Oh, man, y’all.

I knew we had houseguests coming this weekend, so I had to pause in the Great Declutter (briefly) to get the guest room partially ready for inhabitants.  What I didn’t know was that our houseguest was going to arrive a day early.

Now, this was not as big of a Panic Attack as it would have been, say, a month ago. (Thank you ChoreWars….), but I still hasn’t made up the guest bed or laid out fresh towels, or rearranged the shipping supplies that live in that room.  I CAN say that I wasn’t worried they’d find the room to be so covered in dust that they couldn’t FIND the bed, or have to lay out their stuff on a carpet of dog hair.  So, really, I’m pleased overall with the direction in which the house is going, even under duress.

I’m now down almost 1500 individual items in my studio.  More than that, overall, from all rooms.  It’s to the point that my Piles O’ Crap (of which there were many) are minimalized somewhat, and I’m even able to free up some of the copious “organizers” (read: crap receptacles) that I’ve bought over the years in order to keep the clutter corralled.

That’s the part that’s amazing me, I think.  I knew, in my head, that you can’t organize clutter.  That it’s just THERE, and you have to MAINTAIN it all or get RID of it.  One of the two.  All the organizers in the free world won’t help you if you have, oh, say, sixteen tubs of yarn.  (Not that I know anyone with that many…..uh….anymore. I cleared those out in November.)

Still, it didn’t sink in until I started getting ruthless with myself.  Being honest about how much time I have in a day, and what needs to be done to even just maintain a house of this size and this full of crap…er…valued personal items. My valuation had to change — a LOT — before anything was going to even think about getting done.

Before, it was so figuratively dark that I didn’t know I was in a tunnel of my own making.  (Probably a tunnel through all the crap, actually.)  Now, I’m starting to see the light at the end of it all.  I’m hoping that soon, I’ll find the actual end.  It means my chorewars points will dry up a bit (until I start painting and/or doing a *lot* more around here), but honestly?  Then I can dig in on the garage somewhat, and take a whole lot more points, even if the stuff isn’t all ours.  (I’m sure that’s where some of these mice are coming from, actually.)

Goodbye, SLOB…hello, light.

In some cases, literally.  This was the studio window this morning:

That is seriously a SHEET…pinned to the top of the windowframe.  This was for two reasons:

1.  I didn’t have any idea what I wanted for curtains, and

2.  Even if I did, they don’t make curtain rods that big.  Well, they do, but they’re a million dollars, and I’m cheap.

I’ve had the fabric to MAKE the curtains for about a zillion years now.  Or at least part of them.  I still want to make two more, for the middles of the window.  (That window’s, like, wider than my first apartment.  One curtain on each side won’t look like there’s anything there, much less keep out the light in the summer when it superheats that room to approximately the temperature of the surface of the sun.) I’m still not sure what I’ll do with the middle.

But today, I whipped up this:

Which is still pinned to the top of the windowframe.  It’s awaiting the tab-topper things to be put on.  But still, it’s a drastic improvement over the way things WERE, and that makes me very happy.  I’ll be amazed, however, if the two are the same length.  I’m not so good with the curtainy-goodness.  Or sewing in general.  Ahem.  (If we ever meet, ask to see the sewing scar on my left index finger, where an old machine tried to remove it.  Oh, but seriously.)

I got away from the alphabet there for a little bit during the first part of The Big Declutter ‘08, but we’re up to L, for Love.  What part of homekeeping do I absolutely love?

I like planning.  I get a lot of great ideas.  All the time, in fact.  And if I was only superwoman and had extra hours in every day, I might even do some of them.  But the decorating bits and the cooking bits, I can usually at least do passably.  And I really do love organizing…not that you could tell from my house.

I love that I’m making a *home*.  I love taking all these raw bits — all the detritus and accumulation of living, and making a place I want to come back to and that my husband likes to come home to.

Granted, we have very different ideas of what that IS, exactly, but he’s coming around.  (After growing up with a very warped idea of “clean”, he’s kind of getting a taste of the simplicity of the whole decluttered world, and finding out that it IS a little bit more peaceful.  I think if I keep it up, he’s going to eventually make that connection.)

I’m rambling, but you get my drift.

Need to finish that other curtain and press it before it gets too late and I fall asleep at the machine.  No sense in letting it take off the other index finger.

This is my seriously scary (though less so now, thank you chorewars…) kitchen of doom.

It’s open to both the living and dining room, and as such, the clutter from the living room (also known as “the husband’s work crap”) spills over into it via the channel under the cupboards.  Not to mention the fact that we have to keep everything on the counters rather than under them, in those bottom cupboards/drawers, because there is a serious Mouse Problem in there.  As in, anything we put in there becomes an immediate Mouse House, replete with ripped up bits of insulation and lots and lots of the nastiest poo pellets you can imagine.

