Happy organizational season!

Happy organizational season! Yes, folks, it’s time once again for a boost in the butt, a shot in the arm (does not contain mercury or aluminum, don’t worry, I’m not down with that) in the area of…bum ba da dum – ORGANIZATION!

The word strikes fear and panic in some and causes others to swoon with gleeful anticipation – how could a little (or okay, big. Ish.) word cause so much widespread emotion? However you feel about it, let’s jump in and see what we can do to help you out.

I am happy!  Oh, so happy!

I am freaked, oh so freaked!

I want to attack a philosophy first off because that’s where we get the guts of it. People who are considered organized are actually…well…get ready for it – a little lazier than the rest of the population. WHAT? LAZIER? What are you TALKING ABOUT? Okay, okay, okay, I know, it sounds weird. I was talking to my friend about this very thing. When it comes down to it, I am a pretty organized person – I have an organizational business where I like to go in and tear up peoples homes (and offices, whatever you’ll let me get my hands on) and mainly get you to simplify your life and make your stuff work better for you. So what’s with the lazy? Okay, total secret. (Apparently not for long anymore.) People who are organized actually take things as they come and plan ahead so that they have LESS work when the fun hits the fan.

Visualize: You put an important paper inside of a cardboard box because you 1) didn’t take/have the time to file it and 2) don’t have a home for it anyway. Your hubby calls you and wants that paper. You now spend five hours looking through a box of papers for the right one. You just did five hours of work. That is not lazy, that is INTENSE for one sheet of paper.

 Let me give you a few examples so you can understand the depths of the recesses of my bubbling mind – when I first got married, I hated (this is an understatement: picture – near slumping down onto the floor, writhing and halfway to seizure-imitation) 4:30 p.m. Why? Because it meant I had to make something for dinner. OH GOOOOOSH DINNER, NOOOOO!! So it would be like this: open fridge. Shut. Open freezer. Stare. Shut freezer. Open cupboards. Shut them. Walk in a circle in the kitchen. Look out the window up to the sky and ask God why-for must I make dinner, can’t we just have cereal or pb&j for dinner!? And then, because time was getting closer for the hubby to come home, I would grab some pathetic lump of frozen meat out of the freezer and try to come up with something that I had enough ingredients with to make. When it was finished, it was like a gigantic weight was lifted from my mind. Until I went to bed, woke up the next day and then nasty 4:30 came back to murder my life once again. (Did I not see it coming? I’m not sure how that escaped me…)

Did you miss me?  I'm back.  I'm Martha.
I am a genius!  Don't hate.

At some point (I don’t know when – I think it was about 4 or 5 years ago) I started attacking dinner on the front end. I sat down on a Sunday evening with my Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazines and would flip through them. (She is my hero and a genius, don’t hate.) I would write down what I was going to make that looked good out of those magazines (because hey – whenever you are flipping through recipes you’re always saying, “OOOH, I should make that sometime, that looks good!” And then you never do. Because you didn’t actually plan it. Then you lose the recipe and your life is just plain sad.). I would pick five or six recipes and plan it for my upcoming week. And then, something else happened. I thought that while I was doing this, I could scratch down a grocery list so I could go to the store and get exactly what I needed (thus saving some time and some money – no wasted food, etc.). Then my anal self took over and I ended up with a spreadsheet of my grocery stores in order of aisles – but HEY – you don’t have to go OCD on it, it’s just an example. What, pray tell, is my point in all of this? Now I am up to doing menus for the month and so I sit down for a couple hours (or less) on a Sunday afternoon, flipping through magazines and recipes I’ve collected throughout the month and what do I have to gain for this? NO TORTURE AT 4:30!! I don’t hate 4:30 anymore! The frozen block of meat is now defrosted and I know what I’m making for dinner. I know that you will think I am mental for having such an issue with this, but whatevvvvvs! I am just being honest.

This applies in other areas – clean up as you go when you cook; pick things up throughout the day. I am going to give you examples from my life because that’s the only life I get to live, so yes, I am OCD and sometimes a little O.T.T. but it’s fine. That’s how I roll. I have established times in my day that are considered full-clean-up times – that is – points in the day where my whole house is cleaned up/picked up. This helps me to move on to the next thing without mind clutter. It also makes it VERY easy to clean everything up because I do it so often throughout the day. How often? (You don’t have to copy me, as I said, I might have issues…) Before a meal, before we leave the house, before the hubby gets home from work, before bed (and when the kids were little – before they took a nap). Doing things often made it so there were not so many things to deal with and it only took a few minutes to get me back to ground zero.


