nothing to show for it...yet

I have a few "Andreas" in my life who are very motivating. One I talk to every day for motivation - it just doesn't seem right to fold laundry or load laundry or load dishes or put away dishes without talking to her at the same time. The other, I may not talk to as often, but she's given me just as much stuff to take up my time as being on the phone for hours. She shares her favorite BLOGS with me - how could she - and she has a lot of them. I have told her many times now, but I am really wasting a lot of time looking at how OTHER people organize, clean, display, decorate and use their stuff and their homes. A LOT of time.
I thought playing scrabble on my phone was a time waster. I thought facebook was a time waster. I used to be a news junkie - I'd check the news on my phone every few hours, in the middle of the night, waiting in the pickup line for school, in the grocery line, etc. Now, it's looking at other people's blogs - that's my new time waster. When I see a number on my google reader, the higher the better - that's how many blog updates I get to sit and read!
My reality after reading all these blogs: a little bit of envy, a lot of new storage bins, many trips to Marshalls, JoAnn's, Michael's, Home Depot, etc. looking at which little storage bin/basket/stacking snapping container is best and on and on and on. It's a bit obsessive, and can get a little expensive if you want everything to have a happy little place that's cute (to me, I hit a total of $30 and I call it expensive). I'm happy to say that in the past week I've cooled off a bit from the bin-buying practices of the week before. Now I'm filling those bins, throwing a ton of stuff away, finding glitter and sequins everywhere, going through my kids' "art," and making things easier to find for those people in my house who are 4 1/2 feet tall and under, like this guy (the guy who is currently in charge of compartmentalizing my life into sweet little 7.5 minute intervals)


In the past week or so, I have:
-reorganized my kitchen drawers (gag, those things get dirtier than I remembered)

-put nails and screws where nails and screws are necessary to make a hinge work properly
     (no more yelling and frustration about a drawer falling off it's track or a cupboard not closing all the way)
-reorganized kitchen cupboards
-consolidated all glues/paints/craft necessities/games/puzzles
-taken apart a whole closet, and then had to leave its contents in the middle of the room for days while I was busy with something else
-annoyed my family
-stoppped to make valentines (great idea from http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2011/01/you-gotta-see-this_28.html )

-confused my dog (he doesn't know where to lay down, i keep moving everything)
-found a lot of dust and a few dead bugs
-worked all day long while husband is at work, and when he gets home there is nothing to show for it unless I open all drawers and cabinets - so I do
All of this is not nearly as much as I could have been doing if my days weren't filled with all the normal fun things (practices, rehearsals, meetings, dinners, meetings, computer work, phone calls, showers, and sleep).

The frustrating thing about organizing anything with another human in the house to take care of is that when you organize it, it feels great, but then you close the drawer or cabinet and look around at the growing mess around it, and you want to lay down on the cold floor and cry. But I can't lay down on the cold floor, because I've been so busy cleaning inside things, I haven't swept or mopped or vacuumed or done anything I normally would all week long. I would SO much rather be decorating and clearing little bits of clutter, and in 15 minutes having a semi-normal looking house that anyone can walk into. But during mega organize week, it's not going to happen.

For now, I have very little to show for all my hard work and ugly dry hands and cracked fingernails....but the first time someone comes to me and says "mom, where is this and that" and I can TELL them, instead of SHOWING THEM or GETTING IT MYSELF, that is when I'll receive the payout.

Some of my blog obsessions include:
http://abowlfulloflemons.blogspot.com/
http://cleanmama.blogspot.com/

Okay, I'm stopping here, because the rest of the blogs I read are less about organization and more about decorating an already organized wonderland. I'll share those later, when I'm ready for that mode.

a real friend in my too-real house

I contemplated taking a picture, but then I thought I'd kick myself tomorrow...and maybe receive a kick from another adult that lives here, too.
Wow, today I woke up from a busy week behind me, and a busy day ahead of me, and I looked around to see an utter mess. In the middle of that mess, with no time to clean what was already done, I had to do some tweaking on our aquarium, so that just added to the mess. Then after making a mess, I had to leave - for a few hours. Then I returned to the mess, knowing a friend, who had some stuff for me in her car, was on her way to my mess to drop it off.
Oh messy messyness.
I didn't want to let her in, but I did. She's the kind of friend I can let into my mess. Some friends I could not and would never.
But this one, I can let in.
For that I'm so grateful.
We'll see if she remains my friend after seeing that mess...that's a good test! She tried to act like maybe her house gets somewhere near what can be considered 'messy' sometimes too, but I know the truth - she's of the organizational clan that my husband belongs to, so I don't believe her.
I think, as she was here in my mess, I even smelled something out of the ordinary. Yes, it was that gross. That kind of gross happens when you are running around with unexpected crazyness and busy-ness and only have time to drop off your mess (and the mess of your children) only to leave it again in a few minutes!
It's all better now. Come on over. Seriously, it's better. Even the fish are happy in their unmessy aquarium. I refuse to live in more of a mess than my fish, who swim in their own you-know-what.
The lesson = when it's messy, just imagine your super organized friend will be over in a few minutes. That should whip you into shape.
Wait, that's not the lesson....the lesson is, find a friend who is cleaner than you, so you're motivated to clean your house, but that friend has to also be down to earth enough to visit your mess without you having a heart attack. That's the true lesson.
Thank God for good clean friends.

pantry organization - you know, really interesting stuff

This isn't my pantry. It's a pantry from Real Simple.

It just made me laugh. Because this week one of my mental list tasks was to tackle the pantry. Two youngest think that place is like a secret hideout for their "club." I started seeing lots of messes in there and realized it was pretty nasty, then I realized it has the same flooring as my kitchen. I mop my kitchen floor, but not my pantry floor. That's just not fair, so I had to completely empty it, mop it, then put it all back. I was going to take a picture of my clean pantry, but who wants to see that, and that's kinda personal. Then you will know what I eat, and how much, and that's weird. I want to keep the Doritos and Cheetos hidden and pretend I don't eat those.

After I did so, I looked up "organize pantry" because I wanted to see what "experts" say about what to put in there....and I love to see pictures of organized stuff because then I think "I can do that."  That's how and why I do most things I do - I see someone else do it, and I think "I can do that too." And then that's why my blog name is MessyJessy, because the more I want to dabble in, the bigger the mess.

Back to the pantry. This picture cracked me up because I did recently copy a friend of mine - she has a shoe organizer on the inside of a closet door and keeps her kids shoes in it downstairs so it's easier to find them when they leave the house. Done. Copied that one. LOVE it. AND I managed to find a super cute shoe organizer at Target.

But a shoe-ish organizer in my pantry? You know what I would fill those pockets up with? CHOCOLATE.

So I won't copy this idea.