I wish I was exaggerating.  I’m not.  We’ve tried glue traps and poisons and everything short of locking a live cat in them.  Doesn’t phase them.  They are the UBERMICE, genetically engineered with the intelligence of Einstein and the flexibility of Rubber Man.  They are sneakier than …uh…something really sneaky.  And OH MY GOD THEY POOP A LOT.  One would think they would die just from overpooping, but nooooo.

We are powerless.  We gave up our cupboards after the first set of 24 (!!!) glue traps came back with one to two mice apiece in them, and STILL we have mice.  One day, they will carry off one of the dogs to be their servant.  When we complain about this little mouse issue to our landlords (aka “the inlaws”), they tell us it’s because we live in the country and there’s nothing they (or we) can do about it.

Gee.  Thanks.

I clean things with bleach.  A lot.  For a reason.  *shudder*

All mice aside, though:  there are some other things to be done. That piece of fabric hanging there on the wall next to the windows is a test to see how the fabric looks in various light.  Under it is an open cabinet where we keep the kitchen towels and the mugs, since it’s mouse-free up there.  I’ve picked one of the two to make a curtain to hide the clutter, and the other fabric will be the curtains for the window.  Right now, there’s just a little swag thing, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but doesn’t look so hot.  (The whole lower floor gets very little light, so I was reluctant to cover the window too much.)

I’d like to also do something with the cabinets.  Paint them, restain them, something.  They’re that sexy 1970’s dark wood that sucks up the light and doesn’t even remotely match the countertops, which are blondewood-toned melamine or whatever that stuff is that artificial countertops are made of.  They’re also dirty as hell from sitting unwashed for a zillion years before we moved in.

We need a backsplash behind the sink.  One of the window trim pieces fell off the window god only knows when, and has been long gone since before we moved in, so I’m thinking about putting steel of some sort behind there, all the way up to the window.  Easy to clean, and relatively practical for the times when I’m working with dye and splash it on the wall.  There are blue spots in my yellow paint there now.  Go figure.

The cabinets on the right are starting to sag, too, so we need some kind of brace support on the nearest-to-the-camera side.  You can’t see it well in this picture, but they’re pulling away from the ceiling a little, which is kind of scary.

And the big thing I want to do is get a hanging pot holder dealie for the ceiling.  Hang a light or two from it (the one light over the sink doesn’t work, which is why the torchiere is in our kitchen), and get all the pots and pans out of the cabinets, freeing up space for some of the clutterybits that reside on the countertops.  I think it’ll work — we’ve got 12′ ceilings in the whole first floor of the house.

Oh, and the floor.  OMG, the floor.  If we were staying here for longer than just a few years, I’d soooo get a new floor.  That cracked lineoleum that’s flaking all over the place?  Nasty.  Nasty to the point of being repulsive.  I try not to think about it too much.  Maybe I’ll get a big 5′ x 8′ rug at some point, maybe sisal or something, to cover the majority of it up.  The edges are all caked with waxed-on dirt, since the mother-in-law person used to use wax cleaners on the thing, virtually ensuring that the resultant mud would be cemented on for all eternity.  (No, seriously.  20 year old wax is like hardened glue — there is not a cleaner/wax remover/stripper/anything that will take off the muddy wax buildup.  It is now a feature of the house, and may be the only thing holding the kitchen together.  I have a secret fear that, if I was to find the magical floor-cleaner that would turn back time and remove it, the whole house would collapse like a house of cards.  And it’s probably not all that unfounded.)

That said, I’m still decluttering like a MAD FIEND.  Got rid of another four garbage bags’ worth of stuff since the Big Closet Clear-Out of 2008, in fact.  Almost 400 items out the door, ranging from old button packages to paper files that are out of date and/or unnecessary, to lamps that don’t work….and everything inbetween.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the Quakers, or the Religious Society of Friends.  While I don’t consider myself all that much of a Religious Sort(tm), the basic tenets of caring for the earth, caring for each other, and living simply really, really appeal to me.  I used to think I wanted a big house with lots of space, and now that we have one, it’s really kind of a pain in the ass.  There’s always something that needs doing, and having lots of space means needing a lot of stuff to fill it up, and while the acquiring of Varied And Sundry Crap isn’t all that hard for me to do, I don’t think it’s healthy having all this stuff around me all the time.

I know, I know.  Be grateful for the abundance.  And I am.  But there’s abundance and then there’s excess, and the two are profoundly different things.  We’ve been to the Excess point for a long time now, and when I started de-acquiring things to the dumpster or to friends, or selling off the excess in various venues, I’m noticing I have more energy.  A *lot* more energy, even.  It’s like I can start to breathe again, which I think I’ve said before, but it’s true — when there’s Too Much, the walls close in and I don’t know what to do next. It’s the paradox of choice — Choice is good; too many choices are confusing and disheartening.

Just in the past six months, I’ve gone through and gotten rid of just about 75% of most of my major clutterpoints:  yarn and craft supplies, clothing, kitchen junk, books.  People look at me like I might actually be insane when I tell them I sold off 75% of my yarn, and like I have lobsters sprouting from my ears when I tell them that more than half my books are gone now.