One of the things that I have noticed is that sometimes people do not have an exact (read: reasonable) grasp of how long it takes to do something AND they do not factor in the clean-up of that activity to do such things. How long does it take you to get ready for church on Sunday morning? Did you plan time in there to clean up the breakfast dishes, sweep the floor, and pick up the whole house before you leave? If you have goals to have your house clean (and often), this is a factor you need to take into consideration. A little work on the front will save you in the end.

Sometimes I am asked to give organizational talks and a point that I’d love everyone to adapt into their lives is this: if you can do it in 30 seconds, DON’T wait to do it later. Just do it. (Nike. Rawrr.) If you leave all of your 30-seconders (not a word) for the end of your day, guess what, homegirl/homeboy? You’ve got an hour of piddly junk to do! How utterly unpleasant! I’d rather read, crochet, imagine ways to be a hippie/farmer/anti-Monsanto activist or do something to help me the next day (like pack my swim bag for the next morning).
The moral of the story is this – do a little now and save yourself a lot of time later. It is the principle I live by and when life attacks, you have a couple things laid out so you are less likely to flip your lid (just picture that Reach toothbrush commercial from 15 years ago where they suggest you get a flip-top head).

Get on top of your things: do your laundry before you lose a child in it, swish out the dishes before they need to be chiseled out with a crowbar, sweep the floor before the dog hair piles grow legs and start reproducing and demanding food, stuff like that.
Have you had enough philosophy? Do you just need a list? Let me break down some things you can do to make your life easier.

1. Make your bed as soon as your feet hit the floor. Your bed takes up a lot of visual space in your bedroom and visual clutter is like an ever-multiplying to-do list bashing your head like a frying pan.
2. Bring in your mail ONLY when you are 1) standing over a garbage can and 2) have a minute or two to deal with it. Pitch the junk. If you seriously keep stuff (for ANY amount of time) like those newspapery advertisement crapola they send on Mondays, you have a problem, call Sam.
3. Make a meal plan for yourself. Start off with a week and if you want to make it longer in between, work up to that.
4. Clean up your life as you go. Clean up the kitchen as you cook. Pick up the toys/clothes/hairballs as you pass them.
5. Purge. If you don’t have the philosophy of having a grasp on your finite space, you may run into problems. When you are standing at the store and you’re about to buy something (and you use your charge card and Dave Ramsey cries an elephant tear), know 1) where it will fit in your home and 2) what thing is going to move out of your home because something new is coming in. New in, old out. You are the owner of your things but when they hide around in spaces and reproduce themselves, they start to look more like an army and start owning you. Don’t let the inanimate objects suffocate you and your life.
6. Keep an inventory list of things that are difficult and/or odious to navigate. For me, it is my chest freezer and my cellar. I HATE being cold. I am not going to go freezer diving to see if I have a whole chicken. It makes me die to be so cold and for such an unrewarding prize. I stopped that madness with a simple yellow legal pad duct taped (don’t hate on my glam) to the top of the chest freezer. Each page has a category and I do something very advanced and complicated: tally marks under the “in” and “out”, yes, I know, high tech and remarkable. Running a home is like running a business, you should know what you have so you don’t waste money.


Side note: If you are a hoarder (you have cats, collect bags, collect wrapping paper like you’re about to open up your own Hallmark, etc.), you need to get help. People can come and help you clean up but until you find out what is going on in your mind that makes you want to do things the way you do them, your home will always regress to the state that it is in. Don’t call an organizer unless you’re also speaking to a counselor or a psychologist. (And I like to joke and stuff, but for real, I am not mocking and I am not looking down on you, I am encouraging you to get help.)

Side note 2: If you are a frozen perfectionist and can’t do anything unless you’re doing the WHOLE thing and doing it perfectly, you need to take a look and see that you are hindering yourself. It is not a valid excuse for you not to do anything because you can’t do it all. That is like saying you’re not going to try that 5K because you haven’t run a marathon yet. That is something you need to work through in order to be successful. A lot cleaned up seldomly vs. some cleaned up often: think about it, you will be closer to your goal in trying to approach the latter.


One more thought: I sometimes ask my clients this question while standing in the doorway of one of their rooms – if someone came and pushed a magic button and everything in this room evaporated, what would you miss? Your answer to this question will reveal what is really important. The rest of the stuff may no longer have the purpose it once did, it may be time for it to go.

At any rate, live simply. Plan ahead. Your tomorrows will thank you.

A Whirly Good Time!

Michaela, this is for you.  Ask and the door shall be opened to you (and the blog, too.).

