My husband and I have a “studio”. One of the reasons we picked the house we did is that it had a family room off the kitchen - actually it sort of opens into the kitchen with a big squared off archway between the rooms. It is not an original part of our house. One of the several owners before us added it to the back of the house as room to watch television and spend time with their family. To us it was a room to set up to work on our crafts - personal and to sell - and I would be able to cook at the same time in the adjacent kitchen. In the days before cable boxes and flat screen TVs we could also put our kitchen TV on a lazy susan and turn it around to also watch in the studio.
We set up the studio to suit our needs. We each have a 5 ft by 2 ½ foot office type table to work on. The tables sit back to back so if needed we have a 5 ft x 5ft space to work on - the tables are, for some reason, about an inch different in height, but generally that is not a problem if we need space. I have a bridge table in the corner of the room which abuts the table. When I used to make a lot of baby quilts it worked well to hold them up while I stitching them. It also is good to hold supplies and stuff next to me. I have two stacks of small plastic drawer units to hold ideas in progress, spare spools of thread, etc. There is a large 3 drawer plastic chest underneath with my sewing supplies and items to make small bears I used to make a lot of. Husband just had his table until a few years ago, after the bed bugs when I was trying to better organize the room, I added a 2 shelf plastic unit to hold items he needs more often than others next to him along the wall.
We have husband’s long dresser from his bedroom when he was a boy at the ends of the tables (the other ends are against the wall). Drawers hold embroidery supplies and pieces - completed and waiting to be made, miniature punch needle - ditto, wood turning parts and assembly tools, lucets, wooden games husband makes, some fancy batting and iron on glue and a pasta maker (well it is right off our kitchen and no place else was large enough). On top of it we have a 3 drawer unit which has a drawer each for items either of us is working on and a drawer of glues - all kinds of glues. (If we need glue in the house we know to look for it here.) There are an assortment of paper cutters - sliding ones, guillotine type ones, etc. There is also something called an Ellison machine - what is used in schools to cut letters, pictures, etc. to decorate classrooms.
We have 2 other dressers which we bought over the years which hold fabric - we have a lot of fabric. These are the ones which are cut pieces - the bolts are in the basement. We also have a dresser/cabinet combination - also husband’s from when he was a boy - which holds unstarted skeins of embroidery floss (Walmart discontinued them some years ago and we bought 2 of each color they had - since then they have brought them back) and other assorted needlework threads. The fabric dresser behind husband’s chair at his work table also serves as a counter to put things on and work on. We have two tall bookcases for books and magazines - mostly craft, but my recipe books are also here (again, remember this is next to the kitchen) and there is a collection of girls books I have and I keep it here as husband needed most of my bookcase in our office/library and there are some shelves along one wall which holds items we have made.
Lastly, of what I will mention right now, we have a big piece of furniture which I do not know what to call. It is divided in two - one side has shelves with full length doors in front of them and the other side has shelves with 2 small drawers at the bottom. The plan is to take the doors off and then plastic boxes of supplies can be turned depthwise - as they are on the other side of the unit - and smaller boxes put next to them - ditto.
When we had the bedbugs I had to heat all of the cut fabric in the dryer on high heat for 50 minutes and then bag them in sealed plastic bags. It was a mess. Between the fabric and personal fabric items I filled over 60 bags of fabric items. The thought of returning the fabric to the drawers was overwhelming. I finally decided to do 10 pieces a day. Husband pointed out that 10 pieces is not much - I replied that it is 10 pieces put away more than before. Day by day I did this. Some days it went well and I put away more than 10 pieces - other days there was just no time. Within a month and a half to 2 months - the fabric was put away - neater and better organized than before and I had done something I always planned to do - I cut a piece of each fabric and made a swatch card by gluing the piece of fabric to half a 3.5x5 inch index card. I then put the cards into the plastic sleeves made to hold baseball cards in a looseleaf book. (The looseleaf book dates back to high school.) We can now look through the book for fabric when need it. It is marked with the purpose the fabric was bought for, where it is located, and how much we have (all in pencil so it can be changed as needed). I also have a diagram in the front of the looseleaf book with the dressers, a number I gave to each drawer, and generally what is in each drawer to make it easier to find.
I sorted ribbon. I sorted lace. I bagged pompoms. I put all of the weaving, knitting, and crocheting and related stuff on one shelf in the unnamed shelf unit. I made a box with assorted general crafts. I made a box of buttons. I sorted findings for leatherwork into a sectional box (with a note where I stored spare in the basement). I was progressing along well. I used the dining room table covered over to protect it, some wood crates we used at craft shows to hold up the shelves, plastic boxes and such to sort and store craft supplies.
Then I hit a snag. We had a tall thin set of plastic drawers. They never worked well - any weight in them was too much. We decided to replace it with a new and better made dresser. We started looking. We could not get too wide a dresser as one of the bookcases faces the side of the dresser and we have to have room to walk in front of the bookcase to have access to the shelves. It took us about a year to find a dresser. We bought one in the children’s section of Ikea. We assembled it and set it up. I started figuring out what to put in it. Top drawer - in sectional dividers - scissors and small hand tools (and over the years it has also accumulated personal stuff I have to deal with), next drawer - paints, markers, inks, crayons color pencils, another drawer husband’s paper cutting scissors and paper, a drawer with pieces of felt in it. It was going so well.
Then we had mice in the (again, adjacent) kitchen. I carefully sanitized most of the cleaning supplies and put them in some of the cartons I had been using for sorting craft supplies and they ended up in front of the new dresser - leaving supplies unstored and drawers empty and inaccessible. This went on for several years until I got around to cleaning out under the sink in the kitchen this past year and moved the kitchen stuff back in place.
Now I could go back to organizing. In the interim we, of course, needed the dining room so supplies and what they were in were stored back in the studio willy nilly - filling up space and blocking things.
Two weeks ago husband was again talking about a weaving book “we” own. He wanted it as it contained instructions on how to make a certain type of small loom he wanted to make. I was sick and tired of hearing about this magic, missing book, so at 3 in the morning, I moved the crates and so on that were stashed in front of the bookcase facing the new dresser. I got everything out from in front of the bookcase and found the “weaving section” - 3 books. (I had done a lot of work at sorting and organizing in the studio before I got stumped at continuing.) I gave him the book that seemed to be what he was looking for and it was - yay for me. It did not have the directions he wanted for the small loom. Oh, well.
Well, now we had crates and other items out blocking space in the room. I went through the crates and they had much less in them than I thought and in one evening they were emptied out of everything which did not belong in them (table covers for craft shows were left in them). The next thing to do was to put them away.
The crates and a variety of other items store under my work table - far enough in to be out of my way when sitting at the table as they are rarely used. (The table itself is covered with stuff to be sorted and stored.) I figured that I would take out the plastic boxes under the table which “I knew” held the small bears I had made, store the crates, and put back the boxes - easy, peasy - half hour, 45 minutes at most. I bet you can guess what is coming -
I pulled out the boxes and put them on husband’s studio table. (His table is empty as he has been drying items he weaves on it.) I found out that most of the boxes had items other than I thought they did. Some years ago we had bought square and rectangular gift boxes for pens and jewelry which husband made to sell. They did not sell well. We have since been using the square boxes in shipping out some other items he makes and have been running out of the square boxes. One of these plastic boxes had some of the turned items in it - I combined some of the items which were in square boxes into 2 rectangular boxes - hmmm, 4 more boxes he could use. I then took the carton which had the jewelry pieces in the gift boxes and combined same into many less rectangular boxes- for storage - and ended up with a good number of square boxes. I also found that this way all of the small turned items fit in the one plastic box for storage (bowls, plates, etc. are in another carton). I then managed to combine 3 cartons of boxes into one as enough had been taken out and one also used to hold the jewelry - what a great change in storage space! (The 2 empty cartons went out to the porch for recycling - one was used for last week’s recycling and the other will be shortly be used for same.