But seriously here — with the money that I got from selling off my yarn, I bought upgrades for my Other business.  Stuff we really needed, that made our lives easier and our work more enjoyable.  With the space in my kitchen created from ditching all the old stuff, I’ve been able to get a bunch of stuff off the counters that we DO use, which equates to more space to actually COOK in there, which equals a Happier Husband and a healthier way of life for us both.  (McDonald’s is evil.  Cooking at home means I know exactly what’s in that food we’re eating.)  And now, with the books (which is where I lose a lot of people who can’t imagine every decluttering their libraries) being sold as used on Amazon…I’m using that credit (which is considerable, let me tell you.) to buy things for the house, as well as buying books that I’m actually going to read.  (And once they’re read, they’ll go back up on Amazon as used, trust me.)  I’m actually finally getting a new comforter for the bed, a coffeemaker that doesn’t leak water all over my counters, and some baking stuff I’ve needed for a long time, AND that loaf pan I was obsessing over a few months ago — for essentially *free*.

AND I get the FREE SPACE.

It really IS kind of awesome, even if the whole decluttering thing gives some people fits.

My things ARE NOT ME. I’ve known that, intellectually, for quite some time now.  But knowing it in your head and knowing it in your heart — that’s two different animals.  The crap I surround myself with is supposed to reflect me, us, our lives together…or it’s supposed to be functional, allowing us to live our lives.  It’s not a substitute for life, or a replacement for having a life.  It’s not part of me — if it was ALL gone, I would still be me (and me with a clean slate, no less).

Realizing that fact has made it about a zillion times easier to shovel out from under the protective blanket of Crap that’s made its way into my life.  And once it’s gone, I think I might actually be even more willing to make a LIFE rather than a STOCKPILE.

Subject change:

Remember the scary picture of the tub a few days ago?  The one where the tin man crawled into my bathroom to rot and rust?

I got out the heavy-duty chemicals yesterday, and dumped a bunch of it in the tub.  I haven’t done the walls yet, but I rubbed a little bit of it on them so you could see the difference, for contrast.  (I’m doing those today.  It’s a multi-day job, since those chemicals can burn off your eyebrows if you’re exposed for too long.)

There really *is* porcelain-colored plastic under all that rust.

Who knew?

It’ll take today’s wall wipedown and tomorrow’s once-more-with-feeling on the tub itself with the Evil Chemicals Of Doom, but then I’ll have my tub back, thankfully.

Note to self:  broken or not, it needs a once-over at LEAST once a week, probably more often.

Does anyone know if waxing the walls will help prevent the iron from sticking?  I heard that somewhere — that a thin layer of TurtleWax would keep them from turning into Orange Iron Central, but I’m reluctant to try it if it means I have to then wash wax off the walls, too.

Back to the declutterybits.

So the past three days, there has been A Fire In Me ™.

I’m still blaming ChoreWars.  I’m locked in a vicious battle with GreenApples for the top spot in our group — we go back and forth being number one.  And I have to admit — the competition has been not only fierce, but motivating.  Yesterday, I was literally looking for things to wash, just so I could get the wash-fold-put away points.  I’ve been decluttering like a mad fiend so that I might be able to get ahead.  I’ve been sweeping things I swept two days prior (and finding that the dogs really DO shed about a dog’s worth of hair a day, and that perhaps I should be sweeping daily ANYWAY….), doing the dishes by hand right after we eat, vacuuming upstairs every time my husband so much as walks through….I even found myself wishing that it would warm up outside JUST so I could wash the windows without having the Windex freeze into fractal-like ice.

In short, I’m scaring myself, but my house is not only GETTING clean, but STAYING THERE.

Last night, when my friend Nikki was over, I mentioned that I really wanted to clean out the closet in my master bedroom.  That I have clothes that are totally Wish List items at this point, thanks to the expanding nature of my ass.  (My activity level dropped to nil when I moved from the northwest to the midwest, since I have allergies that keep me from being outside most of the time.  As such, the weight came over to say Hi and never left.  Ugh.)  Being just a touch OCD herself, she offered to cheerlead while I decluttered.

Over the next several hours, I threw away or gifted more than 50% of what was in my closet and my dresser.  There are EMPTY DRAWERS NOW.

I know.  I almost fainted, too.

Before:

I know this doesn’t look all that bad to some of you.  I’ve been slowly clearing out the bottom of it for several weeks, even before the ChoreWars Mania hit me.  But it was really hard finding stuff to wear, because the whole thing was disorganized and crammed full of stuff that didn’t fit.

We don’t have a linen closet, either.  (Well, we DO, but the mice know where it is, so we don’t keep anything in it that’s not in sealed rubbermaid containers, and no linens.  Otherwise, there is poop and chewed holes, not necessarily in that order.  I know, ewwww, right?)    So our towels resided partially in that one cubbyhole and in that laundry basket on the floor.  Not really an efficient use of space, and honestly, most of them had seen better days anyway.  We started with that, and got rid of all but about a dozen towels, six washcloths, and three hand towels.  They don’t all match, but that can be a project for another day.

