Write: Getting Ready

One of the downsides of writing 50,000 words in 30 days is the lack of time to do much else.  I try to publish here three times a week, on my other blog once a week (I said try), and write a couple other things.  I also have to craft and get ready for xmas.  How am I going to fit all this in at once?

I'm going to plan ahead.

Yes.  I, the ultimate procrastinator, have made a plan and have started working on it.  This plan calls for me to have most of these posts written ahead of time and ready to be published.  This plan also calls for me to craft my butt off in order to have my projects finished.

The biggest problem I have with creating is blocking myself with too many thoughts.  That's a part of the reason this blog was created.  By structuring things so I knew what I needed to work on, it freed me from worrying about everything else.  By having a plan in place and some of the work done ahead of time, I can sit down and write without worrying about needing to do something else.

Are you participating in NaNoWri this year?  How are you planning the rest of your life around the word count?

Create: Pick up your lunch

I've been making my lunch and the kiddos for a couple years now.  It's more cost effective than eating out or school lunch, and I can make sure the kiddo gets what he will eat.  For me, I don't drive myself to work so there isn't really anywhere to go for lunch as we don't have a cafeteria.  So homemade lunch it is!

I use leftovers for lunch typically, so it's more cost effective for me.  Last year, the kiddo's teacher always gushed about how his lunches were so cool and different.  I thought, seriously?  It's a pork chop and corn.  No one else brings that?  Although he has had inventive things a couple times - Po Boy sandwich with shrimp, meatball sandwich, and Indian, yum!

Lunch from home comes with a certain amount of stuff, namely lunch bags.  We each have one that we use on a regular basis.  Then I have an extra one I got from my rideshare company for free, a bag with a built in freezer pack, and another one for the kiddo.  It's all so unorganized.

But my craftiness has come to the rescue!  I took some old nylon string I've never used much of and braided myself a hanger.  At certain lengths, I added a loop to hook our bags through - our main ones have buckle straps.  The rest don't, so I left the tail of the braid loose so that I could wrap it through the loop and keep a bag in place.  The braid is attached to the wall by one of those 3M removable strip hooks. 

Here you can see how I looped the extra tail through the last hoop.  I know I have a couple carabiners in the house but I couldn't find them.  When I do, I will probably add another loop out of the tail and use carabiners to attach my non buckle lunch bags. 

Tadaa!  Now my lunch bags have a home that isn't a pile on top of my fridge.  The ones that don't get used often are in a cupboard, but it's hard even for me to reach.  This is much nicer.

Inspire: A Kitchen Makeover

A friend of mine is moving and I'm inheriting some of her stuff.  Most of it is currently sitting in my living room, waiting for me to figure out how to change my furniture around.  A couple of things landed, or may land, in my kitchen.  One is some fantastic vintage containers (that I forgot to take a picture of) in yellow.  I was using ceramic black and speckled white jars but the lid on the largest one broke and I couldn't store my flour in it anymore.  These new containers all have tight fitting lids and I have no problems putting my flour in it.

The containers were sitting on my messy counter taking up space until this weekend when I finally got around to switching them out. 

My kitchen is the center of my house spiritually.  When I don't feel good, my kitchen is a mess.  When my kitchen is a mess, I feel icky.  The limited amount of counter space tends to overflow with plastic bags I need to wash, empty cups, and random bits that I set down.  I went through this weekend and reclaimed my counter space a bit.  Even clearing one area off made the whole kitchen feel completely different. 

The first step to the Flylady cleaning system is to shine your sink.  I believe I need to start doing that again, making sure my sink is free of dirty dishes and clean before I go to bed.  Just this one simple task lets me feel that I am centered and okay. 

With the Ames C.art garage sale coming up, I'm going to be destashing my house and getting rid of things.  I feel the overwhelming need to clean out a huge amount of my junk, including things in my kitchen.  At the same point, I'm a pack rat and I drag new stuff in all the time.  How do I organize the things I need so it doesn't look like I'm just piling things up?

Do you have a special room in your house that connects to your mood?  Do you know a pack rat?  How do you organize all your stuff in an apartment?

Muse: Ah! Get Organized!

If you have read this blog for awhile, you know that keeping things in their place is not a strength of mine.  I try and achieve good results, then sink back into the depths that is clutter.

I signed up for FlyLady a while back and it worked pretty well to begin with.  I cleaned a couple areas of the home and kept my sink clean.  But then I didn't have time to follow the areas and kind of fell out of it again.  I mostly kept my sink clean, but this week I haven't.  Sigh.

