A Place for Everything, and Everything in its Place

Favorite words of every OCD. :)  The latest subject in my attempt to deal with all of our "stuff," and create a household that is clutter-free and easy to maintain: the File Cabinet.  Oh, how I dread the file cabinet.  It seems impossible to not have the files constantly overflowing and very hard to organize them so you can actually find what you need.

I probably would have saved this element of our household for last, as its not terribly fun to deal with files --- but for my birthday last year, my sister and mother gave me a filing organizing system called Freedom Filer.  Ever since, it has sat in a pile of junk for me to deal with, and as I picked my way through this pile, I decided it was time to give it a go.

Freedom Filer was definitely designed by an OCD --- it even has practice labels so you can decide how you want to stick them on the label holders (stuck directly on top of the plastic insert, or inside the insert, or on a piece of paper in the insert) --- and yes, I did practice, and includes a discussion on why they chose to use sticker labels instead of paper labels.  I am totally impressed with and in love with this system, and admittedly wished that I had come up with the idea myself.

It was a lengthy process to set it up, which included three separate trips to Office Depot for file folders, as I kept under-estimating how many files we have.  Apparently, we have just about 100 files.  And dealing with the files themselves was not much fun.

But now, how impressive does our file cabinet look?  And while I haven't done any filing myself yet, Mark told me that it was indeed much easier after he dealt with our last round of bills.

So glad to be done with that project!

I'm not the only one completing organizing projects in our house, though.  Check out Mark's latest project:

The Garage

I wish he had taken true "before" pictures, as the garage was a MESS.  He's already spent many hours cleaning it up to get to this point.  His plan is to turn our garage into a use-able workshop, with future plans to build an airplane in it!  So the first step is cleaning out all the clutter that has been accumulating there during the past five years.  He's made good progress!  He is also working on the "design" of the garage.  And I should mention that he has a little OCD in him as well, as I caught him using my old engineering graph paper to draw out the dimensions of the garage (both overhead and elevation) and also created to-scale cut-outs for the contents of the garage to see where he would put them.  It's all rather cute. 

So look for future updates with progress as Mark begins installing wiring, insulation, a wall A/C unit, drywall, paint and then builds his cabinets to hang on the wall!  Whew, he's going to be busy!

Happy Independence Day!

Lessons in Domesticity

Two posts in one day (please see the other post for Katie below)!  Benjamin is home from school next week, so I know it will be difficult to get on the computer --- and there are so many things I want to remember from this special time at home.  So here we go.  We'll see how long Katie naps to let me get through these posts.

First, it's done.  Is this not a beautiful picture?

That's right --- these are the last few EMPTY tupperwares that housed our stuff from our Hurricane Ike evacuation.  It only took 21 months to move completely back in to our house. :)  Over the last few weeks, we've been putting the final items away, and even hung pictures on our walls.  It looks like we live here now, and I love it!

So now everything has a home.  No more boxes and tupperwares lining empty walls waiting to be dealt with.  I now have the luxury of moving on to stage 2:  trying to make the things that we actually use accessible and easy to put away.  Some of the closets are packed rather full, and while everything fits in them, it's not always easy to get things out and put them back away.  I'm hoping to purge more items during this second go around so that there may even be a little extra room to grow.  Because in all likelihood, we will acquire more stuff, and once we return to "real" life (ie me going back to work), I want to be able to maintain some sense of order and not let our house slowly (or in some cases, quickly) creep towards the chaos it had become before my maternity leave began. 

So on my to-do list is everything from cleaning out our files and organizing our digital photos to re-organizing the hall bathroom to make way for two children's worth of toys, washcloths, diapers, etc.

In addition to this "tweaking," I am still pursuing my other "project" --- learning how to cook.  While I am definitely contributing more to feeding our family than I was a few months ago, it's definitely not yet a 50-50 task in our household.  But Mark and I are getting much better at actually planning out our meals at the beginning of the week (versus, "shoot, it's 6 o'clock... do we have any pizzas in the freezer?) --- and I'm especially proud that we've incorporated more vegetables and fruits into our evening meals!  I probably actually cook only 1-2 meals per week, but I am becoming quite a skilled sous-chef for Mark.  It's fun to work together in the kitchen, and I like doing the simpler steps that don't require concentration like washing and chopping vegetables or herbs.  Because half the time, I'm trying to appease Katie or get something for Ben, and the other half of the time, Katie wants to nurse right smack in the middle of a time-sensitive step in the cooking process.  I've come to realize that I don't really have a strong desire to become an expert chef --- each household only needs one, and Mark fills that role beautifully!  His cooking has really improved (although I thought he was good already), and it's fun to enable him to use his talents to make delicious, healthy meals for our family.  Whoever thought that broccoli would become our family's favorite part of the meal?  (try Cook's Illustrated Roasted Broccoli --- it is absolutely fabulous!).  All this is to say that my efforts in the kitchen are going well.  The other aspect that we'd like to be better about is buying food seasonally and locally.  But hopefully that will also come.

So as I continue to be a SAHM "poser" (I felt like this way when Katie and I went to a recent lecture about "babyproofing your marraige" at our church on a Tuesday MORNING), I figured I better learn another job duty of a housewife (smile!) --- how to clean.  That might sound strange, but we have all sorts of cleaning products and I've never really understood which products you are supposed to use where, and why you need different products for different parts of the house.  What is the part that actually dis-infects and makes things clean?  What is the difference between natural or non-toxic and traditional cleaning products?  A big drive in all this is the fact that I would like to rid my house of anything "dangerous" to young children.  Partially because I'm tired of calling the poison control hotline ("um, yeah, my son may have just squirted 409 into his mouth, what should I do?") and partially because we really want to integrate more chores into our routines with Benjamin --- and I can't clean with him around if I have to worry about the chemicals I am using.  Understanding how to "organically" clean has been something I've wanted to do for a couple of years now --- but never had the time or mental energy to do anything about it.

So I picked up a book called Organic Housekeeping, and despite first impressions, it's actually a very interesting book to read!  Now the author is admittedly a bit extreme (no, I am not going to wipe down my shower walls after EVERY shower, and I intend to continue to use my sponges), but it's very enlightening (and also a bit scary) to learn what is in traditional cleaning supplies, what the natural alternatives are, as well as bigger picture approaches like thinking about how we set-up our house to make cleaning easier.  The Fly Lady's book is next on my list for another perspective.  If you have any other recommended reads, let me know!

Okay, Katie is now up from her nap, so it's time to go. More later!

Dear Katie

 Dear Katie,

Now it's your turn for a blog post!  I just settled you down for a little nap, and Benjamin is at school, so I (hopefully) have a few minutes to document a few thoughts on your life so far.

On Tuesday, you turned 3 months old!  You have now been in existence for one year (since conception, that is), and you have completed the "fourth trimester."  You certainly look and act more and more like a baby every day, and I'm admittedly a little sad that your newborn-ness is passing so quickly!

Katie, I am immensely enjoying my time at home with you!  Benjamin broke us in nicely, so I fret about much less with you (I still worry, of course, because that's what I do --- but it's not a panic-worry this time around) and just enjoy snuggling and playing with you, and I also very much enjoy the few quiet moments to myself when you are sleeping and Ben is at school.

So what kind of baby are you?  That's hard to say, because you change so quickly!  I held out hope that you would be an "easy" baby since you are a girl --- and most of the girl babies we know are pretty docile.  But you certainly wasted no time in making it known that you are not the average girl!  Your first breath after being born was a piercing scream, and even the labor and delivery nurses were impressed by your volume and intensity! 

You are certainly an intense little girl.  You are so obviously taking in the world around you when you are awake, and sometimes you have difficulty shutting everything out when it's time to go to sleep.  So sometimes you get over-tired and spend the evening screaming to block out all the stimulation.  We have ear plugs placed strategically throughout the house for such occasions.  Even Benjamin has sweetly asked you on occasion to stop crying.  I have no worries that you will be over-shadowed by your big brother or that you will become a shirking wall flower.  I once read somewhere that "fussy" babies are the intelligent ones --- that their fussiness is due to the intensity with which they are studying the world, and they don't stop to take a break or a nap when they need one.  At this rate, you are going to be brilliant. :)

But, Katie, even though you sometimes spend the evening yelling at us, you are still a very sweet child.  You smile readily at your mommy and daddy.  And when you smile, it's this great wide open mouth smile and your eyes scrunch up in delight.  You love being pulled up to a sitting position now and are even beginning to enjoy standing for little bits of time.  You love being carried in your sling by both Mommy and Daddy - whether it's to explore the great wonders of Target with Mommy or learning how to pan fry with Daddy.

I imagine soon you will smile for your big brother.  He's a bit intense for you right now, and likes to get right in your face when he speaks or plays with you.  We're working on that.  But it's good for you --- you will be a tough little girl!

Well, sweet girl, that's all I've got for now.  We love you very much, and when you get bigger and bigger and bigger, you and Ben are going to have great fun together!

Lots of love,
Mommy