Then we started in on the hanging stuff and the shelves.  What didn’t fit, was stained or threadbare, or didn’t look good on me…GONE.

We ended up with NINE GARBAGE BAGS FULL.  Nine.  And this:

the right side:

and the left:

Excuse the pictures — it was 2 a.m. before we were done, and there’s little light in there.

I still want to do something with the walls, since they’re still the blue that my master bedroom used to be (as in: retina-searing blue), and maybe get some better storage options in there, but OMG.  FUNCTIONAL CLOSET.

People are starting to arrive for S&B, so I need to get running so I can shower and get the cupcakes frosted (and a second batch made).  But I had to pop over here to squee a little bit about that closet and the fact that I’m actually DOING IT.

It already feels less congested and more free in here, and I’m not even remotely done yet.

I can’t wait.

(And ooh, the points!)

And, apparently, “jar”.

This is my windowsill in the kitchen.  It used to be covered with a lot of clutter and crap, and this past week, I threw everything away that was on it (or moved it to where it belonged, at least), wiped it off despite the peeling and rotting wood, and lay down a handwoven runner that I made a while back.  The tealight looked kind of pretty next to the jar, which used to be full of old sponges for some reason.  It will eventually contain flowers from outside, if the peonies bloom again this year.  And you can just barely see the hills beyond the house.

The hills that would, mind you, be kind of pretty, if they didn’t belong to a rock quarry that’s cleared them of any living vegetation.  *grump*

It seems like the light here’s been so pretty the last couple days.  Blue-ish and clear.  A big change from the overcast grey of the past few months.  I’m also blaming the sun for this cleaning spurt.

Today, I actually maxed out the ChoreWars points you can earn in a day…by 2 p.m..  I tried putting in my points for the lunch dishes, and it cut me off!  Apparently, you can only earn a thousand in a day.

Yes, I said A THOUSAND.

Today’s been de-clutterpalooza over here at Chez Wife.  I tossed out some stuff from the office, then hit the upstairs bathroom and got the medicine drawer and the other drawers/cabinets, and started in on my art studio.

Oh. my.

A mouse got into my art supplies drawers.  Or the bottom two, at least.  Chewed up what is probably thousands of dollars in equipment and supplies.  I ended up throwing out LITERALLY more than a hundred and fifty things, just from those drawers and the surrounding area.  Listed a bunch of books on amazon.  Gave away even more.

I’m finally starting to be able to breathe up in here.

There’s still a LONG way to go, don’t get me wrong.  My tub still has the dead tin man thing going on and there’s more clutter than space, and dust motes outnumber the occupants here a few legion to one.  But I’m getting there.  Slowly.

I have to run and get groceries, and take a few hours to myself this afternoon.  Out, away from it all, to get some more fresh air and perspective.  (I’m shopping for a pair of matchy-matchy lamps for the bedroom, to be honest.  Now that it’s cleaner in there, I like sitting in bed, reading before sleeping.  I didn’t know how much all that dirt and clutter was affecting the way I felt, really.  I knew I felt a little anxious and depressed with it all messy, but didn’t realize that I was subconsciously avoiding the whole ROOM.  Sheesh.)

Then it’s Back With A Vengeance Time.  I want to bag up all this stuff and take a picture.  Seriously, folks — you won’t believe it.  BAGS and BAGS of what amounts to TRASH that’s been living in my house, rent-free, for all this time.  Stuff that I never really thought of as “trash”, either.  It was my art supplies, or my old paperwork, or some toys that we were keeping, or clothes in my closet, or some old hot-rollers for my hair from the days with Really Big Hair…not “trash”.    But bagged up?  It’s trash.  And it always has been; I just didn’t have the eyes to see it or the heart to get rid of it before now.

What I really DO know, though, is that my house is going to be much easier to clean when it’s all gone.  And there will be room to breathe and grow again.  It’s like that jar, sitting there on the windowsill — empty and ready for something more beautiful than itself to fill it, rather than storing stuff that no longer brings joy.

And that makes maxing out my ChoreWars just that much better.

My life up and got purdy on me the past two days.

I’ve been blaming it on that post-sickness energy that you get.  Y’know the kind — where you wake up after being a giant pile of mucous for a week or so, and realize that HEY…I really AM human under all this snot! and suddenly, there’s all this energy that you never thought you had.

Maybe that’s just me.  People keep looking at me like I’m crazy, but I get it every single time I’m sick/healthy again.

And it really *is* partially the ChoreWars thing.  That stupid competitive side of me keeps telling me that all these people with the Really Clean Houses don’t have NEARLY the kind of raw material I have to work with.  Just getting to a place where my house doesn’t look like it’s been rescued from Condemned status would be one helluvalotta points.

Case in point….and you might want to shield the eyes of small children and the elderly from this one.  The shock may scar them for life or strike them dead on sight.  Seriously.

