Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged bathroom, challenge, Do One Thing, door hinges, home repair, New Year's resolution, postaday2011, resolutions on February 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 32: I fixed a bathroom door that was sticking by tightening and loosening hinges in a procedure that can only be described as haphazard.
And effective.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged books, cantaloupe, CDs, challenge, decluttering, Do One Thing, garage, greens, library, New Year's resolution, postaday2011, refrigerators, resolutions, side-by-side refrigerators, strawberries on January 31, 2011| 1 Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 29: Listed a couple of books and CDs for sale at Amazon. I’m always tempted to keep every book that comes into my hands, but I don’t have room, and I don’t miss them when they’re gone.
Day 30: I have been granted permission to scour the garage and make executive decisions. Best. Fling. Ever.
Day 31: Who’s the genius that came up with side-by-side refrigerators? The freezer section isn’t necessarily small, but it acts small, with two deep drawers that items just get lost in, and a couple of flimsy wire shelves, one with too much vertical space, the other with too little. The design of the refrigerator section is slightly better, but it’s not proportioned quite right either. And, because it’s shoved into a just-right-sized hole in the cabinetry, I can’t open the fridge door enough to remove the drawers. So they’re only as clean as I can get them while they’re still inside. No soaking old dirt and grime off; it’s there for life.
I’ve only chosen my own refrigerator once during my entire life, and we had to leave it behind when we moved four years ago. Therefore, I’m always stuck with somebody else’s bad decision and missing accessories.
Sigh. Today, I repacked some small bags of frozen cantaloupe, strawberries and greens into bigger bags in an effort to make one of the freezer drawers less of an abyss. The other one may hold a human head for all I know.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Eats, Huntsville, tagged alabama, fried foods, fried shrimp, gumbo, Huntsville, king cake, Po Boy Factory, poboys, postaday2011, shrimp on January 30, 2011| 2 Comments »
You don’t realize how much you miss a good fried shrimp poboy until you only get to eat one or two a year. And, apparently, you don’t realize that fried foods provoke headaches until you eat fried foods only once or twice a year.
Anyway, I had a superb shrimp poboy and cup of gumbo at Huntsville’s Po Boy Factory with MrsDragon and company in celebration of The Dining Dragon’s 6-month anniversary. I had been meaning to eat at the Po Boy Factory for the last couple of years, but somehow never made it there except to buy a king cake.
This will not be my last meal there.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, Photographs, tagged cats, Gladys Kravitz, iPhone, neighbors, photography, postaday2011 on January 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The construction guys next door were making plenty of noise this week, and Yang’s inquiring mind wanted to know what was going on. Note that in his quest to see down into the yard, he has pressed his head against the glass so hard that his ears are flattened.
I live with the reincarnation of Gladys Kravitz.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged 3/4-length sleeves, anger, baking, challenge, cleaning, coffee, decluttering, Do One Thing, King Arthur Flour, kitchen, kitchen gadgets, New Year, New Year's resolution, pie, postaday2011, resolutions on January 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 28: Clean angry. Choose a room. Get rid of anything that you don’t wear, don’t use or don’t love. Get rid of anything that doesn’t make you less angry. Get rid of anything that makes you angrier. If you start to feel less angry, go have another strong cup of coffee and remember why you were angry to begin with. Choose another room. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Previously this week:
Day 25: Chunked a couple of small, miscellaneous kitchen gadgets into the thrift-story bag. I can’t tell you what they were for. Seriously. Better to toss than to research, since I’ve lived without them for this long.
Day 26: Faced my true feelings for 3/4-length sleeves. I despise them, yet always seem to have a few in my closet. I was always a little tall and long-limbed as a child, and I sometimes had problems finding shirts with sleeves that were long enough. So, 3/4-length sleeves always make me feel like I should be tugging them toward my wrists. They’re gone now.