I then climbed under my table and stored the crates, the plastic boxes, and some other craft show display items under the table - 2 plus hours work - but what a difference. What a great feeling of getting something done. I went on to clear some smaller areas and put the excess stuff away.
Now, I have mentioned in the past that we do 1770's reenacting. Husband is looking for something to do at events - he used to be commander, but no longer is and can now do what he wants instead of needing to run events. He needs a small, period looking table for several of his ideas. The table has to be able to be taken apart for storage and in transit. He decided the best way would be to use screw in legs which are available at home/lumber stores even though these are definitely not correct to the period, but made properly it would just look like a small table with legs. (What does this have to do with organizing - just wait and see.)
We went out the day after I had stored the crates and boxes away to find legs that looked right. He saw the price of the legs and realized that it would cost much more to make the table than he had planned - he had to get wood for the table top and the screw pieces also. Then I said magic words - “When I was under the table last night putting stuff away I had to move 2 sets of those legs.” He could not figure out why we had them - I reminded him that he had made a table for a knitting machine - decades ago - but neither of us can remember what the other set of legs is for. I was pretty sure one set of the legs was definitely passable for the purpose.
So, we went home and, yes, I had to take back out most of what I stored away the night before. This time I was smart - I handed him my chair so it was out of the way and I did not need to deal with it. (Notice when I am organizing and cleaning it is “me” doing it and he is scarce - when he needs table legs it is “we” doing it and he is “helping” me.) Well the legs were fine and then I had to store everything else back - again.
The other night - now that I have access to the bookcase - I sorted needlework magazines which I have just been fitting in on top of books when I did not have access. Most of them went into the magazine cases we have, I need 2-3 more magazine cases and, yes, I have decided some magazines I no longer need for reference and have started looking through them for any articles I want to keep and putting the rest out for recycling.
He had mentioned that one issue of the magazines I had and was sorting was suppose to have an article on weaving. As I was going through I noticed that one of them had weaving on the cover - yes, it was the one he wanted. The craft magazines are now sorted by date. Many of them have previously had their tables of contents scanned into the computer to make searching for an article or subject easier. Now with access I will one day be able to scan the rest.
Yes, progress is finally being made again!
Have you been working on any organizing projects and finally making progress?
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Making up the bed in a very small space - our RV
I have mentioned in the past that we have a “second home” - a very small RV. I have to first explain what I mean by small as when people hear “RV” they think of the huge bus size and shape RV (called a Class A) that they see on TV and in the movies or one of the ones which have a section (which has a bed in it) that sticks out over the driver and passenger seats (called a Class C). NO, ours is SMALL. It is called a Class B and is a conversion of a van. What I am talking about is the vans used by tradesmen. The Class Bs are made in a variety of these vans - in our case it is a Chevy Express 3500 van. Next time you are driving down the road and a Chevy van passes you (or you pass one) look at it for size. The entire inside is less than 120 sq ft. My sister in law has a closet bigger than that. (I don’t have a closet even close to that, but she has one bigger.) Life in this Rv is very close and there is little room for stuff.
Last week (in case you were wondering) we ended up just going to the dealer and having the work done - and not all of it, as part of it they suggested waiting for as it involved too much time. We had dinner afterwards at a restaurant we like in the general area and then drove home - good thing, as there were big storms over the weekend and we would not have been able to go where we planned - plus we would have been dealing with the RV.
Husband always feels bad that we have the RV (and are making payments on it) and are not constantly using it so he planned a trip for this week instead. We were to drive to Lancaster, PA on Wednesday, and then on Thursday drive to Delaware for the day to a museum since it is having an exhibition we were interested in and then back to Lancaster and spend Thursday and Friday there.
The trip was delayed to Thursday and it was not certain that we would go at all (and we are not going as this weekend not only will there be rain, but also hail), but yesterday (Tuesday) I decided to deal with making the bed up anyway. We will make a trip by the end of the month as we have reservations for July 4th, so I figured I would get it over with now whether we go on a trip this week or not.
It takes at least 45 minutes to make up the bed due to the small space. The bed makes up into a short king size bed - shorter by 3 inches on one side than the other in addition to being shorter than a king in general. There are 2 bench seats facing each other (like a restaurant booth) with the end (the back of the RV & the head of the bed when it is made up) filled in between. To make it into a bed one fills in the space between the seats with pieces of plywood and then slides the cushions of the seats to the middle and then lays the cushion seat backs between the seat cushions and the sidewalls of the RV to fill it all in. When this is done the bed goes from the wall on one side of the RV to the wall on the other. At the back of the RV (head of the bed) the bed is touching the headboard. At the foot of the bed there is the kitchen area counter touching the bed on one side of the aisle and the toilet closet touching it on the other (with a cabinet overhanging the foot of the bed on that side). This leaves just 2 and half feet of aisle at the center of the foot of the bed to make it up from. So, basically one has to be in the bed to make it up.
What I have found to do is to use (flat) twin bed bedding and make each side up separately. I first make up husband’s side. I do his first for 2 reasons - first, it it’s the better made up side (less wrinkly sheets, etc) and second, it is the longer side. To make up the second side I put the main mattress piece (seat cushion) from the other side on the already made up bed for part of the time and it would not work with my side first as his mattress piece is too long to go on my side.
Since the reason we are in this tiny home is the bed bugs we had, I don’t want to go on the bed in my street clothes, so I change into fresh jeans and tee shirt before making up the bed - when we travel this outfit will be my pjs. I won’t go through all the details (unless there are requests to do so) but I make up his bed as one would a regular bed. I then make up on my side the seat back (now lying against the wall on the bed platform) as if it was an entire bed with the excess of the bedding lying across the platform, then stack it all on the seat back, slide in the pieces of wood to hold up the center of the bed, slide my mattress piece (seat cushion) into place and then - while lying on husband’s previously made up side of the bed - pull the various layers of my side into place and tuck them in.
The bed is now one bed, but each side has its own bedding. Rather than entering the bed from the sides as one does with a normal bed, I have not tucked in the top sheets and blankets along the center where the 2 “beds” join together into a king bed. This allows us to get in and out of the bed in line with the aisle at the foot of the bed. If we got out of the bedding on the sides, we would have to crawl on the bed to the middle to get up, this way we just have to crawl to the foot of the bed to get up.
It was in at least the upper 70's today and hot in the RV. I opened a window, but did not want to turn on the battery to run the fan. I was glad when I was done. Since we were not using the RV for at least 2 days and probably longer, I covered the head of the bed with a plastic shower curtain. We have this to cover same when it is raining out so that when we open the back door of the RV - less than a foot from the head of the bed - the bed does not get wet.
Oh, I should mention that once the bed is made up there is only the aisle which is 2 and half feet wide by maybe 5 feet long to walk around.
Now when we are ready to travel we “only” have to fill the water tanks, add clothing, spare shoes, snacks and related items and we are ready.
Now think about this - if you have less than 120 square feet of space - what would you decide you need to have with you?
There are people who live in these full time and some have large dogs. They have to decide very carefully what they will own and have with them. Two weeks is about as long as we have we have been able to stay in it - sans dogs (as we have none).
Believe it or not when we first looked at this RV and then bought it we thought that there was a major lack of storage space and wondered how we would fit everything in. We are now at a point that when we make some of our short trips we have - TOO MUCH STORAGE SPACE - in it. Why too much? If a space is only partially filled the stuff in it will move around while driving and if the items are hard they will add to the noise that is already occurring. I have learned that depending on the trip we need stuff to be stored in different places than it is on other trips and that the spare plastic shopping bags are great at filling in the space around hard stuff to keep it in place and deaden any noise it might make shifting about - also good for garbage bags. In later posts I will talk more about what we originally brought, what we have found out we need, and the odd places items are stored.