I was speaking with my English friend (who is very lovely, by the way - she has even brought me real English Twinings straight from the Motherland, yes, you're jealous.  I know.) about laundry.  She remarked about how her washing machine is quite a bit smaller back at home and that she was a little surprized because in the U.S. we're all about dryer use while back in the U.K., they just hang it up on the line (in the warm months) or throw it over the radiator (in the cold months).  Now I don't have a radiator so I won't be able to try that (unless I throw it on my car...but then I'm guessing that whole idea of having clean laundry would be slightly out the window), but I was very interested in her description of her clothesline.

My grandma used to have a line that reminded me of a telephone wire, basically.  It was a T-shape with three lines across to the other T-shape.  My mother has one line that goes from tree to tree.  I was used to all of these two dimensional planes for clotheslines and I didn't realize that there was a whole world of fabulousness out there in the realm of clotheslines.  So my friend tells me about this thing that she calls a "whirly" (because, she explained, you can whirl it around).  I ran home and looked up "whirly" on Google images.  Wow, what weird things it came up with.  Mostly lollipops, a cat toy and a weird lady sitting on a stick.  Well none of THOSE things are clotheslines. 


Wheeeeeeeeee!!  Whirly!!


I searched and searched and finally found out that our very boring word for it is not even close to the whimsical word "whirly".  No.  You want to know what the dreadful American English word for "whirly" is?  "Umbrella style clothesline".  Reeeeeeeeeally.  Wow, that certainly sounds fun.  Not!

I knew you were curious!
Here it is, the famous whirly!
(Or...umbrella style clothesline.)

So, I thought, you know, I think I'd LIKE to hang my clothes up on something fun like that!  I could actually look forward to doing that!  She told me that it dries much quicker than in your dryer, especially in the heat of the summer.  She was right.  It takes 20-30 minutes.  Not to mention I feel retro-fresh-crunchy-domestic whilst pinning my clothes on the line.  And even though you can save plenty of money by not running your dryer, I am actually doing it just for the simple fact that I enjoy it.  My hubby would like to save a few bucks, that I know.  Although he did think I was a bit different for doing so and happened to mention I was the only person in the world that he knew that did such things (to which I responded, "Well, duh, you married me, you should have known this already.").  And my almost-(T-minus-12-days)brother-in-law saw the contraption and suggested to my son that perhaps I was calling in aliens.  I am not easily disturbed or distracted from such prattle so I forge happily on with my whirly anyway.  Hmph! 

The darling whirly comes down in between each use, should you wish to do so.  I bring it down and put it in the garage when I'm not using it, mostly because I can imagine some small tots clambering upon it with reckless abandon and glee.  (Read: finding some way to tangle themselves in it and break it in two seconds.)

Now, two things.  If you want to get one, you can get it cheapest at Home Depot.  They sell them online if you don't have a Home Depot near you.  Online I found them for around $55, at  Home Depot I got it for around $40.  The second thing is that she warned me about the towels.  If you hang them up straightaway on the line, they'll be a bit crunchy.  And not like Crunchy Betty.  Like actually crunchy.  To resolve this, she pops them in the dryer for a few minutes at the beginning and then puts them on the line with much greater success.  I was just crunching it up because I didn't care that much (but did receive a complaint from the husband department this morning..."Um, honey, yeah, you know uh...are you doing something wrong or something with the towels on the line - uh, they're sanding my skin off..."  Wuss!).  So I will henceforth do the pre-dryer treatment, per implied request.

You know you can make your own laundry detergent, don't you?  I use it on my whites.  Check it out, it works like a charm and does not include piles of chemicals to irritate your small one's skins (or your own).  You don't have to jump in to both of these things both feet, but you could...I mean...it's kind of fun.
Crunchy Betty's Laundry Detergent 

You can also give your whites a superboost by using this "bluing" stuff. 

                                                                      Mrs. Stewart's Bluing

Make sure you read the instructions, though.  (Mainly - mix it with cold water first before adding it to your laundry.  Unless you want all blue clothes, I mean.  But maybe you're into that, I don't know.)

But at any rate, I'm here to tell you that it's kind of fun.  I mean, laundry is a necessary evil of life, you might as well experiment and have a good time with it.  But for now, I'm off - I've got a beautiful pot of English afternoon waiting for me and some smashingly fabulous clean clothes to sniff.  All thanks to you, Andrea!