This is my bathtub, AFTER nearly a half-hour of scrubbing at it with salt and vinegar:

Tell me it doesn’t look like someone murdered the Tin Man and left his ass to rust in there.  Go on, tell me.

That, my friends, is literally TWO WEEKS of iron build-up.  TWO. FREAKIN’. WEEKS.  Not two DECADES.  Not even two YEARS, but two WEEKS.

Our water is THAT hard.  Well water.  I usually have to use these really noxious chemicals to clean it every other day, but it was broken two weeks ago, and I’ve been a little afraid to run a full tub.  So JUST FROM SHOWERS…..we get the Death of the Tin Man.  Seriously.

And since the vinegar/salt thing is working less than well, tomorrow, I’m back on the acid cleaner.  I think, when I use it, I can actually feel it giving me cancer.  But if it’s cancer versus the Dead Tin Man, I’ll take the carcinoma.  (Don’t they give you chemicals as treatment for that?  Am I the only one who sees the irony inherent in that?)

But seriously, for every picture like the scary one there, there’s this kind of thing emerging now, too:

That would be my newly-cleaned, newly bedecked-with-curtains, JUST SHY OF EMPTY (as in, all laundry completed) laundry room of comfort and joy.  Complete with the world’s sexiest dryer, which is from the 1950’s and still has a foot pedal to open the door.  I love it just a little bit.  And now that the laundry mountain is tackled and vanquished, the floors are sparkling, and the washer/dryer themselves are be-scrubbed and glowing, I kind of want to sit in there all day.  Like, ALL DAY LONG.  I think it’s the one truly, completely clean part of my house.  I love that.

There’s the half-done spots:

Like my dining room/part of the living room.  The floor’s still disgustingly being held together with duct tape to keep the ants out, but the vinyl’s mostly clean.  (Need to swiffer again tonight.  Four dogs.  Vinyl floors.  You do the math.)  But it’s getting there.  Two days ago, you couldn’t see the tabletop, and the dog hair was so thick that I could have literally knit me a new dog, if I was in the market for a fifth.

All of this is being compounded by the universe, too.  In the mail today, Jane Brocket’s “Gentle Art of Domesticity” and the new Everyday Food  (O Martha, how I love you so…).  Think it’s trying to tell me something?

So now….Ironing.

I don’t do it if I don’t have to.  I’m sooo bad at it.  I put creases where there aren’t supposed to be any, and flatten out the ones that are supposed to be there.  I learned this about myself a long, long time ago, and finally came to the realization that I need clothes with no ironing required.

Or I put things in the dryer with a damp washrag, which usually fixes everything anyway.

So if you come to my house and expect a nicely-pressed tablecloth and starched napkins…welll….you’ll be a little disappointed.  Just sayin’.

One other small thing of note:

I realized today that through ChoreWars, some of you from my Other Life might be able to figure out who I am.

Doh.

If you do, or if you suspect, please…keep that information to yourselves.   This is the place that I’m kind of trying to keep to myself.  Where I can work out all this domestic stuff without worrying about the public eye, or how it will reflect on that Other Life.

It’s not that that Other Life isn’t *me*.  Because it is.  But so is this, and while it might seem kind of like the Anti-OtherLife, it’s all part of this crazy thing we all do, called living.  I’m a little one-dimensional in that Other Life, intentionally.  Keeps a safe distance between us and the ones who know us through that other thing.

So, please….if you find this, and you know or think you know or have a sneaking suspicion that you know who I am in that Other?  Forget you know.

Thank you.

I’d say the “C” is silent, but then it becomes Horewars, and that isn’t quite the connotation I’m looking for.

But this:

has become my new best housekeeper’s friend. Seriously.

I’m on the Reclaiming the Home team, from the blog and ravelry group (in the sidebar), and MAN…it is TOTALLY helping. At the time of this writing, I’ve got 588 points, which puts me in about 8th place overall. And I’m competitive, so if it takes me forever, I’m totally going to get up there in the top three.

Better, my house is happier. I’ve been fighting a nasty flu bug for the past three days, and just getting up out of bed has been challenging. But with the ChoreWars thing looming, I vacuumed almost all of my house (three more rooms to go!), dusted things that sorely needed it, vacuumed my STAIRS and the WALLS of the stairwell (four hairy dogs + 1 hairy husband + lots of static electricity from the old carpets = furry walls. Seriously. It was gross.), did all my dishes and put them away, folded ALL the laundry that was waiting, decluttered a bunch of stuff, put a TON of stuff away, swept almost all the lineoleum in the house (three more rooms!)….it just goes on and on.

I still want to wash all the windows and do more laundry (and put it away!), and there’s still some seeeeeerious decluttering that has to happen in the kitchen before I’m done. But my house is FEELING cleaner already. And that, to me, is priceless.

