trip to the dentist last week, some tax forms for returns that are still in progress, and only one small pile of mail to be sorted/shredded/tossed) AND because my files are cleaned out and it's easy to file stuff now, it wasn't as much of a nightmare as it looked. This is stuff that's important, so if I lost all or part of those papers I'd be in trouble. So there's a little voice inside my head repeating, over and over again, "Do you know where everything is?", and I didn't. I thought it was on the desk, but what if it wasn't? What if some of the pile had fallen off the desk into the trash can that sits there beside the desk? All of which was making my stomach hurt.

Above is the messy, strife-filled desk. Below is the peaceful, calm, all-is-well desk less than 2 1/2 minutes later.
Want to know why the messy desk bothers me so much? I figured it out. It's because as I (and everyone else) walk up the stairs, there it is "BAM!" staring you right in the face. It's the same sort of deal as making your bed - if you make your bed even an untidy rooms looks neater. The reverse is true too - an unmade bed makes a tidy room look messy. So with a cleared-off desk, you aren't as likely to be annoyed by or even aware of the smudges on the woodwork or the dust on the curtains, and the disorganization isn't keeping you up at night with a bellyache. It's housekeeping for lazy people who just want to be able to sleep at night!

Never say never

I did something yesterday I thought I would never do.

I made my own laundry soap. Oh yes, I did. It seems like such a...I dunno...such a denim jumper-wearing, home-birthing, fundamentalist thing to do. Doesn't it? I don't know. But I'm trying to reduce the amount of dangerous chemicals in my home because I think they are killing me and Jake. Sometimes I can't breathe when I'm cleaning, and it takes days for my hands to recover after scrubbing a bathtub or shower. I am also trying to save money.

Here's the recipe:

1 bar fels naptha soap
1 cup borax
1/2 cup washing soda
1/2 cup baking soda

Grate the bar of soap in the food processer. Add the remaining ingredients with the grated soap into the work bowl and process with the blade until powdered. Store in a container with a lid. Use 2 tablespoons per wash load.

It looks like regular, granulated laundry detergent. It works great. It smells fresh. It was easy to find all the ingredients at Walmart or Ace Hardware store.

And it was super cheap! I doubled the recipe, which made enough for 56 (or so) loads of laundry. I spent less than $8 on the ingredients, and I still have most of the boxes of borax and washing soda left. So when I'm out of laundry soap, I'll buy two more 97 cent bars of the soap and make enough for 56 more loads for less than $2. I can probably do this at least three times more with what's left of the washing soda and borax. The whole process was easy and took about 5 minutes. I found a metal 2 tablespoon measuring cup at Walmart so using the detergent is easy.

Because you know if it's not fast and easy I'm not going to do it.

In our Relief Society meeting next Thursday we are going to make different kinds of homemade cleaners, including this one, so I've been experimenting and looking around for availability of the items we'll need. I'm going to do all the math and figure out exactly how much it costs to make these things and how it compares to the cleaners and detergents you can buy at the store.

One that I am kind of excited about is 1/2 cup baking soda mixed with 1/2 cup kosher salt and a drop or two of essential oil. This makes a scrubbing powder similiar to Comet or Ajax. I'll be interested to see if it dries out and hurts the skin on my hands like Comet does.

I'll let you know the results of all my experiments.