How To Make Your Husband Very Happy

Okay, okay, okay.  Let me just start out by saying I don't mean VERY (raise your eyebrows up and down repeatedly) happy.  I mean very (normal straight face) happy.  If you need to know what to do to make your husband VERY (eyebrows) happy, you should probably talk to my friend Debbie.  She can counsel you in the right direction.  I'll give you a hint.  It has three letters.

Anyway.  The real reason we're here today is because I have taken another idea from another fabulous online source - http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/ .  These peeps wrote the book on awesome.  Well, close.  They wrote a book on how to make bread (and baguettes - and bagels - and carbohydrate heaven) like those jolly singing and dancing bakers in Beauty and the Beast.  ("Marie, the baguettes, hurry up!")

Now I know what you're thinking.  You're all like, "Pink, what the heck.  You think I have like five hours in my day where I'm doing nothing so I can just flit around my kitchen watching bread rise, punching it down, timing it, singing in French and all the rest.  What EVER!"  Yeah, I've been there.  I've made bread The Other Way (a.k.a. The bad way.).  Well, minus the French.  I sing in español.

No really, this is different.  I promise.  You just watch me, okay?  Then you can see.  You can try it.  You will be very popular around your house.  You might even get the special eyebrows just for making this.  Unless you don't want the special eyebrows.  Then you can threaten - no more homemade bread - stay back, eyebrows!

All right.  On to the awesome.

Step 1: Get stuff you need.  What do you need?  Violá.

EVOO, warm water, coarse Kosher salt, granulated yeast,

flour, rosemary, a strange container (6 quarts). 

Not pictured: a baking stone, a fork, an oven, a broiler pan, parchment paper.

(Yes, the eggshells on the windowsill are getting ready to get smashed and go on my face.)

To be exact:

1.5 Tbsp. granulated yeast
1.5 Tbsp. Kosher coarse salt
6.5 cups all purpose flour (go get King Arthur, he's so worth it.)
3-ish to 3 and a half-ish cups of warm water (not too hot, you'll kill the yeastie boys)
a blob of rosemary
another blob of extra virgin olive oil


Now about the weird container. On their website, they can show you their fancy container. I am not fancy when it comes to this container. I went to the Buy Everything Here store and bought a Rubbermaid storage container. It has to be able to hold 6 quarts. Then I poked holes into the top where the plastic maker thingy company shot out their plastic out of their mold. This is actually important. You have to let the gases escape, so go on, get some scissors or some other pointy object (ooh, wouldn't one of those old school compasses come in handy!) and dig a hole. Not giant, but it has to be there. Unless you like explosions, whatever.

Oooh!  A hole in the lid! (Really there are 2.)

2.  In your weird container, dump 1.5 Tbsp. of granulated yeast and 1.5 Tbsp. of Morton's Kosher (coarse) salt.  Add 3ish cups of warm water (REMEMBER - not too hot.  Don't kill the Yeastie Boys.).  Stir lovingly.  Garnish lavishly with rosemary (whatever amount you want), pour in extra virgin olive oil - with a flourish (also whatever amount you want).

Okay, we are sideways.  Ahem, here we have: salt, yeast, water,

a blob of rosemary and a blob of EVOO.

3.  Stir wildly with a fancy fork.  Sing.  If you can't think of a song, "la la la la!" loudly will do just fine.  Carelessly dump 6.5 cups of that King Arthur all-purpose flour, making sure to make noises as each 1/2 cup hits the pool.  Stir rashly with previously mentioned fancy fork.

4.  Slightly mash to partial flatness.  Put the specially poked hole lid on.  Let it sit there for two hours.  (Yep, told you.  Really hard.)

Woo!  I'm lidded!



5.  After two hours, you can grab some dough out of the batch (it will have risen to the top).  If you are so tired out from all of this hard work and just want to go to bed, put the container into the fridge.  You can keep it in there for a few weeks and keep pulling out dough when you want to use it.  The longer you leave it in there, the more sourdough it will become (a.k.a. it smells like beer/alcohol.).

So, let's pretend you put it in the fridge and you wake up and say, "Golly, Wally!  Gee whiz, I just want to bake some fresh artisan bread today!"  All you need to do now is dust the top with flour (so you're not too sticky when you grab it).  Pick up about a third of what's in there.  Make a ball out of it and toss it on some parchment paper.  Actually, you know what, just watch this video.  They're amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcG4PpG1LcQ&feature=player_embedded#at=147

You can slash your bread to make it look like you bought it from the store.  I'm sure there's a good reason for doing this, I just don't know what it is.  I'd like to make it up but the kids are being so loud that I can't even come up with a fantastically ridiculous reason.  By "slash" I mean: get out a sharp knife, make lines in it. 