I’ve been really hesitant to get into those daily cleaning routines (like the ones from RealSimple that I mentioned before), because it’s so dusty and nasty out here in hooterville that I never see progress. I never get to feel what it’s like to have a truly clean house (and probably never will, based on the amount of crap that’s tracked in)…so I’ve been disheartened in the past. Now, though, I get to look at my points and see that HEY…I’ve actually DONE something. Quite a BIT of something, actually! It’s keeping me going. I LOVE THAT.

If you click on that “reclaiming the home” link under “crafty wives”, you’ll get to the page where the link is to sign up. (Not sure if I have permission to hand it out or not.) It’s freakin’ fabulous.

Which leads me to H for Handbooks…

I just got this in the mail today, and just reading through it, I kind of love it a little. Okay, I love it a LOT. It’s british, but finding used copies is pretty easy, and I think Amazon now sells the new ones, too:

It’s called “How to Be The Perfect Housewife: Become a Domestic Goddess and a Queen of Clean: Lessons in the art of modern household management”, by Anthea Turner. Apparently, there’s a british television series called “The Perfect Housewife”, and this is the companion book they put out.

It. is. fabulous. It’s separated into lessons, starting with de-cluttering room by room, storage, and cleaning, heading into laundry and home office stuff, then on to repair of things like clothes and shoes, and finally into things like shopping and homemaking and entertaining and safety — seriously….this could be the only primer you’d ever need, even if you knew NOTHING ahead of time.

Personally, I think every woman should be handed a copy of this when she gets engaged. (Of course, some would take offense, but for the ones who wouldn’t, this is a great gift.)

It has me all raring to get my house into some semblance of Homehood, and that’s a positive thing. Since that’s one of my goals from this Wife Project, I’m going to be keeping it close to my chest, following the lessons from 1 to 20 in order. It makes it feel like yes, it’s actually POSSIBLE to have a home, even with conditions so out of control as ours.

Motivation, of course, is priceless.

I’m off to earn more ChoreWars points!

As in, “what’s in yours?”

I’d love to say I’m one of those people who has a bunch of Emergency Food all saved up and regularly rotated, just in case there’s a six-foot-of-snow blizzard or a massive flood that keeps us from the grocery store, but sadly, I’m not.

Right now, in my freezer(s), since we have two refrigerators, both of them old as dirt and not even remotely enviromentally-friendly, there is:

• One full bag of ice, and one nearly empty bag.
• One bag of chicken breasts, partially used.
• One 3-pound pack of hamburger
• One frozen partial can of tomato paste, since martha said you can freeze it.
• two boxes of pop-tarts (my husband’s)
• two bottles of vodka
• and two pounds of coffee.

I know. I’m not in the candidacy for Housewife of the Year. *facepalm*

One thing I’m doing in 2008, though, is trying out Once A Month Cooking — where you take one day and chop things and season things and put them all in baggies and end up with 30 meals, just waiting in your fridge for the morning you want some real food without all the mess and hassle. I’ve done it once before, and while the Preparation Day was much more rigorous than I thought it’d be (I was figuring 3 hours of prep-time…it was more like 8.), it was REALLY nice being able to NOT worry about cooking, even on those days when I was really, really busy.

The downside is that you have to buy everything at once, and that much meat can be waaaay expensive. (I think our grocery bill was around $300 that week. Granted, it was cheaper in the long run because I was buying food in bulk quantities, but still….that was a choke-moment at the register.) And you do still have to go to the store every week, to get your side dishes, perishables, and breakfast/lunch foods, so you’re not saving a whole lot of time, for sure.

Still, for us, I’m going to try it twice more, to see if I can get us out of the habit of picking up fast food when life gets overwhelming.

For the record, I’m using this set of menus. It’s the Mega-Mailer stuff — and I have to say, when we did this last time, there was maybe one stinker in the whole bunch of them. (A lot of times, when I try to make menus untested, I have about an 80/20 ratio — out of every ten recipes, two of them will be hooboy I’m not making THAT again for sure recipes. With Mega-Mailer, we had one out of thirty, which seems like pretty good odds to me.) It’s less than $12 per mailer, and she gives you side dish ideas and nutritional info in there, too. AND there’s a vegetarian AND a low-carb version, for people with special diets.

So there’s my pontification for the week. I’m not affiliated, I’m just a fan. (I’ve had the regular menu-mailer for about six years now, too. Helps IMMENSELY in meal planning.)

This week, I’m planning on trying out the Real Simple Speed Cleaning plan. Or at least trying to start it — I plan to do it for three weeks, just to see if it works for us and our lives. It doesn’t cover any of the deep cleaning, but I’m thinking it might help for the day to day stuff that I tend to…uh…forget. My poor husband is about to choke on the dust bunnies and the mud, so it’s time to start *something*, at least.

I’ll keep you updated.

I am obsessing.

And what I’m obsessing over isn’t even something all that important, since I have one of these already, just not this brand or type.

Oh, but seriously. I’m obsessing over a Typhoon Vintage loaf pan, after seeing a similar one on a blog I often read. And since I got a set of pink mixing bowls as a wedding gift (of this same brand and color), now I really, really want the loaf pan.