But when it was clean, when I did follow her and take the time to clean up, the house looked great.  Was it still cluttered?  Yes.  But the clutter was contained in it's space.

I think my downfall was not following the baby steps.  I am going to change that this week and actually sit down and keep track of what needs to be done.  I am out of my "Oh my gosh I have so much to do!" funk and I should be ready to go.

Have you tried to get organized after the New Year?  How is your plan going?

Create: It's a Box

Work has been annoying me lately.  Of course, that's not really much of a stretch of the imagination.  My desk is almost constantly a mess right now.  Partly from work, partly from a disorganization of my stuff.  I have a weirdly shaped area that is technically a cube, but not really.  One of my walls is replaced by a counter which has space underneath for putting things.  This is where my stapler and such goes.  I have been randomly sticking things under that space for awhile and I finally decided to make it official.

Thus, I made myself some boxes out of Fedex/UPS envelopes.  I have such a stash of these things that I need to use up it isn't funny any more.  If you have any ideas, feel free to let me know!

The box set up is pretty simple but involves some math.   First, of course, you need to measure the space you have available and figure out how big of a box you want. 

On a scrap of paper, write down your dimensions and add them together.  I sketched mine out and added it that way, I'm much more of a visual person.  My dimensions ended up (after a couple of boxes to truly figure out what I wanted) being 2.5 inches high, seven inches length, and five inches width.  So I needed a length of 13 inches (2.5 + 7 + 2.5) and a width of 10 inches (2.5 + 5 + 2.5).  With me so far?  I made my box like a + and folded up the sides, so I had to add the sides to my length and width in order for it to turn out right.

I'll stop trying to explain math now.

I cut open my envelope and laid it out flat.  Then I took my ruler and sketched out the square 10x13 shape.  After cutting this out, I went back and made my actual lines at the appropriate spots.  Once I had my lines drawn, I went back in and drew an additional line .5 inches out from the lines.

You can see the lines in the picture above.  By adding in those lines, you are adding the flaps that will be folded over and glued into place.  At the small box where all the lines meet, I cut diagonally out for the flaps.  

Once you are done cutting, score along the inner lines that you will fold on.  Then fold up and glue.  I folded one flap on the inside and one on the outside of each corner.

Once the glue is dry, throw in some stuff and you have a box!

Inspire: Organization - Ho!

Note:  That's a ThunderCats reference, by the way.

Organization and I have always gotten along like two best friends living together.  Sometimes it is perfect, sometimes we want to kill each other. 

I remember when I was a child and my room was a mess, my grandma would always tell me to clean up and “How can you find anything in here?”  It may have been in piles on the floor, but I knew where everything was.  When I cleaned up and put things away, I lost items and couldn’t figure out where anything was.

I’m better than I was as a child.  Most of my stuff is picked up, but I am still a pile person.

I come home and drop my things into a pile, or put the mail into a pile.  Then I will come back to it at some point and sort through and put things away.  But until I put things away or move my pile out of the way, I know where everything is.  Once it’s put away, I can’t find it.

But organization and I have a cyclical relationship it seems.  I’m all sorts of disorganized, so I go through and sort everything out, make a new system, and follow it strictly for a period of time.  Then I slack off a bit, then a bit more, then I realize the system isn’t working anymore and I need a new one.  So, I take all my disorganization, sort through it, and make a new system to follow strictly for a time.

I’m at one of those moments now.  Nothing seems to be working the way I want it to.  It has grown stale, grown out of its box, and it feels like nothing is getting done.  I’m coasting.

Now, organization doesn’t only mean stuff.  It means how I take on tasks and finish them.  How I plan for time for my son, my crafting, and my writing.  I organize my life so that it runs without driving me crazy.

That’s how this blog got started.  I had too many ideas and none of them were getting done.  So in came this nifty new idea on how to hold myself accountable for getting things done and a way to organize them all.  The blog has held its own for quite a while and has accomplished its goal with honor.

But does it still work for me?  Until last week and this week, I would have said no.  I felt boxed in, doing the same thing over and over again.  And I was tired of it.  But I really like pancakes, and as I said, they help heal what is hurting. 

So I may make some changes around here.  What they are, I don’t know.  Should I put more religion on here?  Should I take it off completely?  I thought about starting another blog for only my religious posts, but I don’t know if I could run two blogs at the same time. 

What would you like to see?  What aspects do you like?  What parts are you not so thrilled about? 

How do you deal with life when it gets tossed upside down?