Squawk Box

Me: (in sweet voice) “Don’t forget to pick up all of your things around the house and take them to your room.”

Them: “---“

Me: (in whiney voice) “You need to get all of your stuff out of here.”

Them: “---“

Me: (in sharp tone) “I’ve already asked you several times to clean up…I want this mess picked up!”

Them: “we will.”(as they exit premises)

Me: (noting the entire contents of my bedroom drawers stacked in towering and teetering piles up the staircase) "AAAAAaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!" (then I exit the premises)

For me summer is all about the opportunity to slow things down...to work on all of the projects I fantasize about completing "when I have time."  Project #1 is usually always the purging of junk in an effort to streamline and simplify life when I'm back at work.  The hard part about all of this is the fact that I don't necessarily want to spend my time off cleaning.  But then again I don't want to spend my time on cleaning either.  Truth be told: I don't want to clean-period!  Nevertheless I spent a couple of days taking all of the things I have squirreled away in my bedroom and have decided to squirrel them away in the loft (I never truly get rid of anything...I just move it from one room to another).  The method here is to stuff as much schtuff as you can in the one room most people are never likely to visit.  So, after this afternoon I should at least have a cleaner bedroom.  The loft will be cleaned next summer when I bring everything back down and cram it into my bedroom.

Getting Organized

Well....here I am...staring my end-of-summer-deadline in the face...the countdown is on and I have been pulling several all-nighters-in-a-row attempting to get done "all the things I said I'd do when I was 'off for the summer' before Tuesday, August 11th. I simply chose (as I always do) to cram it all into the final four days of my summer instead of spreading it out over the past eight weeks. That's just how I roll. My summer goal was to SIMPLIFY and to ORGANIZE (which has been my goal for the past twenty-plus years...but I digress....). The difference is...this time I am actually doing it. Take my pantry for example: the "before" picture (which is not shown...for obvious reasons) always lead us to believe that-even though we could never find anything to eat, we just knew there had to be something edible in there. NOW....now that all is organized we KNOW that we don't have anything to eat. But, like most things in this world...it's not about what you have...it's about how you look...and my pantry looks GOOD!!!

A Mouthful of Memories

Yesterday, while killing time before picking up the kids from their summer celebration vacation bible school, I stumbled upon this wide-mouthed frog...and I just HAD TO HAVE IT! Here's why: one of the things I remember most about my grandmother's house was the ceramic, green, frog sponge holder that sat to the right of her kitchen sink. For some reason this kitchy little gadget appealed to me (she also had an orange one in her bathroom). While hers did not have a hinged "lid" it is still the same, basic concept...AND IT WAS ONLY $4!! (Thank goodness there was only one left or else I'd have a rainbow of frogs to deal with!).