jisaacs

oh well. i never even got around to posting my amazing dream. maybe someday.

i am not doing this (except, very occasionally, by accident when horrifically hungover).

i should be doing this. it was a good idea.

I just added this to my things because of a dream I had last Wednesday, one week ago. I’ll post the dream next.

If it weren’t for the weekly reminder I would have forgotten to post and celebrate. I could put this off until I manage to snap an “after” behind-the-bar shot, but I think I will not. Suffice it to say that it has been a long struggle since last July but I truly have Made Better Use of My Storage Space. My house (and my psyche) are both clearer.

Okay I did it! Ordered, delivered and under the sink holding its first kiwi peels. Farewell, mouse-chewed 5 gallon paint bucket. Farewell, thing. Can you believe it took an entire quarter to accomplish this? I shudder to think how long my current bathmat quest may last.

arrggh

okay, this weekend.

i wonder why everything takes so long …

i haven’t checked in here for a while it seems. and guess what … progress has not been made.

okay it’s all settled back into disorganized heaps of chaos again, but at least i covered it over neatly with a tarp last week so i don’t have to look at it all winter (it’s next to the main entrance of the house). when the warm weather comes again, look out shed: you are On My List.

tenía la oportunidad de practicar un poco el domingo pasado, con una maestra de Montessori en su escuelita lindísima. ella parecía disfrutarle mucho también. ojalá que tengamos más ocasiones en que podemos charlar.

i guess i’m done. i may have missed a stray preservation moment here or there but i got all the biggies in and i’m damned if i’m not going to award myself the joy of an “I’ve done this” click.

the blogging was fun at the time, but here’s what was satisfying about this goal: eating it. i gave away most of the sour cherry jam but what we ate was delicious! the girls have pesto and cream cheese sandwiches in their lunches probably twice a week, and often on eggs in the morning as well. we’ve mixed our strawberries and raspberries with the blueberries I bought from C’s grandmother’s farm to make nourishing raw milk smoothies for many a breakfast. i’ve been using lots more peppers in my cooking: yummy for everyone, and good for the two grownups with arthritis! i’m hoping this record will remind me next year not to miss the ripe goodies of summer and not to fail to appreciate the balmy temperatures. it’s ten degrees out … my fingers are cold as i type this … ah, summer …

maybe once i finish the all-out assault on the house. maybe when i’m not so busy starting a school and sponsoring an electric vehicle conversion workshop and finding a location for a homeschooling resource center. am i giving up? i was going great guns there for a while. and i didn’t write at all while i was not getting anything done on the above. hmmm. i need to ponder the nature of this thing and how to do it.

I was too busy last week purging and cleaning to even post this, but here’s the rundown:

- laundry room: cleaned of about thirty square cubic yards of lint, making the storage space there usable
- under-the-stairs space and workshop tidied
- master bath: cleaned all the shelves and their dusty contents, winnowed said contents, they’re set to go back when the shower is cleaned (meanwhile THE TERRIBLE BE-SPACKLED CEILING HAS BEEN REPAINTED!)
- bar cleared, behind the bar clutter moved into our bedroom (some of it is disturbingly familiar; some of it, to my horror, has even been in my car on its way to P’s house and then got detoured back into the house by the need to stuff the car for Xmas ReduX at my brother’s house)
- bar shelves cleared and contents (mostly my canning stuff) moved entirely onto an existing set of shelves elsewhere, meaning I don’t have to rebuild them behind the bar which will make better use of that storage space because they mostly block it
- clothes rack moved to a different wall, freeing up the behind-the-bar space and rendering the daily act of choosing new clothing less hellish
- mudroom transformed into a usable and pleasant space now that I’ve moved one shelf of shoes into our room—we will be winnowing shoes shortly, I have a system set up already

I think that was it. You certainly get the general idea: after months of mojo blockage, an explosion of concerted effort and the Forces of Entropy gave up their hold on those outposts, though of course they have fought back on every minor front in their sneaky way. But I will not be defeated.

When I get our room and the master bath re-organized, I am gong t rule this goal accomplished. Of course it is an ongoing battle, but I’ll restrict myself to less general articulations of it in its new incarnations. I have to say that getting weekly reminders has been very helpful. I look forward to making a new item a weekly priority in my life.

On average: this goal takes 6 months to complete.

Thanks, 43things!

i reorganized the cleaning closet.

(again, but it is better this time.)

i obeyed the CLEAN THIS MESS UP! command on the white board and cleaned up my office (with which term i will dignify one corner of a room, consisting of a three-tiered shelf and the top of a dresser full of kids’ artwork). it was very helpful

to remind me that I keep wanting to explore how to tweak that, maybe next week if not before. Yesssss, there was MUCH improvement of use of storage space occasioned by the vast pre-pirate party cleaning. For three days I was mighty in the fray and at the end of the pitched battle the mudroom, the sitting room, and the octagonal room had all yielded to new, more orderly and efficient and considerably less dust-infested arrangements. ‘Twas a grand triumph and many a victory draft has been quaffed during the feast of Thanksgiving.

Honor compels me to admit that I did not entirely conquer The Mountain of Infinite Laundry prior to departing for the calendrical feast, but it was subdued, and during the assault I finally formulated a plan for Dealing With the Laundry Better which, like replacing the compost bucket with a mouse-proof one, now teeters tantalizingly on the horizon of Things about which I can say, “I’ve done this.” O you beautiful button, I can’t wait to press you again.

Got my reminder in this email check and I had spent a chunk of the morning making better use of my storage space in the kitchen—rearranging the pantry and repacking the dresser, clearing off a couple of end shelves, etc. Whoo-hoo. Big cleaning plans for the next couple of days should see improvement in other areas of the house as well.

actually, I was six behind, I had lost count, even though I’ve lugged them hopefully out of the house on several with-laptop excursions in the last week during my efforts to catch up. Now I am current, and can read some more of my library books!

I have 146 books logged on Google Books since January 2007, though I didn’t start annotating till 2008 (I happened to have saved all my library receipts in 07 so when I first discovered GBooks I just entered them all). It’s long been a goal of mine to keep track of my reading and I am pleased that I’ve been doing that—and greatly relieved to have overcome whatever was blocking me on this last batch. Part of the general theme of Not Doing Things which has pervaded the last few weeks of my life, I suppose.

books behind.

Gah.

this week a small rearrangement may pay big dividends in the kitchen: I moved all our mugs into a drawer and the Pyrex measuring cups I use regularly for baking onto the old coffee mug shelf, making them more accessible. Less-frequently-used items (glass teapot, creamers) went onto the old measuring cup shelf, which cleared out a bit of a stuff-jam over the stove, where our travel mugs and coffee thermoses are stored.

It is time to reorganize the pantry again, since I took out the big slow cooker a few weeks ago to make something for a potluck and it’s been sitting on the counter ever since, while the stuff in the pantry apparently filled in the space where it was!

until my knee is better.

oh well