UFO Sighting! (In My House)

I rearranged my craft closet a couple of months ago, and during the excavation activities, I uncovered evidence of several UFOs.

That closet is sort of my own personal Area 51.  Nothing to do with extraterrestrials, however; the UFOs are UnFinished Objects.

I found a pair of socks I'd mysteriously abandoned, some crochet projects (including a large lace bedspread), and assorted counted cross stitch items.  All begun, none finished.

I have a problem with enthusiastically starting a project, then jumping to another before the first one is done.  Thus, all these half-finished THINGS languishing in the craft closet.

So one of my goals for the new year is to find ALL the UFOs in the house and work on them, one at a time (here's the key!) until each one is DONE.

There are some rules:

1.  Work on only ONE project at a time.

2.  Don't start on another UFO until the current one is completed.

3.  Don't start any NEW projects until all the UFOs are done.

4.  Don't buy any more crafty materials/kits/equipment until all the UFOs are done.

I did finish the socks this past weekend.  I discovered that I had stopped because I'd dropped some stitches (the knitter's nightmare!) and didn't have the patience at the time to fix them.

So, one down, and an unknown number to go!

BETTER (A Five-Minute Friday Post)

It's the first Five-Minute Friday of 2019 and the word of the day is "BETTER!"

Here's the evidence!

This year, I'm working at making the house better.  I have a heap of boxes to go through - some have been stored in the garage and attic for a long time (please don't ask how long - it's embarrassing!), and some are from our parents' houses, stored in one of the bedrooms.  I actually took one of those blasted boxes from the garage and emptied it today.  Easy-peasy lemon squeezy!  I decided to keep about half and donate the rest.  I only pitched one thing.  Someone will enjoy the items I "released."  I'd like to do that once a week.  Just think of the stuff I can jettison!!!

Also, I've been watching "Tidying with Marie Kondo" on NetFlix, and even though some of the things she does make me shake my head in disbelief (for example, thanking the items you're letting go), it's been kind of motivating.  You know, if Those People can do it, by gosh, so can I.  I've gotten some ideas for how to store some things that I would have never come up with on my own.

So, like the old motivational mantra says, "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better!"

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This post is part of the Five-Minute Friday link-up.  Today's writing prompt was "BETTER."  For more information on Five-Minute Friday, click here.

First World Problems - Too Much!

There's too much STUFF in my house.

Too much yarn.
I have an entire closet and a large cedar chest STUFFED with yarn.

I have a thing for sock yarn.  And cotton yarn.  And variegated yarn.  And eyelash yarn.  And wool yarn.  Oh, me (as Dad would have said).  More than I'll ever use, I'm afraid, but I'm going to give it the old college try!  I'm working on a pair of socks right now.  I figure if I alternate knitting a pair of socks with doing some other yarn project, I might make a dent in the stash. 

Eventually. 

Maybe by the turn of the next century.

Too many pots and pans.
I have all of Mom's, all of my great-aunt's, plus all of MY Revereware.  I almost added some more from one of my friends when she was cleaning out her mom's house, but I restrained myself with great effort.  I did give some to That Girl, and some more is packed away for That Boy, but I still have more than I can comfortably store.






Too many cats.

Four.  I've already documented THAT hot mess here, here, here, and here... 

Heavy sigh.






Too many clothes.
You'll notice there aren't any pictures associated with this part of the post. 

Too. Much. Shame.

This is the WORST.  My clothes won't all fit in the walk-in closet and dresser.  I don't wear most of them.  I can't even SEE a lot of them, so they get forgotten.  Time to release them back into the wild.

I looked online for decluttering ideas. There are zillions of sites dedicated to getting rid of excess STUFF. Obviously, I'm not alone. I think Nike's "Just do it" tagline is probably the best advice, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with decluttering.

Following the instructions from one site, I did a quick and dirty closet and drawer inventory (a project I’ve been putting off for some time now). I discovered, to my great dismay, in my wardrobe inventory (excluding underwear, shoes, outerwear, and accessories, I have a whopping 367 items in my drawers and closet.  OUCH.

Here are the counts: Athletic/Athleisure 172, Casual 102, Better/Business Casual/Church 86, Professional 0, Date Night/Girls Night Out/Dressy/Formal 8. Wow.  That’s a boatload of jeans, t-shirts, and running clothes. I knew I had a lot of clothes, but who knew??? And I forgot to go count the storage box of too-small/special/holiday clothes.  Surely those don't count. At least I'm not counting them this time around.

Then, upon further reflection, I found I’d forgotten about the clothes from the recent trip to Florida!  So I counted those. Oh, my. Now I have 398 pieces of clothing. Actually, there are two more items in a gym bag I keep in the car for emergencies, so I guess I’ll just make it an even 400.  Just too many clothes, and almost all in the Athleisure and Casual classifications. How sad is THAT?

Well, at least it fits my so-called lifestyle.

I'm chipping away at the overflowing closet.  I've donated four big bags of perfectly good clothing, but the closet doesn't look any emptier.  Everything was jammed in there, and now it's not as tight.  At least it's an improvement.  I've only attacked one wall of the walk-in closet so far.  Maybe I'll make some real headway during the next stage of the purge.

