Tackling a Long-Neglected Chore

I used to be a good housekeeper.

I had a schedule for cleaning the house and other chores, and actually followed it. I taught my children to do the chores, rotating the assignments occasionally so they would become proficient in all areas. My house was usually clean...except for a few spots that were always in need of decluttering or whatnot.

Our house in Kansas - just before I started writing
for publication.

I even helped to write a book about homemaking for girls where I shared my schedule and how to clean the house! It's still available, although I sold my rights to it a few years ago. It's fun to see it pop up on Amazon!

Here's the link to the listing on Amazon!

On the whole, things hummed along smoothly in my homemaking life.

Then two things happened, almost simultaneously:
1) Our children grew up and started leaving home.
2) I started writing.

Before I knew it, the house was back to looking like we lived with a passel of toddlers!

The children and their grandparents, 1994

I can only blame myself.

But recognizing the problem is half the battle, right? Balancing housework and writing has been a struggle, I admit it.

There are some seasons when the writing consumes all of my time. There are other seasons when thinking about writing consumes every minute. And yes, there are those days when procrastination is the overriding force (although they are becoming fewer.)

But all of that doesn't keep the house clean. To help my problem, I started following someone else's decluttering schedule (hey, doing it on my own wasn't working!) I downloaded a calendar from Home Storage Solutions 101

I follow her 365 decluttering missions and the weekly organizing challenges...but not in a timely fashion. Using the schedule, I work on the tasks when I can, knowing I will never finish in a year...but I WILL FINISH!

And I'm making progress!

On Saturday I tackled the freezer.

I forgot to take a "before" picture, but here's what it looked like when I reached the bottom:

Quite the mess! Saturday was the warmest day we had had for weeks - we reached a high of 33°. Not quite freezer-defrosting weather, but it worked. I filled a gallon pitcher with hot water and set it in the closed (and unplugged) freezer for a while. Then repeated the process. Then repeated it again.

Meanwhile, I took care of all the stuff I had hauled OUT of that freezer.

It was cold enough in the back of the garage to keep everything frozen for the afternoon. I sorted through the items, dumping anything that was too old or freezer burned.

Then I took inventory, sorting the different kinds of foods into their own baskets or boxes: meat, herbs and spices (I buy in bulk and store the excess in the freezer), grains and cereals, miscellaneous.

*By the way, you might notice a big category that's missing: fruits and vegetables! I keep those in the kitchen freezer to save space in the big freezer for the 1/4 steer we're expecting soon.*

I wrote down what we had and how much we had on a chart. I'll use that chart to keep a running inventory from now until next year when I do this again.

By that time, the frost was thawed and I finished cleaning the freezer.

So clean!

Then it was time to reload the freezer again. Since I had sorted each kind of item, and each kind had a container, it was easy to organize it with the meat in one place, grains in another, etc.

And now we have room for the beef we ordered. It should be arriving around the end of March.

We still have a little bit of meat from our 2017 order, and now that the freezer is organized, all that meat is in one place, and I know exactly what we have, we'll be able to use it between now and then. Without my inventory sheets in place, I had no idea how much beef we had left. I thought there might be a pound of hamburger left (we actually have six!), and a couple steaks (we have one.) It turns out we have quite a few ribs, too.

So we'll plan to have ribs sometime soon!

There's nothing like organization! The refrigerator and freezer in the kitchen are next on my decluttering and organizing schedule, and after that comes the pantry.

How is your housekeeping going? Are you an semi-organized wanna-be like me? Or are things pretty much under control?

Jan Drexler lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota with her husband and growing family. When she isn't writing, she loves hiking in the Hills or satisfying her cross stitch addiction.

You can find Jan on Facebook, Jan Drexler, author, or her website, Jan Drexler.com.

Pantry Overhaul

Mindy here, and we have officially moved into the big house. Things aren't perfect, not that they ever will be. Some finishing touches still need to be done, like the exhaust pipe for the venthood over the stove, some shelving, etc. Little things that we can get by without for a short time.

In the meantime, there's still that physical act of moving-in. While most of our things had been moved into the house the day after Thanksgiving, we didn't spend our first night in the new house until December 15th. Then it was a rush toward Christmas, hopping into the car Christmas morning to meet the rest of the family in Ft. Worth, welcoming baby Taegan, coming back for a day and half with one daughter and her 4 boys before I headed back to FW for 10 glorious days of getting to know my new granddaughter.

I can't believe she's 3 weeks old already.

And this little guy...

