So
the other day I talked about tackling laundry, the kitchen, and the papers taking over my desk. Here are the promised "after" pictures:
My Shiny, Sunny Kitchen
The Surface of My Desk Does, In Fact, Exist
Mostly-Empty Laundry Baskets
Empty hampers and clear surfaces make me happy. Unfortunately, they don't tend to stay that way for long. I guess I can understand where the dirty clothes and dishes are coming from, but what's going on with the papers? Are they reproducing when I'm not looking? All I know is, I think I have it under control, then I turn around and they attack!
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Today's little tip involves laundry. Actually, I guess there are two little tips. The first is that I don't generally have things professionally dry-cleaned. I use Dryel for everything but the most delicate of items. That saves us a fair amount of money, since DangerBear's suits and a couple of my skirts and blouses require dry cleaning. And no, I didn't realize those skirts and blouses needed to be dry-cleaned. I got them on clearance and didn't even think to look at the tags.
Anyway, the second little tip involves the Dryel cleaning cloths. A box of six cloths costs about $10, although I use a
coupon and get them for $7. You use one cloth for each load of up to four items. However, I usually have only two or three items to clean at any given time, so I simply cut the cloths in half. I save the remaining half in a ziploc bag (which I reuse, of course). Voila! The cost goes from $1.17 per load to fifty-eight cents per load. I also do this with dryer sheets:
Admittedly, cutting my dryer sheets in half doesn't save me nearly as much as cutting the Dryel sheets in half, but it's something! Plus, it scored me a couple of points with my mother-in-law. =)
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Chickpea likes collecting rocks and sticks. Even if they're not really rocks, just chunks of concrete. She also became rather attached to one particular stick. When it broke, she used duct tape to put it back together, but I'm afraid it'll never be the same. Apparently, she decided she didn't want her collection strewn all over the yard, so she gathered them in a pile by the front door.
With several old trees in our yard and a long gravel driveway, there's plenty more where that came from.
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Yesterday, Chickpea and I baked a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. I'm really trying to get better at letting her help in the kitchen, so I decided to let her ice the cake. (I admit, I "helped" at the end.) In order to let her go at it without me freaking out behind her, I actually left the room.
The Works for Me Wednesday part is the way I kept the plate clean: Before frosting the cake, I slipped strips of parchment paper underneath the cake to cover the exposed parts of the plate:
Chickpea did a lovely job.
Now this was where I "helped" by smoothing out the frosting. And then I pulled out the strips of parchment to reveal a nice, clean plate underneath:
Maybe next time I'll let her frost it all by herself...
Yummy!
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How appropriate that today is Tackle it Tuesday. DangerBear has an out-of-town meeting and will be working very late, so I'm using today to catch up on some things. I'm keeping it real here, so these pictures make me blush at how much tackling I have to do today.
First, my homeschool planning needs help. A lot of help. Because I'm homeschooling Chickpea part time (she attends a three-day-per-week kindergarden), I was trying to plan a week's lessons without assigning specific days to each one. Things are pretty vague, and not much is getting done. Plus, because I don't have a planning binder set up, there are papers all over the place. Today I'll be setting up a new planner and portfolio and writing out goals for the next six weeks.
I also need to go through all of the papers on my desk. I know there are bills on there, notes I've written to myself, homeschool stuff, you name it. Here is the "before" picture of my desk:
Another thing I need to do today is catch up on the laundry. I have a schedule to do one load each day, but I didn't follow it last week and here is what it looks like:
Since I've already posted two embarrassing pictures, I might as well show you my kitchen, which I can assure you will be clean by lunchtime:
Oh, and I want to keep working on my recipes for the Festival of Breads. Entries are due on February 15, so I need to start wrapping it up.
(You can see the "after" photos
here!)
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