Lines!  Glory hallelujah!

After your bread has rested (it's very tired) for about 45 minutes or until you remember it and can feel like messing around with it, put that oven on for 450 F.  Make sure your baking stone is in there near the middle.  The broiler pan (or metal pan of other sorts) should go on the rack underneath the baking stone's rack. 

Do you have a pizza peel?  It's one of those wooden things that you see pizza dudes shoving their pizza into the oven with.  If you have one, slide it under the parchment paper then use it to slide the stuff onto the baking stone.  Leave the parchment paper there.  It's not a big deal.  It likes it in the oven.  If you use waxed paper instead, you will shoot yourself.  Don't get it mixed up.  Shut the oven.  (It's supa doopa important to keep the oven temp up.)

Pouring hot water into an oven is hard to do
when you're taking a picture.  Avoid.

Now for awesomeness.  Get a cup of hot water and pour it into the metal pan.  You will create steam inside your oven like you're a wizard.  Shut that door and trap the steam.  This is what makes a crunchy crust and a soft middle. 

Bake your precious darling baby boule for about 25-30 minutes.

Cool on a rack.  Chop off anybody's hand who tries to cut it open and eat some.  It actually has to cool down before you cut it because the steam inside the crust cooks the rest of the bread inside.  If you cut it now, you will have a great crust and a puddle of goo inside.  Not eyebrow worthy at all.

Every day you can make some more.  It's divine as sandwich bread - a little Everroast (by Boars Head), a dab of mayo, some Mucky Duck and some organic romaine.  Delish.  What creative sandwich would you make with this bread?

And if you think that even bread won't solve the serious problem you're having with your hubby, you really should talk to someone.  Don't be selfish (if you just said, "HEEE's the selfish one!", you might want to climb down off of your throne and remember what God has done for you.).  Don't take the best piece of bread for yourself.  Share, baby, share!

Crushing Eggshells

Whilst perusing one of the crunchiest places on the net (http://www.crunchybetty.com/), I came across her highly retro idea of crushing eggshells into a powder to put on your face.  What?  Eggshells on your face?  Yes.  It creates a matte powder so you can avoid the Sweating Pig look.  Why can't I use my powder I already have?  You can, go ahead.  Do you know what's in it?  Maybe crazy chemicals?  Maybe horse hooves?  Maybe vampire blood?  Maybe not.  Well, you have no idea either way, you just slap it on your face without a care in the world.  Do you know what is in ground up eggshells?  Yes.  Ground up eggshells.  So, let's just entertain me for a moment and go with the idea.  (Plus, think of all the hippie points you can get from talking about putting eggshell powder on your face.  All of your friends who used to follow Phish will probably high five you.)  And also plus - it's fun to crush things up.  You can pretend you're a mad scientist - without the boiling radioactive liquid.

Now that that's explained, let's begin.

Step one: Eat eggs for breakfast.  Yum.  Just think of how delish they are with that cracked black pepper, a little salt - don't forget the sprouted multigrain toast with loads of butter and your Irish breakfast tea. 

Step two: Wash out eggshells and dry them with a paper towel.  For extra dryness, I put them outside in a glass jar so the hot air could bake them to a crisp.

Step three: Bring them back in the house after about a day (or more if you can stand it).  Depends on your crispy-ness level tolerance.

Left: eggshells in jar.  Right: handy-dandy mortar and pestle.

Step four: Take out your handy-dandy mortar and pestle.  WHAT?  You don't have one of these?  Why not?  Ooooh, yes.  You have a normal pet, I forgot.  Well, never mind, while I am twice to thrice daily crushing pancreatic enzyme pills to a fine fly-up-your-nose powder, you're busy with doing other things.  Well then.  Go get one.

Step five: Begin crunching.

Notice the lovely pigments.

Step six: Crunch a little more.

Oooh, powdery.

Step seven: Take pictures.  Okay, okay, you can totally skip this step.

A happy family: Eggshell mama, mortar and

pestle daddy, baby egg powder.

Step eight: Go get a blush brush and brush some on.  The end.  Well, unless you get really carried away with your mortar and pestle and decide to go on to step nine...which is:

Left: crushed dried oats.  Right: kid breakfast.

Crush other things because they're laying around and you think it might be fun.  I made some oatmeal for the kiddos breakfast and decided that it would be fun to smash dried oatmeal and see what happened.  That's what happened.  I have no idea what to do with my smashed oat powder, but don't worry, I'll find something.

Do you have any ideas?