Last week (in case you were wondering) we ended up just going to the dealer and having the work done - and not all of it, as part of it they suggested waiting for as it involved too much time. We had dinner afterwards at a restaurant we like in the general area and then drove home - good thing, as there were big storms over the weekend and we would not have been able to go where we planned - plus we would have been dealing with the RV.
Husband always feels bad that we have the RV (and are making payments on it) and are not constantly using it so he planned a trip for this week instead. We were to drive to Lancaster, PA on Wednesday, and then on Thursday drive to Delaware for the day to a museum since it is having an exhibition we were interested in and then back to Lancaster and spend Thursday and Friday there.
The trip was delayed to Thursday and it was not certain that we would go at all (and we are not going as this weekend not only will there be rain, but also hail), but yesterday (Tuesday) I decided to deal with making the bed up anyway. We will make a trip by the end of the month as we have reservations for July 4th, so I figured I would get it over with now whether we go on a trip this week or not.
It takes at least 45 minutes to make up the bed due to the small space. The bed makes up into a short king size bed - shorter by 3 inches on one side than the other in addition to being shorter than a king in general. There are 2 bench seats facing each other (like a restaurant booth) with the end (the back of the RV & the head of the bed when it is made up) filled in between. To make it into a bed one fills in the space between the seats with pieces of plywood and then slides the cushions of the seats to the middle and then lays the cushion seat backs between the seat cushions and the sidewalls of the RV to fill it all in. When this is done the bed goes from the wall on one side of the RV to the wall on the other. At the back of the RV (head of the bed) the bed is touching the headboard. At the foot of the bed there is the kitchen area counter touching the bed on one side of the aisle and the toilet closet touching it on the other (with a cabinet overhanging the foot of the bed on that side). This leaves just 2 and half feet of aisle at the center of the foot of the bed to make it up from. So, basically one has to be in the bed to make it up.
What I have found to do is to use (flat) twin bed bedding and make each side up separately. I first make up husband’s side. I do his first for 2 reasons - first, it it’s the better made up side (less wrinkly sheets, etc) and second, it is the longer side. To make up the second side I put the main mattress piece (seat cushion) from the other side on the already made up bed for part of the time and it would not work with my side first as his mattress piece is too long to go on my side.
Since the reason we are in this tiny home is the bed bugs we had, I don’t want to go on the bed in my street clothes, so I change into fresh jeans and tee shirt before making up the bed - when we travel this outfit will be my pjs. I won’t go through all the details (unless there are requests to do so) but I make up his bed as one would a regular bed. I then make up on my side the seat back (now lying against the wall on the bed platform) as if it was an entire bed with the excess of the bedding lying across the platform, then stack it all on the seat back, slide in the pieces of wood to hold up the center of the bed, slide my mattress piece (seat cushion) into place and then - while lying on husband’s previously made up side of the bed - pull the various layers of my side into place and tuck them in.
The bed is now one bed, but each side has its own bedding. Rather than entering the bed from the sides as one does with a normal bed, I have not tucked in the top sheets and blankets along the center where the 2 “beds” join together into a king bed. This allows us to get in and out of the bed in line with the aisle at the foot of the bed. If we got out of the bedding on the sides, we would have to crawl on the bed to the middle to get up, this way we just have to crawl to the foot of the bed to get up.
It was in at least the upper 70's today and hot in the RV. I opened a window, but did not want to turn on the battery to run the fan. I was glad when I was done. Since we were not using the RV for at least 2 days and probably longer, I covered the head of the bed with a plastic shower curtain. We have this to cover same when it is raining out so that when we open the back door of the RV - less than a foot from the head of the bed - the bed does not get wet.
Oh, I should mention that once the bed is made up there is only the aisle which is 2 and half feet wide by maybe 5 feet long to walk around.
Now when we are ready to travel we “only” have to fill the water tanks, add clothing, spare shoes, snacks and related items and we are ready.
Now think about this - if you have less than 120 square feet of space - what would you decide you need to have with you?
There are people who live in these full time and some have large dogs. They have to decide very carefully what they will own and have with them. Two weeks is about as long as we have we have been able to stay in it - sans dogs (as we have none).
Believe it or not when we first looked at this RV and then bought it we thought that there was a major lack of storage space and wondered how we would fit everything in. We are now at a point that when we make some of our short trips we have - TOO MUCH STORAGE SPACE - in it. Why too much? If a space is only partially filled the stuff in it will move around while driving and if the items are hard they will add to the noise that is already occurring. I have learned that depending on the trip we need stuff to be stored in different places than it is on other trips and that the spare plastic shopping bags are great at filling in the space around hard stuff to keep it in place and deaden any noise it might make shifting about - also good for garbage bags. In later posts I will talk more about what we originally brought, what we have found out we need, and the odd places items are stored.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
THE BEST MADE PLANS WILL GO AWRY
I try to plan in advance so I know I have everything I need when I go someplace. I learned as a child that if I wait until the last minute I will panic and something will be forgotten or missing. So when I or we have someplace to go, I lay out what is needed in advance - generally the night before, but sometimes even further in advance if there is something else which will be done just before what I am laying out stuff for or if it will take an excessive amount of time to prepare.
I will put items out in one of two places - if it is for me for work, I will put it on my desk - generally this will include my briefcase with assorted papers and such in it (it always has pencils, pens, small ruler, business cards, tiny stapler, Scotch tape, subway cards, extension cord, and printer cables, also some $1 bills in the outer section and tissues). I will add the folders and USB drive for the client the night before and will leave my laptop charging on my desk where it is obvious so I don’t forget it the next day.
Otherwise I will put out what I or we need on the kitchen table. If whatever I need to bring is food related I will leave a reminder to bring it - especially if it needs to be in the refrigerator I will leave a reminder note with the other items. If there are a lot of items I will leave a list of the items needed whether they are on the table or in the refrigerator just to make sure all are taken with me/us.
So, I seem to have it all in hand - yes? Noooo!
Once a year, in June, my embroidery group (local chapter of the Embroiderer’s Guild of America, Inc. to give a good organization a free promo) has a party for its meeting. It is the end of the programing year and we get a chance to sit and discuss ideas for next year, chat, and share some of our work - finished or unfinished (okay, we do this at every meeting - we have “show and tell”, but this is suppose to be one with everyone bringing something and more than one item is encouraged). One of our members has very generously allowed us to use her house for this event, which is not near where we usually meet nor near my house. We each bring a dish of some sort for the party - light refreshment as would be at a tea party.
Now, this year I have the added “fun” of a trip with our RV to our dealer who is located 2 states away for a bit of routine maintenance the day after the party. In addition my husband had planned on staying one or two nights in the general area where the dealer is located as it is an area we like to go to and have not gone since last fall - plus we are paying the tolls to get there anyway and why not have fun also for the money. This was fine with me.
I knew I could deal with both events. The biggest part of getting the RV ready for a short trip such as this is making up the bed (the reason for this will someday be explained). I had planned to do this over the last weekend or yesterday (Tuesday). Packing clothes and snacks and a few other items for only 2 days is easy enough and it did not concern me to do the packing of the items tonight. Along with the idea in the first few paragraphs above, we have what we call “the last minute bag”. This bag is used for items which we need to use the night before or morning that we are leaving on the trip. It is kept in our bedroom and we add the items as they are used and then ready to go. Normally we would also have some refrigerator items to bring out at the last minute, but this trip that is not necessary. I figured that preparing for both events around each other was not a problem.
Then came the weather reports. My husband was concerned about reports of heavy rain where we would be going, as well as here also, on Friday and Saturday. What is the use of going somewhere where one will be outside most of the time - in heavy rain, getting wet and sick? So since last Friday he has been watching every weather report, agonizing over what to do. The bed is not made as we still are not sure what we are doing. I will have to make it up while we are away if we stay.