He's 8 months old now and trying his hardest to crawl.

But I digress. Babies will do that. 

Moving in. Yes, that's what I was talking about. So you know how it goes. You're unpacking boxes, not sure where most things are going to go, but shoving them here and there as you go. Then, once you get most of the rooms kinda settled, you go back and figure out where to put all that stuff you just stuck somewhere for the sake of putting somewhere.

Which leads me to my pantry. For two months, it pretty much served as a catch-all. When something needed to be out-of-sight-out-of-mind, we stuck it in the pantry where it wouldn't be in the way of the workers. I mean, not only did it have all those shelves, it was also the the first space that was truly "finished." So by the time we got somewhat settled, the pantry looked like this.

Which was okay, for a time. I mean, for the most part, we knew what was in there. Then I woke up one morning with a determination for some sort of organization in the house. Living in chaos for several months will do that do you.

And so it began.

But where to begin?

At the bottom.

Bet you weren't expecting that. 

Notice all the crapola on the floor, rendering our walk-in pantry un-walk-inable. So the first thing I did was remove everything cluttering the floor.

This isn't all of it, but these boxes took up a lot of space. We'd purposely kept boxes for things, knowing we'd be moving, but now that we're in our forever home, it's time these things had a permanent place to live where they're easily accessed. 

Next, I segmented similar-use items into their own areas. Like my baking supplies.

Of course, flours and sugars were already at home on the counter.

Cereals were grouped together in clear containers so with one look I can see which ones need to be added to my grocery list.

Even snack foods were grouped. Now I just need to come up with something to hold all those individual little packets, but that's a job for another day.

Once everything was grouped and put back in, this was the result.

The stuff I rarely use went on the top shelf. While the things I use regularly...

Are easy to grab. Note the air fryer on the shelf. Now it's ready to go whenever I want to use it. No unboxing necessary.

Notice how much more free space I have. And would you look at the floor.

No more tip-toeing around things while I'm looking to see what I need from the grocery store. 

You know, when I envisioned my new house, everything was perfectly appointed and clean as a whistle. Reality, though, is that I am not an organization freak, nor a clean freak, and my rooms rarely turn out as beautifully decorated as they were in my mind. However, I'm pretty proud of my tidy little pantry. And all it took was some time and determination. If only the rest of the house were that easy to tackle.

Now it's your turn. Does organization come naturally to you or do you have to work at it? If you're a natural, the rest of us would love some tips. 

Mindy Obenhaus lives on a ranch in Texas with her husband, the youngest of her five children and two dogs. She's passionate about touching readers with Biblical truths in an entertaining, and sometimes adventurous, manner. When she’s not writing, she enjoys cooking and spending time with her grandchildren. Learn more at www.MindyObenhaus.com  

What's in Your Dining Room? A Pinterest Adventure

When I promised ManO we would eat in the dining room more often, I didn't realize the ripple effect it would have on my meals, our conversation, and most especially the decor!  One month and I figured we'd be tired of it and I'd get to turn the room I never used into my dream library.

But a funny thing happened. We liked talking to each other and guests without the distraction of the television or dirty dishes (I'm a use all the dishes, spread the mess around kinda cook). There's a reason restaurants are so popular! No television unless we're in a pub and then ManO sneaks looks at the scores. No dirty dishes. Except we have "seat them by the kitchen" faces. We did an informal study once and realized 90-99% of the time, that's where the host leads us unless we say ASAP, "we want to be FAR, FAR, FAR away from the kitchen." I keep hoping it's because that's where a lot of restaurants seat families with children and we look like we're young parents or, at the very least, tolerant grandparent types.

So why didn't we eat in the dining room before now?  It's simple.We'd started referring to it as
"the museum." The dining room was the last decluttering domain, a reminder of times and people past. Last year, we still couldn't bring ourselves to go through all the formal  stuff we'd inherited.

But after our challenging 2014, 2015 needed to start fresh!  This month's experiment proved we liked eating in the dining room. We just needed to make it our own, keep a few valued heirlooms and antiques then mix them with our favorite things. ManO wanted to keep our newlywed furniture (he's sentimental and it's solid wood) but he wouldn't let me paint that maple no matter what Pinterest said!

My $50 budget also kept me under control because Pinterest can tempt you to do things you never thought you'd do.  We wanted an Ameri-Parisien feel to the room. Plenty of ideas on the boards. Faux French linen placemats were a much less expensive touch than the real thing. 