What do you need to declutter? What is your shameful story of Too Much?

Emergency! Got Prepped?

I've recently gotten interested in emergency preparedness.  I've always been interested in being self-sufficient - vegetable gardening, sewing, knitting - you know, doing things for yourself, and not relying totally on the supply infrastructure.  But I read a couple of books (The Prepper's Pocket Guide: 101 Easy Things You Can Do to Ready Your Home for a Disaster, and Prepper's Instruction Manual: 50 Steps to Prepare for Any Disaster), and they've made me think.

I think about tornados, and ice storms, and local flooding.  I remember being without power for a week in January.  But everybody thinks about natural disasters.  What if your income dries up?  Or there's a medical emergency?  Or your house burns?  Or grocery stores can't get deliveries?  So many "what ifs!"

Here’s an interesting note – one of the first things I read in the emergency preparedness book was to DECLUTTER YOUR HOUSE!  Because when your house is decluttered, you will be able to get to your emergency exits (fire, etc.) and your emergency supplies (first aid kit, food, candles, generator, batteries, flashlights, etc.).  One more excellent reason to get rid of the STUFF!

Anyway, I bought a NOAA weather radio (at the grocery store, of all places!) and set it up.  That was pretty fast!  The most time-consuming part was editing which alerts for it to actually announce.  I didn’t think hurricanes or tropical storms or avalanche watches/warnings would be of much interest here in Indiana.  

The bigger (and more long-term) project was making sure there is enough food in the house to feed us all for a month.  The first step is to KNOW what you DO have.  Oh dear. 

Because our house was originally built in the mid-1950s, the kitchen is a decent size, but there is a lot of wasted space, and really, not much cabinet space, so I had put a metal shelf unit and some rolling wire basket carts in our utility room, elegantly renaming this hellhole our “pantry!” 

The shelf unit sat perpendicular to the wall, alongside the furnace.  The carts were lined up along the wall.  That was so “everything would be accessible.”  Well, that was the original thinking, but it really WASN’T.  Stuff got shoved to the back of the shelf unit, and lost in the baskets.  And I never knew how much I had.  Another place we store food is in a corner carousel cabinet in the kitchen – a dark, scary place where things also get shoved farther and farther back until they languish and expire.  UGH.

So, I started Friday evening.  I rolled all the wire basket carts into the kitchen.  Two are small with fixed baskets.  One is a little larger, with pull-out drawer-type baskets.  One is much larger, with pull-out drawer-type baskets.  Most of them were less than half full!

I took everything off the metal shelves and piled it on the kitchen counters.  I dusted and washed the shelves.  I moved the unit out and cleaned the floor where everything had been sitting.  I put the unit back, but this time along the wall.  Amazing.  I can get at everything on the shelves without reaching way back and knocking things off behind!

I went through all the stuff from the shelf unit and threw out everything beyond its expiration date.  I threw out heaps of stuff, which left LOTS of empty space!  I filled up a couple of trash bags by the time I was done.  I took a marker, found the expiration date for everything and wrote it in an OBVIOUS location on each item.  I sorted the items by what they were, and then sorted them by the expiration dates.  I pulled all the canned goods out of the carousel cabinet and did the same to  them.

I’ve been collecting 12-pack soft drink can packages for this project.  I cut a hole on the top on the package at the back for loading them, and put a label on the front of each one.  Then I loaded the date-labeled canned goods into the packages, oldest first.  I lined them up on the shelves.  Now I have can dispensers!  I can see what’s supposed to be in that location, and how many there are.  A 12-pack holds six 15-oz cans of veggeis, etc.  It would probably hold 12 of condensed soup cans.  It won’t hold the larger soup cans (they’re too tall).  So I have a package of diced tomatoes, one of corn, one of cream style corn, one of stewed tomatoes, etc.   All very organized and neat.  I put all the unopened cereal boxes on the top shelf.  I put other boxed stuff on the second and third shelves.  All the canned stuff is on the bottom 3 shelves. 

I really didn’t get to the wire basket cart things.  (That Man and That Girl came home early from his drag race – he lost first round – RATS!)

But I was fixing dinner, and got something out of the one other (wall) cabinet in the kitchen where I keep some food.  I pulled another item out, looked at the expiration date, and pitched it.  Um, about ¾ of the stuff in that cabinet got the heave-ho.  It’s looking pretty empty!  That wasn’t even part of the plan yet – it just happened.

I didn’t get to the bottom shelf of the carousel cabinet, but oh my!  What an improvement!  The stuff I organized, I can SEE – ALL OF IT.  And it will all get used – first in, first out!  I’m going to put things in there that I only keep one or two of – syrup, cooking oil, olives, Tabasco – that kind of stuff.

The next step will be to empty those wire basket carts and either put them to use somewhere else, or GET RID OF THEM!  I’m going to keep the big one.  It fits along the wall next to the shelf unit perfectly, so nothing will be blocked.  Everything will be truly accessible. 

Then I will seriously tackle the CHEST FREEZER.  Oh my.  The Black Hole of Calcutta.  Not good.

Pray for me!