Day 27: I organized nothing, but I did go to a King Arthur Flour baking demonstration and might stand a chance of making a proper pie now. And pie makes any home nicer.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baking, postaday2011, Shakespeare on January 27, 2011| 4 Comments »
Baking class. Graduate seminar. Shakespeare production. All in one day.
There simply MUST be a name for my disorder.
Posted in Eats, tagged brown sugar, dried cranberries, New York, New York City, oatmeal, postaday2011, Serious Eats, steel-cut oats on January 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »
A slide show over at Serious Eats: New York featuring the best oatmeal in New York City tells me that my steel-cut oats with brown sugar and dried cranberries is the stuff of amateurs. Oatmeal with vanilla and lavender syrup, anyone?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged age, aging, death, father, milestones, mother, postaday2011 on January 25, 2011| 2 Comments »
Having heard about the death of a friend’s father and the death of one of my mother’s friends within the past seven days, it occurred to me that perhaps I’ve reached that age when deaths become more common. Then I realized that my father died nearly 10 year ago, so I guess I’ve been reaching that age for a while.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged challenge, crafting, crafts, Do One Thing, embroidery, furniture, guest room, home, home office, Mod Podge, neatnik, New Year, New Year's resolution, nightstand, organization, organize, organizing craft supplies, postaday2011, resolutions, storage, storing craft supplies on January 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 24: I realize that some people have an entire room dedicated to their crafting supplies. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I yearn to be craftier. But I also associate crafts with stuff, and I don’t need more stuff.
So, my craft supplies consist of magnets, Mod Podge, a few rolls of post-Christmas-sale ribbon, colored pencils, a hole-punch, an X-acto knife and embroidery supplies.
Wait. Embroidery supplies? I know. Because I was TRASH at embroidery when I attempted to take it up a couple of years ago. Trust me: The embroidery supplies are just biding their time until their turn comes on the circle of thrift store donations.
Anyway, today’s Do One Thing activity was to organize all my craft supplies into two stacked storage units that I got on super clearance last year at Michael’s. Yeah, yeah — a couple of corners are kind of weathered, and one of the smaller drawers is a slightly different color, but I got them both for less than $20.
The storage units are currently serving as a nightstand in the guest bedroom; at the rate I buy new furniture, they’re likely to be serving in that capacity for a while.
Really, the embroidery supplies were the only thing that needed moving. They were hanging in a bag in my office closet, and I’m trying to take down everything that’s hanging in that closet to make it neater.
All crafting supplies in one place, and a closet that I could walk into, assuming I could actually get both bifold doors open (grrr). I’m nearing neatnik nirvana.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, Uncategorized, tagged bathroom, bathroom accessories, bifold closet doors, challenge, cleaning closets, decluttering, Do One Thing, faucet, New Year's resolution, photo scanning, photograph, postaday2011, redecorate, remodeling, resolutions, Rubbermaid boxes, Scancafe, shredding, sorting photographs, thrift store, toilet paper holder, towel ring on January 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 18: Put a blazer into the thrift store box. It’s a well-made wool blazer, but its cut is simply out of style and I don’t know when it’ll come back in style. I’m no fashionista, but in addition to being outdated, it’s also a little big for me.
Day 19: Manhandled my office bifold closet door to obtain the big Rubbermaid box filled with more photographs that I need to send to ScanCafe. Spent another 10 minutes trying to figure out how to repair the bifold closet doors so they both actually open and close. I hate those closet doors.
Day 20: Shredded documents like an Enron accountant, only with less desperation.
Day 21: Really started to dig into the photo box retrieved on Day 19. Remembered why every time I start to sort through this box, I quickly put the top back on and put it back in the closet. It contains everything from old photographs of family members I don’t remember to vacation photos from the late 1990s.
Day 22: I actually made headway on the box of photos, sorting out duplicates and choosing the best copies to send off for scanning.
Day 23: Finally bought the faucet, toilet paper holder and towel ring to go in the remodeled downstairs bathroom. This is why people buy new houses.
Entirely Adequate 