So, now back to getting ready for the party. Since it is a meeting I needed to get all sorts of paperwork together and my treasurer’s report. I did that yesterday afternoon. I put it in the folder I have for this purpose and brought it down to the kitchen. Normally I use a certain bag for these meetings, but it holds needlework and supplies and was not needed today. I brought down a different bag. I put the folder and some other items - such as the pieces I was bringing for show and tell - in the bag. I also run our errands for the day when I go to a meeting, so I had the outgoing mail and banking stuff so I could get some cash for our trip before we go. Last night I made the food item I was bringing and laid it out nicely on a nice plate, then put the plate into a large plastic container (so it would make the trip safely) and put that in the refrigerator. I remembered to print out the directions given by the woman whose house we are going to - and from google maps as well, just in case. I went there last year, but needed the directions as I did not remember how to get to her house from the main road. On the page with the directions I hand wrote a note - BRING PLATE OF FOOD!!! Everything nicely laid out so that nothing will be forgotten - or so I thought.
I got up in plenty of time to dress and drive to the meeting. I picked up my stuff from the table - and headed out to the car. I got in the car and started driving. I was about half way there and it struck me - I FORGOT THE FOOD!!!
What to do? If I showed up without it, I know that it would be understood, but then the food would end up being thrown out as we are going away (at least for a day) and would not eat it. If I went back to get it I would be late? Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma. I turned the car around, turned on the blue tooth in my cell phone and started calling (hands free) while driving. First, I called my husband to let him know that I would be walking in the door and then walking back out so he would not think someone was breaking in. Then I called the woman whose house I was going to and let her know - she told me to come without it, but I told her that I was halfway home already.
I ran into the house, grabbed it from the refrigerator and ran back out to the car and started back. By the time I got there I was almost an hour late as by the time I started the second trip the traffic had picked up on the roads and the road work had started and was slowing down traffic. (Which road work? - all over - from the cable company working on wires to municipal workers cutting grass along the side of the road to actual work on the road itself.) In my haste I missed the turn to the road to her street, luckily when I turned onto the next road it ran parallel, but then, on the correct road her street is about the 3rd or 4th one, on the road I took instead it was the first and I missed that turn also. I found an empty church parking lot and quickly turned around and made the turn onto her street and drove back to where her house was. Rushing made the trip longer than it should have been - not by much, but still longer and added a few extra minutes to my already very late arrival.
My friends were very nice about my being so late and I apologized no end, and was greatly embarrassed - they all think that I am the most organized person in the world, they only see the result of all my prep work to be organized and not my house.
So what went wrong? Well, I was cheap. Instead of taking a piece of paper and writing the reminder to bring the food on it, I wrote it on the directions. I then picked up the directions without noticing the notation on it. I knew the way to her house on the main roads, so it was not until I looked to see where I would be turning off the main roads that I noticed my notation. If I had written the note on another piece of paper I would have had to move it and would have noticed it and remembered the food.
Other than this the party went very nicely and I managed to make it to all of my errands afterwards, although finishing them a bit later than expected as everything was late due to the party being late.
But now the question you might be wondering - are we going to spend a few days away or just go to the dealer and home? I don’t know. I have packed our clothes for the two days in the RV and assorted snacks we bring with our for the evening as well as rain jackets and some other personal items, and a spare pair of shoes each - for rain. We will go tomorrow to the dealer and then see from there what we decide to do.
Nuts, I forgot to let my sister know our plans. I will have to email her next!
I will put items out in one of two places - if it is for me for work, I will put it on my desk - generally this will include my briefcase with assorted papers and such in it (it always has pencils, pens, small ruler, business cards, tiny stapler, Scotch tape, subway cards, extension cord, and printer cables, also some $1 bills in the outer section and tissues). I will add the folders and USB drive for the client the night before and will leave my laptop charging on my desk where it is obvious so I don’t forget it the next day.
Otherwise I will put out what I or we need on the kitchen table. If whatever I need to bring is food related I will leave a reminder to bring it - especially if it needs to be in the refrigerator I will leave a reminder note with the other items. If there are a lot of items I will leave a list of the items needed whether they are on the table or in the refrigerator just to make sure all are taken with me/us.
So, I seem to have it all in hand - yes? Noooo!
Once a year, in June, my embroidery group (local chapter of the Embroiderer’s Guild of America, Inc. to give a good organization a free promo) has a party for its meeting. It is the end of the programing year and we get a chance to sit and discuss ideas for next year, chat, and share some of our work - finished or unfinished (okay, we do this at every meeting - we have “show and tell”, but this is suppose to be one with everyone bringing something and more than one item is encouraged). One of our members has very generously allowed us to use her house for this event, which is not near where we usually meet nor near my house. We each bring a dish of some sort for the party - light refreshment as would be at a tea party.
Now, this year I have the added “fun” of a trip with our RV to our dealer who is located 2 states away for a bit of routine maintenance the day after the party. In addition my husband had planned on staying one or two nights in the general area where the dealer is located as it is an area we like to go to and have not gone since last fall - plus we are paying the tolls to get there anyway and why not have fun also for the money. This was fine with me.
I knew I could deal with both events. The biggest part of getting the RV ready for a short trip such as this is making up the bed (the reason for this will someday be explained). I had planned to do this over the last weekend or yesterday (Tuesday). Packing clothes and snacks and a few other items for only 2 days is easy enough and it did not concern me to do the packing of the items tonight. Along with the idea in the first few paragraphs above, we have what we call “the last minute bag”. This bag is used for items which we need to use the night before or morning that we are leaving on the trip. It is kept in our bedroom and we add the items as they are used and then ready to go. Normally we would also have some refrigerator items to bring out at the last minute, but this trip that is not necessary. I figured that preparing for both events around each other was not a problem.
Then came the weather reports. My husband was concerned about reports of heavy rain where we would be going, as well as here also, on Friday and Saturday. What is the use of going somewhere where one will be outside most of the time - in heavy rain, getting wet and sick? So since last Friday he has been watching every weather report, agonizing over what to do. The bed is not made as we still are not sure what we are doing. I will have to make it up while we are away if we stay.
So, now back to getting ready for the party. Since it is a meeting I needed to get all sorts of paperwork together and my treasurer’s report. I did that yesterday afternoon. I put it in the folder I have for this purpose and brought it down to the kitchen. Normally I use a certain bag for these meetings, but it holds needlework and supplies and was not needed today. I brought down a different bag. I put the folder and some other items - such as the pieces I was bringing for show and tell - in the bag. I also run our errands for the day when I go to a meeting, so I had the outgoing mail and banking stuff so I could get some cash for our trip before we go. Last night I made the food item I was bringing and laid it out nicely on a nice plate, then put the plate into a large plastic container (so it would make the trip safely) and put that in the refrigerator. I remembered to print out the directions given by the woman whose house we are going to - and from google maps as well, just in case. I went there last year, but needed the directions as I did not remember how to get to her house from the main road. On the page with the directions I hand wrote a note - BRING PLATE OF FOOD!!! Everything nicely laid out so that nothing will be forgotten - or so I thought.
I got up in plenty of time to dress and drive to the meeting. I picked up my stuff from the table - and headed out to the car. I got in the car and started driving. I was about half way there and it struck me - I FORGOT THE FOOD!!!
What to do? If I showed up without it, I know that it would be understood, but then the food would end up being thrown out as we are going away (at least for a day) and would not eat it. If I went back to get it I would be late? Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma. I turned the car around, turned on the blue tooth in my cell phone and started calling (hands free) while driving. First, I called my husband to let him know that I would be walking in the door and then walking back out so he would not think someone was breaking in. Then I called the woman whose house I was going to and let her know - she told me to come without it, but I told her that I was halfway home already.