See, one of my goals for this year deals with learning to make bread. By hand. Not in the bread machine, since that’s kind of cheating, but honest-to-goodness, kneaded and loafed-up bread by hand. Because no matter what anyone says or doesn’t say, homemade bread is one of life’s great pleasures. It’s like alchemy of a sort. There’s the flour and the salt and the water and the yeast, and miraculously, through workings of your own fingers, bread emerges.

And ooh, is it ever tasty.

So why not make it myself? Learning how seems to be worth the final result. And I think buying this pan (which isn’t all that expensive, really. About $20 or so.) gives some added form to the function.

I think I just talked myself into it. I’ll beg my husband for valentine’s day, maybe….

Now, onto the weekly meme. We’re up to “E” for Everyday. It asks the question, “What do you do every day?”

I’m a big stickler on beds. I really feel like the beds need to be made. And there’s a practical reason for this, other than just the fact that it makes the bedroom look about seven zillion times better.

See, I have this husband. And this husband has the bizarre tendency to turn himself into a pretzel while he’s unconscious. And since he’s most often unconscious in bed, there are covers to contend with. Which means that by the end of an average night, we end up with a LEGENDARY tangle of covers.

And by “we”, I really mean “him”, because usually, by the end of an average night, he is wrapped in a twisted pretzel burrito of covers, and I have approximately four inches of Sheet Triangle with which to keep warm. Add in the four dogs, most of which are large and wait for us to fall asleep before assaulting us with their furry, sleeping selves, thus binding up even MORE of the covers underneath an 85-pound labrador retriever’s ass — well, you can see where I’m going with this. I either make the bed every morning, or when I get into bed the next night, I will have literal centimeters of a single blanket, and it’s six degrees outside. Six. Which means inside temperatures at this place sometimes hover around 60 degrees farenheit. And that’s too cold to be sleeping without toasty blankets.

By making the bed every day, I’m able to keep the burrito thing to a minimum. They’re still burrito-wrapper covers when I get into bed with my unconscious husband, but usually by the time I collapse, he hasn’t had nearly enough time to be wrapped double in them, and I can grab a corner and yank hard enough to actually get enough of the blanket to stay warm. For a while. All bets are off around four a.m., but by then, I’m out cold.

I swear, if he wasn’t so gorgeous, I’d kick him out of bed entirely.

The other thing I’m endeavoring to do daily, soon, when I get that far down on my list of oals for this project, is to follow Real Simple’s Speed Cleaning Guide for three weeks to see if it works for our family.

Have you seen it? It’s supposedly a miracle-worker. Much like the whole FlyLady thing, but more spread out over the whole house. Though I can see the wisdom in doing both — you can’t really clean clutter, you just have to get rid of it so you have the space to live within. But if you’ve been doing the whole Flylady decluttering bit for a while, I think it might be the simplest 19-minute-cleaning system I’ve ever seen.

Granted, it’s going to take me longer than 19 minutes, to be sure. (There are three bathrooms and four bedrooms in this place, not including the laundry room and the studio, both of which get horrendously dirty from time to time.) But if it keeps me from having a house that kind of looks like a small tornado might have hit it and left dirt in its place? Totally worth it.

I really should take some before-and-after pictures for posterity’s sake. It gets so bad in here — so cluttered and wrong, that I fully expect an episode of Cops to be filmed here sometime soon. Jimmy Hoffa’s probably in one of his parents’ junk closets in this house.

Anyway, that’s my Everyday. Make the beds, do the dishes, try to do some laundry. I’ve added “cook dinner” to that list on every day but Thursdays (evening meetings), and I’d like to add more than that, just as a pre-emptive strike against the Crazy that is our house’s clutter.

We’ll see how it goes.

(edited to add this:)

OMG…I just clicked on the comments at the Real Simple site (where the 19 minute speedclean thing came from), and the comments are making me gag a little.  Like this one:

miss clean
These SIMPLE solutions are for someone with NO children, NO pets, and NO husband. What size home are we cleaning here. A box. It takes my maids (3-5) approx. 6 hours weekly to clean my house which is 4000sq. ft. I pick up daily, work at home, with one 16 year old child, and NO husband. NOT possible. Is this a joke? This is the most insulting thing I have ever seen in print. Who ever wrote this needs to get a different job. 11/27/06

*blinkblink*

The “most insulting thing I’ve ever seen in print”??

How about having three to five maids for six hours a day for a four thousand square foot house, and then BITCHING that someone else’s plan is oh-so-wrong?

I am suddenly reminded how spoiled we are, as modern women, and how screwed up our society is to think that we *need* four thousand square feet of space to house all our crap, requiring three to five maids to service our posessions.

I think my new prayer will be to ask God never to let me have so much stuff that I have to employ five people for six hours a week to maintain it all.  The *only* reason we’re in this house is that it’s company housing, and I didn’t have a choice.

It all makes me just a little sick of heart.

Is this meme food obsessed or what?