I had a huge grill-front tavern plate rack of my mom's above my buffet. I wish I had a picture. My sisters and I've called it the "pigeon coop" since we were little, if that gives you an idea. It overwhelmed and darkened the room.  Off the wall it went. Wow, a more serene space already.

My favorite antique from my childhood bedroom is the four drawer apothecary chest.

 

I'd spent $17 on four placemats and $20 on wall paint/patch supplies so my personalized art pieces had to be cheap.

 A frame borrowed from another part of the house and an 8x10 print for $3.99 added another dash of  Paris.  ManO looks quite, um, dashing on this bridge over the Seine.

Pinterest helped again when I looked for ways to update our decor.  I love the sign trend out now but that's what it is, a trend. So I went shopping in my house for another frame. I thought about my favorite quotes en Francais and consulted Belle Calhoune  who loves all things French. She also has ten years of French lessons to my seven.

The French have such beautiful words like etoile for star and amour for love. What to choose? But the beauty of making my own "quote art" is I can switch it out. For now I settled on a Matisse quote reflecting my philosophy of life, "There are always flowers for those who wish to see them." It's about finding beauty in the world (see Jan Drexler's Monday post, ) and gratitude in the dark times.

I hope Monet forgives me for using a Matisse quote overlaying a picture we took in his garden. 

By this point my library idea was toast. But no Paris apartment would be without books. Out when all the things that made the hutch look like my grandma's and in came my favorite books and pottery collection.

Best Pinterest book/bookshelf styling tip: No need to buy books by the yard. Use books that you have and love. My flower arranging, spiritual writing and reading, and our travel books look great together without the dust jackets. Bonus, they lighten up the brown hutch I wasn't allowed to paint!

Not everyone can or wants to have a Paris inspired dining room but I leave you with one of the most wonderful spice blends from Penzeys Spices,  Sunny Paris. Such a wonderful blend of purple shallots, chives, green peppercorns, tarragon, and more. I use it on plain chicken and fish to dress it up, in salad dressing, over asparagus and in breakfast dishes. Yummy and so easy to use!

So, if you could have a dining room anywhere in the world, where would it be?  Are you decluttering this winter? Do you have a favorite spice that makes you think of far away lands? PS. Have you visited the Yankee Belle folks' boards on Pinterest? Such fun.

Kitchen Decluttering: How to live with less and love what you have more!

Well, I'm back! So good to be in the YB Cafe again. In the past three months, ManO, my dearly beloved, had a stroke. Papa Jack, ManO's dad, suffered from a different kind of stroke. And I broke my foot. Big sigh.

Years ago, a friend advised me, "When life gets out of control, declutter!"  Point being, clutter is something you can control. You throw away stuff that stresses you out. You see concrete results. I ultimately threw away 24 bags of trash, took 40 bags to thrift store and four truckloads to the dump over 40 Days thanks to a wonderful blogger who posted about her own journey, 40 Bags in 40 Days.  Not only did I lose stuff, I gained muscle mass with all that carrying to the car and down from the attic and lost a lot of that out of control feeling.

Nothing gets more cluttered than my kitchen. It was the job I dreaded the most but I learned a lot.

1) A clean counter is one less obstacle to cooking...unless you don't want to mess it up.

A clean counter is a thing of beauty.

2)  You don't need a whole cabinet of coffee mugs and tea cups. A shelf will do.

The thrift store got a lot of freebie mugs I collected over the years. I keep the good stuff.

3)  With the advent of virtual cooking sites like Allrecipes.com and specialty allergy sites, my cookbooks were woefully out of date. But I kept ones from ManO's and my early days for sentimental reasons. That's also the reason I kept my Laura Ingalls Wilder Cookbook. Pure sentiment. I am not going to be roasting a pig's tail any time soon.

Yep, they are stained and ripped but cookbooks on the top row and middle kept us alive as newlyweds.

4) If you don't keep every dull knife, melted plastic measuring spoon, broken peeler, etc., you have a lot more room in your drawers for what you use every day.

5) Are you really keeping your important kitchen implements in the right place?  I had stuffed my collection of kitchen towels and oven mitts in a tiny drawer. It was constantly getting stuck when I opened it. I had a bigger drawer only half full of sandwich bags, plastic wraps and parchment paper. Off to a shelf on my pantry they went and voila! Plenty of space for my linens and such. Some folks move their utensils to a crock on the counter by the stove.  Others use a hanging rack.  Whatever you choose, make the most of your space.

So what about you? Have you done a kitchen declutter lately, ever? What is the one thing you just can't throw out for sentimental reasons?