I ran into the house, grabbed it from the refrigerator and ran back out to the car and started back. By the time I got there I was almost an hour late as by the time I started the second trip the traffic had picked up on the roads and the road work had started and was slowing down traffic. (Which road work? - all over - from the cable company working on wires to municipal workers cutting grass along the side of the road to actual work on the road itself.) In my haste I missed the turn to the road to her street, luckily when I turned onto the next road it ran parallel, but then, on the correct road her street is about the 3rd or 4th one, on the road I took instead it was the first and I missed that turn also. I found an empty church parking lot and quickly turned around and made the turn onto her street and drove back to where her house was. Rushing made the trip longer than it should have been - not by much, but still longer and added a few extra minutes to my already very late arrival.
My friends were very nice about my being so late and I apologized no end, and was greatly embarrassed - they all think that I am the most organized person in the world, they only see the result of all my prep work to be organized and not my house.
So what went wrong? Well, I was cheap. Instead of taking a piece of paper and writing the reminder to bring the food on it, I wrote it on the directions. I then picked up the directions without noticing the notation on it. I knew the way to her house on the main roads, so it was not until I looked to see where I would be turning off the main roads that I noticed my notation. If I had written the note on another piece of paper I would have had to move it and would have noticed it and remembered the food.
Other than this the party went very nicely and I managed to make it to all of my errands afterwards, although finishing them a bit later than expected as everything was late due to the party being late.
But now the question you might be wondering - are we going to spend a few days away or just go to the dealer and home? I don’t know. I have packed our clothes for the two days in the RV and assorted snacks we bring with our for the evening as well as rain jackets and some other personal items, and a spare pair of shoes each - for rain. We will go tomorrow to the dealer and then see from there what we decide to do.
Nuts, I forgot to let my sister know our plans. I will have to email her next!
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Organizing your computer data to protect it - backing up
Lately in the news there have been reports of computers being “hijacked” and people being told that they had to pay a ransom to get the use of their computers back and if one pays, one may or may not actually get their computer use back. The amount asked can vary from a few hundred to over ten thousand dollars depending on whose computer it is and who has hijacked it.
There has also been - as I am sure you know - those who will send a virus, worm, or other malware to others’ computers.
In all of the above cases having a good, up to date firewall, virus protection, and malware software is important. Also one should be careful about emails and who they are from. Never open an attachment in an email if you do not know the person or if you do not know that the email is validly from the person you know. I have on a number of occasions received an email from someone or other, people well known to me and who I correspond with by email, and the subject line seems odd. I don’t open the email, but instead send an email to the person asking if the email is really from them. Often it is not and the person has had their account hacked - I then delete the email UNOPENED. I hate to cast aspersions, but in most cases, requests from Linkedin, saying that someone has invited you to join are dangerous and not from the person - delete them UNOPENED! You can contact the person separately to double check if you want, but there is a good chance it not from the person. All of these steps will help protect your computer from being hacked, as well as from viruses, worms and other malware.
Something which is very important to do is to back up your computer - often. If this is done it will help restore your computer if something does happen to it. I back up my data after each session of working on the computer (if I work on the computer in the afternoon I back it up and then if I come back in the evening and work again, I back the data up again). I also back up my data once a week and then once a month I back it up to keep it “offsite”. On a different date once a month I also back up the entire computer - or in my case - all 3 computers.
I keep almost all of my data off the computer on USB thumb drives (also called stick drives and other similar names) and use them for most of my back ups. They are rather inexpensive. (I will just call them drives to save time and space in this post.) I know about “the cloud”, but prefer not to put my information out in same, another place for it to be hacked so I use the drives. The ones I use vary from 4 to 16 gigabits, with some smaller ones, which used to be used for backing up and have been replaced with bigger newer ones, being used for things such as the drive on which I keep my copy of my blog posts, temporary use, or moving info from one computer to another if it is easier than sending it through the central drive on our router.
I have a drive for my data - I organize it into folders. It holds my letters and other such, my financial information, my spreadsheets, and so on of regular data. My calender data has to be on the computer, so it is not on the drive. I also have a variety of other drives for different data purposes - one for each business client (I take the drive to the client when I work and use it in my business laptop and on my desktop at home, this way the data on it is always the correct data to use), one for my current project of scanning in instructions and warranties, one for information I need in our RV when we are traveling, etc.
I also use the drives for backups. I have an A and B drive for daily backups of the data drive, calender, and clients. I use the A one and next time the B one, and then the A one again. This way the most data I can lose is the just completed session of work (or fun).
This worked well until I had a problem. There was a problem with the computer and the data and by the time I realized it, I had overwritten the backups several time and had to go back and redo my work. So, I came up with the idea of a weekly backup. This is another drive. I have 6 folders for my data, 6 folders for my calender and 3 folders for my clients (I generally only work once a month on each client’s info). I back up one week to each of the folders and then go back and over write them. So the folders on this drive read, for example - Backup, 0408 Backup, 0415 Backup, 0422 Backup, 0429 Backup, 0506 Backup - and the one without a date would have been backed up on 05/13 and I will change the name on it when I go to backup again to include that date and the 0408 will have the date removed and become the backup to be written over. The other folders are similarly named for their various purposes. If I find that problem has been continued - I have 6 weeks of backups to go back to for reference.
Once a month I copy the data drive, calender, and other data I need to be sure of, to another set of 2 drives for offsite storage. Sounds complicated? I used to send one of the drives to work with my husband and he would bring the old one back - off site - away from our house. When he stopped going out to work I was stumped. Then I had the idea to keep the offsite drive in our safe deposit box and I go there once a month and take the last one and leave the newest updated one in the box. Simple to do and if (God forbid) something happened to my house there is a backup. These drives also have a copy of my last archive disk - more about that later.
For all of the above backups I use a freeware program called Syncback.
When I do this I also burn two DVD disks (I use a rewritable disks) of the data on the offsite drive as DVDs are more stable than the USB thumb drives - just in case. One DVD is available at home for me to use. The second DVD goes into my emergency “grab it folder” just in case there is a disaster coming so I have a quick way to grab information to take with me. (I will talk about this folder some other time.)
I also have an external hard drive and once a month - in the middle of the month - I back up my computers to it. (Desktop, work laptop, and kitchen laptop) This will allow the restoration of the entire computer if needed. I recently had to get a larger one, and I now back up to the new hard drive monthly and the old hard drive quarterly - just in case. I use a commercial program for the backups to these drives. I keep a few years of the backups on these drives.
This is a lot of backups - daily, weekly, monthly, and computer monthly, and there are other unusual ones but it allays my fear of losing data. Early in our use of home computers we had an electric surge on our Commodore 128 and we lost the hard drive and all the data on it - this is why I keep as little data as possible on the hard drive and back it all up - a lot. We also disconnect our computers when they are not in use - we have them plugged into surge protector boxes which are plugged into regular multiplug boxes and we unplug the surge protectors from the multiplug boxes so the computers and peripherals are not plugged in when not in use for protection.
Now, the archive. One accumulates a lot of data over the years and decades. Too much data in every day use can make the data cumbersome. I have another USB thumb drive that use as an archive. Each year I move last year’s data to the archive drive and add it to the data there. I do this about a month or so into the year, as I like to do the bank reconciliations on the December statements and post interest (such as it is these days) received, so it is usually done in late January or early February. Sometimes I will do a second update to the archive of business items related to the prior year, later in the year. When I transfer these files to the archive I back up the archive to, yes, 2 DVD disks, which are kept in the same places as the monthly offsite DVD drives. I also will copy the updated archive to the off site drives - (first the one I have in the house waiting to go to the vault, and then when I bring the one in the vault home, I copy the new archive to it also).
I delete everything which has been copied to the archive drive from my assorted data drives. I then do a backup of everything to one of the daily backup drives. I then format the OTHER one of the daily backup drives and back up the data drive, etc to it, so it no longer has what has been transferred to the archive drive - just the current data. I then format the FIRST daily backup drive and run the backup. This way each of them has a clean version of the backup and the items moved to the archive drive is no longer on the daily backup drives.
I am sure by now your brain is swimming. I use my computers for work as well as personal and I don’t want to chance a client being audited and not having everything I need, nor do I want to look for a letter I wrote to a craft show about our doing the show, and then the following year be missing the information I need for the new show. Also, well, in case you have not figured it out, I am a bit crazy and don’t want to lose any information. I have had times when I make a mistake doing something on the computer and as I try to fix it I get into more and more of a problem. I know that I can always pull out the last backup and replace the what I have messed up and start over.
The important thing is to make sure you backup your data and your computer on a regular basis. This way if anything happens to your computer or your data, you have not lost the work you have done, the photos of your children etc.
I just remembered - I have tried in the past to backup my email and it has not worked as it is too cumbersome - I will try again to do this, but in the meantime I leave my email in my account and on my computer so it is in two places.
There has also been - as I am sure you know - those who will send a virus, worm, or other malware to others’ computers.
In all of the above cases having a good, up to date firewall, virus protection, and malware software is important. Also one should be careful about emails and who they are from. Never open an attachment in an email if you do not know the person or if you do not know that the email is validly from the person you know. I have on a number of occasions received an email from someone or other, people well known to me and who I correspond with by email, and the subject line seems odd. I don’t open the email, but instead send an email to the person asking if the email is really from them. Often it is not and the person has had their account hacked - I then delete the email UNOPENED. I hate to cast aspersions, but in most cases, requests from Linkedin, saying that someone has invited you to join are dangerous and not from the person - delete them UNOPENED! You can contact the person separately to double check if you want, but there is a good chance it not from the person. All of these steps will help protect your computer from being hacked, as well as from viruses, worms and other malware.
Something which is very important to do is to back up your computer - often. If this is done it will help restore your computer if something does happen to it. I back up my data after each session of working on the computer (if I work on the computer in the afternoon I back it up and then if I come back in the evening and work again, I back the data up again). I also back up my data once a week and then once a month I back it up to keep it “offsite”. On a different date once a month I also back up the entire computer - or in my case - all 3 computers.
I keep almost all of my data off the computer on USB thumb drives (also called stick drives and other similar names) and use them for most of my back ups. They are rather inexpensive. (I will just call them drives to save time and space in this post.) I know about “the cloud”, but prefer not to put my information out in same, another place for it to be hacked so I use the drives. The ones I use vary from 4 to 16 gigabits, with some smaller ones, which used to be used for backing up and have been replaced with bigger newer ones, being used for things such as the drive on which I keep my copy of my blog posts, temporary use, or moving info from one computer to another if it is easier than sending it through the central drive on our router.
I have a drive for my data - I organize it into folders. It holds my letters and other such, my financial information, my spreadsheets, and so on of regular data. My calender data has to be on the computer, so it is not on the drive. I also have a variety of other drives for different data purposes - one for each business client (I take the drive to the client when I work and use it in my business laptop and on my desktop at home, this way the data on it is always the correct data to use), one for my current project of scanning in instructions and warranties, one for information I need in our RV when we are traveling, etc.
I also use the drives for backups. I have an A and B drive for daily backups of the data drive, calender, and clients. I use the A one and next time the B one, and then the A one again. This way the most data I can lose is the just completed session of work (or fun).
This worked well until I had a problem. There was a problem with the computer and the data and by the time I realized it, I had overwritten the backups several time and had to go back and redo my work. So, I came up with the idea of a weekly backup. This is another drive. I have 6 folders for my data, 6 folders for my calender and 3 folders for my clients (I generally only work once a month on each client’s info). I back up one week to each of the folders and then go back and over write them. So the folders on this drive read, for example - Backup, 0408 Backup, 0415 Backup, 0422 Backup, 0429 Backup, 0506 Backup - and the one without a date would have been backed up on 05/13 and I will change the name on it when I go to backup again to include that date and the 0408 will have the date removed and become the backup to be written over. The other folders are similarly named for their various purposes. If I find that problem has been continued - I have 6 weeks of backups to go back to for reference.
Once a month I copy the data drive, calender, and other data I need to be sure of, to another set of 2 drives for offsite storage. Sounds complicated? I used to send one of the drives to work with my husband and he would bring the old one back - off site - away from our house. When he stopped going out to work I was stumped. Then I had the idea to keep the offsite drive in our safe deposit box and I go there once a month and take the last one and leave the newest updated one in the box. Simple to do and if (God forbid) something happened to my house there is a backup. These drives also have a copy of my last archive disk - more about that later.
For all of the above backups I use a freeware program called Syncback.
When I do this I also burn two DVD disks (I use a rewritable disks) of the data on the offsite drive as DVDs are more stable than the USB thumb drives - just in case. One DVD is available at home for me to use. The second DVD goes into my emergency “grab it folder” just in case there is a disaster coming so I have a quick way to grab information to take with me. (I will talk about this folder some other time.)
I also have an external hard drive and once a month - in the middle of the month - I back up my computers to it. (Desktop, work laptop, and kitchen laptop) This will allow the restoration of the entire computer if needed. I recently had to get a larger one, and I now back up to the new hard drive monthly and the old hard drive quarterly - just in case. I use a commercial program for the backups to these drives. I keep a few years of the backups on these drives.
This is a lot of backups - daily, weekly, monthly, and computer monthly, and there are other unusual ones but it allays my fear of losing data. Early in our use of home computers we had an electric surge on our Commodore 128 and we lost the hard drive and all the data on it - this is why I keep as little data as possible on the hard drive and back it all up - a lot. We also disconnect our computers when they are not in use - we have them plugged into surge protector boxes which are plugged into regular multiplug boxes and we unplug the surge protectors from the multiplug boxes so the computers and peripherals are not plugged in when not in use for protection.
Now, the archive. One accumulates a lot of data over the years and decades. Too much data in every day use can make the data cumbersome. I have another USB thumb drive that use as an archive. Each year I move last year’s data to the archive drive and add it to the data there. I do this about a month or so into the year, as I like to do the bank reconciliations on the December statements and post interest (such as it is these days) received, so it is usually done in late January or early February. Sometimes I will do a second update to the archive of business items related to the prior year, later in the year. When I transfer these files to the archive I back up the archive to, yes, 2 DVD disks, which are kept in the same places as the monthly offsite DVD drives. I also will copy the updated archive to the off site drives - (first the one I have in the house waiting to go to the vault, and then when I bring the one in the vault home, I copy the new archive to it also).
I delete everything which has been copied to the archive drive from my assorted data drives. I then do a backup of everything to one of the daily backup drives. I then format the OTHER one of the daily backup drives and back up the data drive, etc to it, so it no longer has what has been transferred to the archive drive - just the current data. I then format the FIRST daily backup drive and run the backup. This way each of them has a clean version of the backup and the items moved to the archive drive is no longer on the daily backup drives.
I am sure by now your brain is swimming. I use my computers for work as well as personal and I don’t want to chance a client being audited and not having everything I need, nor do I want to look for a letter I wrote to a craft show about our doing the show, and then the following year be missing the information I need for the new show. Also, well, in case you have not figured it out, I am a bit crazy and don’t want to lose any information. I have had times when I make a mistake doing something on the computer and as I try to fix it I get into more and more of a problem. I know that I can always pull out the last backup and replace the what I have messed up and start over.
The important thing is to make sure you backup your data and your computer on a regular basis. This way if anything happens to your computer or your data, you have not lost the work you have done, the photos of your children etc.
I just remembered - I have tried in the past to backup my email and it has not worked as it is too cumbersome - I will try again to do this, but in the meantime I leave my email in my account and on my computer so it is in two places.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
I HATE SHEETS
I have a secret. There is one thing I really, really hate in housekeeping. SHEETS! I hate washing them. I hate folding them. I hate making the bed with them. I don’t know why I hate them, but I do. I don’t mind cleaning the toilets - I don’t consider it a fun activity, but I don’t mind - but sheets!!!!
One thing is that I am short just over 5 feet tall and therefore have short arms and I have to stretch them waaay out to hold the sheets. Our bed is a queen size, but I don’t like twin size either. Pillow cases are fine. Mattress pads are fine. Strangely even blankets and quilts are fine, but not sheets.
Growing up mom made our beds for us after we left for school - we usually used a quilt on the bed and mom would also put a bedspread on the bed. When we were older mom went back to work and we were expected to make our beds - the bedspreads were no longer used, but a quilt is easy to spread out and mom still changed the sheets.
Then I got married. We got an apartment. We bought two sets of sheets and pillowcases and blanket. It was up to me to make up the bed before we moved in - as well as after. My husband grew up in a home with a top sheet and a blanket tucked in - we did not have a top sheet when I was growing up and we agreed to a compromise - we would get a blanket and top sheets and when the blanket was replaced we would get a quilt - and use a top sheet with it. Our bedding has changed over the ensuing 37 years and we used a quilt for quite some time, until we had bed bugs - we then read that it was hard to heat a quilt in a dryer enough to make sure that any bed bugs died and we switched back to a blanket - in winter 2 blankets. Early on we had something to do and it was change the bedding day - and the other set was in the laundry (I had to go to a laundry up the road to do the laundry then and had not gone.) So we bought a third set - and have remained with 3 sets ever since - 1 on the bed, 1 in the laundry, and 1 waiting to be used.
Because I hate sheets I would plan to change the bedding in the morning and then not do so and plan to change it at night. At night we were too tired, so the bedding did not get changed as often as it should. . I finally came up with an idea - I strip the bed in the morning, the bed gets to air out, and I make it up before we go to sleep - I have to or we can’t go to sleep. This has worked well and also lets the mattress air out that day.
I was changing the bedding on Mondays for decades. Then, after husband was home full time, we started going to a classic film showing on Mondays at 1 pm ($2 each, popcorn and soda included if one wanted same - we were among the youngest there). This made a problem with Monday bedding change, so it was moved to Tuesday where it remains, even though the films have since been discontinued.
Weekly I change the sheets and pillowcases. On the first change of the month I also change the mattress pad (we own 2) and the underneath pillow cases - you know, the ones with zippers that are inside the nice looking cases. Since the bed bugs our mattress and box spring is each sealed in a bed bug proof case and our pillows have a 3rd pillow case inside the zipper cases which is also bed bug proof. The bed bug covers on the mattress and pillows are not normally changed, but I have just bought new bed bug pillow case covers as several years of use and summer sweat have made them unpleasant to look at. They have been heated in our bed bug heater and will be washed with this week’s load of sheets and pillowcases to be used the start of next month.
The reason I thought of this subject for today is that I tend to wash the bedding as the last load for the week and, once again, I did not get around to folding the sheets for an entire week - just in time to be able to do the laundry again.
I have figured out over the years that sheets do not have to be perfectly folded as if they are to inspected. If there are wrinkles in it - I don’t care. If the edges don’t meet perfectly - I don’t care. The fitted sheet - I match the corners (trying hard to figure out which way the sheet is long and which way it is wide so I will unfold it as needed to make the bed), then fold in thirds as well as it folds and then in thirds the opposite way - again just as well as it folds - to be stored. I fold the top flat sheet by finding the corners of the larger hem and matching them, following the sides to the bottom and matching those corners and then gripping all 4 corners with one had and following the sides to new middle fold and then on from there. When I make the bed it all - more or less - unfolds to match how it has to go on the bed.
The bedding is kept in a linen closet just outside our bedroom door in the hall. I have a hanging wire shelf which holds the pillowcases and a second one which holds older pillow cases which are still good from sheets we no longer use in case spares are needed - we threw out the sheets we had when we had the bedbugs as there was evidence of the bedbugs on them. Next to the stored sheets is a roll of paper towels (unrelated to this, but it is there and should be mentioned) and then the spare mattress pad is on the shelf with the spare under pillow case, zipper covers on top of it. Our sheets and pillowcases are now white or off white since the bed bugs. The shelf with the pillow cases hangs just below the sheets. The mattress pads are the type without sides and with elastic on the corners.
We also own a set of twin bed sheets and spare pillowcase as we have a twin bed in our spare room (I may have mentioned “the teddy bears’ room”) which was intended as guest room for our moms, but has not been used other than by niece and nephew once when they were young and two more times by my niece when she was junior high age. Some of the teddy bears and dolls do enjoy sitting on it. I keep a thin quilt (what we called a summer quilt in my family) on the bed over the mattress pad and made it up when someone was using it and then stripped the bed and washed the bedding - then stored it in the same linen closet as our bedding.
Several years ago when we bought our tiny RV I had to buy bedding for it also - more sheets. That bed is very unusual and has to be assembled to be used - it takes a minimum of 45 minutes to make up. It makes up into a short king size bed, but I make it as 2 twins immediately adjacent to each other. I will post at some future point (probably when I make it up the first time this year) about it and the heck of doing making it up - it is like a comedy routine.
There is another use for sheets that also makes work for me they can be used as fairly cheap fabric. We have cut them up and made table covers for our tables for craft shows. We needed some extra curtains for our RV for quicker use on the road (so no one can see in our windows when are stopped and not in the RV) - black sheets worked very well. Older sheets are used as covers over tables which are not ours at craft shows and demonstrations and also to cover over the items on tables in situations such as this when the tables are left for the night.
So, despite my hatred of sheets I have to spend part of my life dealing with them and have resigned myself to doing so, trying to make it as easy as possible.
Do you have a chore you hate to do? What is it and how do you deal with it?
One thing is that I am short just over 5 feet tall and therefore have short arms and I have to stretch them waaay out to hold the sheets. Our bed is a queen size, but I don’t like twin size either. Pillow cases are fine. Mattress pads are fine. Strangely even blankets and quilts are fine, but not sheets.
Growing up mom made our beds for us after we left for school - we usually used a quilt on the bed and mom would also put a bedspread on the bed. When we were older mom went back to work and we were expected to make our beds - the bedspreads were no longer used, but a quilt is easy to spread out and mom still changed the sheets.
Then I got married. We got an apartment. We bought two sets of sheets and pillowcases and blanket. It was up to me to make up the bed before we moved in - as well as after. My husband grew up in a home with a top sheet and a blanket tucked in - we did not have a top sheet when I was growing up and we agreed to a compromise - we would get a blanket and top sheets and when the blanket was replaced we would get a quilt - and use a top sheet with it. Our bedding has changed over the ensuing 37 years and we used a quilt for quite some time, until we had bed bugs - we then read that it was hard to heat a quilt in a dryer enough to make sure that any bed bugs died and we switched back to a blanket - in winter 2 blankets. Early on we had something to do and it was change the bedding day - and the other set was in the laundry (I had to go to a laundry up the road to do the laundry then and had not gone.) So we bought a third set - and have remained with 3 sets ever since - 1 on the bed, 1 in the laundry, and 1 waiting to be used.
Because I hate sheets I would plan to change the bedding in the morning and then not do so and plan to change it at night. At night we were too tired, so the bedding did not get changed as often as it should. . I finally came up with an idea - I strip the bed in the morning, the bed gets to air out, and I make it up before we go to sleep - I have to or we can’t go to sleep. This has worked well and also lets the mattress air out that day.
I was changing the bedding on Mondays for decades. Then, after husband was home full time, we started going to a classic film showing on Mondays at 1 pm ($2 each, popcorn and soda included if one wanted same - we were among the youngest there). This made a problem with Monday bedding change, so it was moved to Tuesday where it remains, even though the films have since been discontinued.