I figured, since this is pretty much a yes or no, have you made them/no I have not answerable question (to which the answer is yes, by the way, I have, on several occasions), I’d expand this a little bit to kitchen gadgetry.

And the reason this leap in logic was spawned?  Finding this under my kitchen counter, left here by the previous occupants (who happen to be my in-laws).  Evidently, they didn’t make donuts very often:

In the box is the stick-free donut oven which looks like it just might have seen better days, and a recipe booklet for about eighty-seven-bazillion different kinds of donuts you can make with the aforementioned “factory”.

I haven’t tried to use it yet.  I’m a little scared of the electrical cord, which is the part of it that looks the most worn, but I may have to dig it out, throw on an apron, and try a few of these one day soon.  I figure the most I’m out is some flour, spices, and time — and while time is premium around here most days, it might be kind of fun to see what I can whip up.

I’m not a big gadget person, really.  I like the IDEA of most gadgetry — make your life simple with a wafflemaker!  Easy clean up with this new tabletop grill!  Feed your family with healthy smoothies with this new feature-filled blender! — I just can’t see the sense in buying a lot of separate gizmos to take up storage space where one tool that’s not as “featured” can do the same.

I’ve got the wafflemaker.  And we use it a lot.  And the crock-pot, which I see as more of a staple than a gadget.  A breadmaker that’s used less now that I have the other staple — a good KitchenAid mixer with a bread-hook attachment.  A blender.  That’s really it.  None of the food processors or tabletop grills, specialized nutcrackers or grinding tools, hand-held blenders or one-cup coffeemakers.  (Well, an espresso machine, but it gets used DAILY, if not more often than that….)

Oh.  And a donut factory.

It’ll most likely be cut in the next trip to goodwill for donation, since a nice little pan of oil will do the same work and probably taste better, even if deep-frying is less healthy than a non-stick pan.  (Though I’m not sure about that — did you hear all the flap about the DuPont Teflon factory workers coming down with rare cancers?  I’m a little wary of cooking things in chemical carcinogens.)

Got a favorite gadget you can’t live without?  Share — tell me about it.  (Not that a lot of you read this blog, but if you do, I’d love to know.)

This is a bad picture, I know.  I apologize, greatly.  The midwest has been under a ginormous cloud for about the past week and a half, and I was getting tired of waiting for sunlight to take pictures, so the picture above was taken without flash under a whole lot of indoor lights that make it look all kinds of crazy.  But the intent’s there, and you can kind of get the gist of what I’m talking about here.

See, over on Ravelry.com, there’s this fabulous group I think I mentioned before, called “Reclaiming the Home”.  (If you’re a knitter, don’t skip Ravelry because you think it’s too trendy or too much of a timesuck.  I mean, it IS a timesuck, but some of the gems include a whole lot of organizational tools and groups like RtH where you can get TONS of information on things that you wouldn’t really associate with knitting per se.  Sooooo worth the wait for an invite.  Seriously, people….)

On the RtH group, someone posted this fabulous meme, full of questions about homekeeping and wifely goodness.  I thought about posting it intact, but many of the answers deserved their own entries.  So in an effort to post more often, I’m going to go through them here, and try to incorporate some new habits in the process.

 Question A:  Aprons, y/n?

I love aprons.  No, seriously.  But I love them on a kind of abstract level.  Like, I love the IDEA of aprons.  I love the function of an apron.  I really love vintage aprons, especially the ones intended to be used on a daily basis, and the ones for showing off when company comes over.

I don’t USE aprons, though.  It’s kind of sad, really.  I have this collection of vintage aprons, some from my mom’s mom, and some from various flea markets and thrift stores, and they’re all sitting in a drawer, folded nicely and waiting for me to get my head out of my tail-end.

The problem is that I’m not a small girl.  So while the ties fit, the waist-aprons (the kind I have) cut me off right in the middle, and hang down all funny, like it’s just shade for my legs.  It’s the same reason I don’t wear full skirts — just either short ones or pencil-skirts that cling to me from the hip down, since my hips and legs are pretty darn good, but that belly has to go.  That kind of thing.

The one in the picture up there is my favorite “for showing” apron in my collection.  It’s sheer-ish.  Chocolate brown.  Long ties that hang off a decorative bow in the back.  (For me, it’s off the back.  For skinny girls, it’d probably wrap around back to the front and tie, to be honest.)  The band of cotton in the front has five rows of rick-rack — three chocolate brown to match the rest, and two contrasting bright aqua strips.  And I *love* chocolate and aqua.  My whole house would be some variation of those two if I could get away with it.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to try to use my aprons.  Not this one, since it’s for company, more than utility.  But one of the 1950’s cotton ones that are obviously well-used and were well-loved while in other hands — those would be practical.  And since I’m doing a fair bit of baking tomorrow, it seems like an apt time to try them out, both for nostalgia and for practicality.

So I guess the answer to the meme question would technically be no, I don’t wear aprons.  But I do love them, and WILL be wearing them, so I’m good with a tenative yes.