Can I Get a What-What?!

I am still on the quest to get my kitchen as clutter-free and easy-to-clean as possible. I have now found two things to help me in that journey! One is an awesome bread box/cutting board combo that I scored for $9. The other is a work-in-progress that I will reveal in pictures as I go about each step.

My husband and I, darling that he is, decided that the dishes are now his responsibility. I gave him the choice of doing the dishes or doing our two boys' laundry. He chose dishes. That has made the attitude at our house the last 10 days or so 100 times better! I've stopped feeling quite so overwhelmed and he doesn't get annoyed by dishes in the sink.

Seriously, delegation is awesome.

The funny thing is, my husband didn't even realize I was overwhelmed. I assumed he knew; he assumed everything was fine. It wasn't until I actually told him that we both realized things needed to change. Communication for the win!

Sorry for the excessive use of exclamation points, it's just that this project of mine to become a better person is actually working. It's slow and the progress feels infinitesimal at times, but it's been worth it.

Onward, ho!

Kitchen Cleaning and Deep Thoughts

My life has been in disarray since March, it seems. I think I've been expecting to catch up, but that hasn't happened. So today when I started cleaning out the cabinets in my kitchen, I think it became a metaphor for my life.

I've been reading an interesting book called, A Mom's Guide to Home Organization: Simple Solutions to Control Clutter, Schedules and Stress by Debbie Lillard. As I've been reading it I've taken copious notes (it's a library book and I can't mark it up, unfortunately). It made me realize that my kitchen is the least functioning room in my house. It gets the most casual use, gets dirty the fastest, and takes the longest to clean. Something needs to be done.

So I started making a plan to get rid of the clutter that gathers on the counters and all the junk that winds up laying around. Today, however, I only focused on the cabinets. I went through my spices and, since I'm not much of a cooker, I wasn't surprised to realize a lot of them (like 90%) expired in 2013, although there were a couple that went back all the way to 2010. Yikes.

I went through the medicine and did the same thing. There was a ridiculous amount of empty bottles that had somehow never gotten thrown away and our antacids had expired in 2008. Yikes again.

Canned goods were next, followed by the pantry. Purge, purge, purge. Then I moved all of those things around so I wouldn't waste so much in the future. Our "pantry" is a corner cabinet and stuff seems to get lost in the nooks and crannies of it, so I switched it out with our plates, bowls, and cups. Voila! Suddenly I saw just how many bags of powdered sugar I have (four) and realized that two different things of spaghetti had been opened and half used.

After all of this I sat down and felt a little sad. So much of that stuff was wasted because I never took the time to see what I had. I never checked to see if I had powdered sugar, I just assumed I didn't and went out and  bought more. It seems like I do that a lot, not just in the kitchen.

Like I said, I made a metaphor out of this. And I think it helped me be just a little bit better.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more kitchen excitement, because we are nowhere near done! I plan on going through all my pots and pans, bowls and Pyrex, and try to get my kitchen functioning at a normal level again.

Out of clutter, find simplicity; from discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. -Albert Einstein-

May: A Good Person Takes Care of Her Home

I know what you must be thinking, "Why start with your home?" The answer is simple really - who can concentrate on making themselves a better person when sitting in a big pile of clutter? If I can get my house in order than I think it will make it easier for me to focus on other more important things.

I've never been a good housekeeper. Ever. I tried really hard when I first got married, but it didn't stick. Then I had a baby and life got even more unorganized. Then I had a second baby and moved into a house and now, three years later, there are still boxes that haven't been unpacked!

But where do I start making myself a better housekeeper?

The obvious answer for me was: the library! I checked out three books on home organization and am looking forward to reading them this month.

I'm a lister, if you haven't noticed. So my next step was to make a list of the rooms in my house that need the most TLC. The one that tops the list, and where I plan on starting, is the kitchen. So stay tuned tomorrow when I lay out my plan for cleaning my kitchen, organizing it, making my house a better place, and helping me become a better person.

My idea of superwoman is someone who scrubs her own floors. -Bette Midler-