Weekly I change the sheets and pillowcases. On the first change of the month I also change the mattress pad (we own 2) and the underneath pillow cases - you know, the ones with zippers that are inside the nice looking cases. Since the bed bugs our mattress and box spring is each sealed in a bed bug proof case and our pillows have a 3rd pillow case inside the zipper cases which is also bed bug proof. The bed bug covers on the mattress and pillows are not normally changed, but I have just bought new bed bug pillow case covers as several years of use and summer sweat have made them unpleasant to look at. They have been heated in our bed bug heater and will be washed with this week’s load of sheets and pillowcases to be used the start of next month.
The reason I thought of this subject for today is that I tend to wash the bedding as the last load for the week and, once again, I did not get around to folding the sheets for an entire week - just in time to be able to do the laundry again.
I have figured out over the years that sheets do not have to be perfectly folded as if they are to inspected. If there are wrinkles in it - I don’t care. If the edges don’t meet perfectly - I don’t care. The fitted sheet - I match the corners (trying hard to figure out which way the sheet is long and which way it is wide so I will unfold it as needed to make the bed), then fold in thirds as well as it folds and then in thirds the opposite way - again just as well as it folds - to be stored. I fold the top flat sheet by finding the corners of the larger hem and matching them, following the sides to the bottom and matching those corners and then gripping all 4 corners with one had and following the sides to new middle fold and then on from there. When I make the bed it all - more or less - unfolds to match how it has to go on the bed.
The bedding is kept in a linen closet just outside our bedroom door in the hall. I have a hanging wire shelf which holds the pillowcases and a second one which holds older pillow cases which are still good from sheets we no longer use in case spares are needed - we threw out the sheets we had when we had the bedbugs as there was evidence of the bedbugs on them. Next to the stored sheets is a roll of paper towels (unrelated to this, but it is there and should be mentioned) and then the spare mattress pad is on the shelf with the spare under pillow case, zipper covers on top of it. Our sheets and pillowcases are now white or off white since the bed bugs. The shelf with the pillow cases hangs just below the sheets. The mattress pads are the type without sides and with elastic on the corners.
We also own a set of twin bed sheets and spare pillowcase as we have a twin bed in our spare room (I may have mentioned “the teddy bears’ room”) which was intended as guest room for our moms, but has not been used other than by niece and nephew once when they were young and two more times by my niece when she was junior high age. Some of the teddy bears and dolls do enjoy sitting on it. I keep a thin quilt (what we called a summer quilt in my family) on the bed over the mattress pad and made it up when someone was using it and then stripped the bed and washed the bedding - then stored it in the same linen closet as our bedding.
Several years ago when we bought our tiny RV I had to buy bedding for it also - more sheets. That bed is very unusual and has to be assembled to be used - it takes a minimum of 45 minutes to make up. It makes up into a short king size bed, but I make it as 2 twins immediately adjacent to each other. I will post at some future point (probably when I make it up the first time this year) about it and the heck of doing making it up - it is like a comedy routine.
There is another use for sheets that also makes work for me they can be used as fairly cheap fabric. We have cut them up and made table covers for our tables for craft shows. We needed some extra curtains for our RV for quicker use on the road (so no one can see in our windows when are stopped and not in the RV) - black sheets worked very well. Older sheets are used as covers over tables which are not ours at craft shows and demonstrations and also to cover over the items on tables in situations such as this when the tables are left for the night.
So, despite my hatred of sheets I have to spend part of my life dealing with them and have resigned myself to doing so, trying to make it as easy as possible.
Do you have a chore you hate to do? What is it and how do you deal with it?
Thursday, May 12, 2016
DIFFERENT METHODS OF ORGANIZING FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE
We are all different. A statement of fact. As a result our problems with organizing and clutter as well as how we try to deal with them are different. Our “stuff” is different.
What anyone says to do to deal with organizing/decluttering problems may or may not work for you as a result. I read one book which gave “what one needs to keep” and one should get rid of everything else. As I read the book I thought of the expensive of going out and buying the items the author, a noted professional organizer, said I should have. Yes, if I followed this book I would have to go and buy things I did not have or want because the author listed these items as what one needed - she never did get around to dealing with anything I have excess of and I certainly would not go out and buy more clothes and shoes or pots and pans to match her list!
Those of us with organizing and clutter problems did not get these problems overnight and will not get rid of them overnight. What I have is the result of almost 37 years of marriage plus 26 years of my life before that plus 27 years of my husband’s life before our marriage. 60 plus years of stuff is not going to be resolved in a month!
I tend to work in fits and starts. I get one section of the house finished and when I am ready to move on to the next part of the house, something comes up - family illness, death, bed bugs, vacation, cold weather, hot weather... Or something causes an excess of stuff to accumulate for a particular project. Currently projects which are all first on my list is to finish organizing our studio - it was pulled apart for the bed bug treatment in 2009 and I finally started putting it back together, better than before, but then we needed a new dresser for storage (this is craft supplies I am talking about storing) and it took a while to find one which fit the space available and the items to go in it, almost immediately after we found one, we had mice in the adjacent kitchen and all sorts of items were stored in front of the new dresser in the studio - but I finally got most of the kitchen stuff back in the kitchen and need to work on the studio - right away - priority one. Oh, but then I have to finish a tax return for our business, clean out the folders from last year which had items only needed related to that year - which means I have to go through a box of papers from 10 years ago and shred what it is in, so that I have a box to store last year’s papers in - priority one. Oh, and I had to pull out a few folders of instructions and warranty papers to look for something for my husband and rather than try to fit it all back in, I am scanning in much of the papers as I have been planning to do and tossing out what has been scanned - I will only keep large instruction manuals and major (such as the siding, windows and roof) warranties - priority one. Plus of course one has to keep up with day to day matters.
People also work differently at projects. Some people like to do a project all the way through and work on nothing else. Others do part and then return to do the rest - often in more part sessions. Still others try to do everything at once (the dreaded multi-tasking)
I, myself, work in a combination of these techniques depending on what I am doing and my time constraints. My latest crazy idea is to scan the warranty and instruction papers into the computer, while simultaneously working on regular matters on the computer. I wondered why I never used my laptop for scanning - then I remembered, I had no scanning software in it. I went to download a freeware program which I use on my desktop and my laptop decided that it’s firewall and it’s virus protection both needed to be, separately updated. I finally got all that done and downloaded the scanning software.
I have an “all in one” and to load pages into the flat top to scan I need to get up and walk around the back of my computer to the scanner. This means that I run around, put in a page, run back to my desk, hit the button to scan and then turn to my desktop computer and work for about 2 seconds and then repeat. What I did figure out after the first day of doing this (yes, there has been a second day and a third day of doing this) was to put my laptop on an adjacent printer next to the flat bed scanner - I have to go there to put the page to be scanned in anyway and this way my desk is not taken up with the laptop and I have room to do other things - in 2 second bursts.
Does this work? Sort of. I have managed to scan in a good deal of papers. I also managed to do a number of bank reconciliations for us and organizations I am treasurer of, check email, deal with renewals for a club I am in, make a revised membership list for another club, pay 2 bills and post them to Quickbooks, help husband with something he uses Quickbooks for on his computer, and do my regular backups - and backup the drive with the papers I am scanning after I finish them for the day. If I did the stuff separately would it be done in the same time? I don’t know, but I do know that if I was to sit and scan stuff in I would be bored, this way at least I am not bored. I am also getting exercise running back and forth around my computer desk. I also am doing some of the work on my desktop computer standing up and that is suppose to be healthier.
How do you prefer to work on organizing and decluttering?
What anyone says to do to deal with organizing/decluttering problems may or may not work for you as a result. I read one book which gave “what one needs to keep” and one should get rid of everything else. As I read the book I thought of the expensive of going out and buying the items the author, a noted professional organizer, said I should have. