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!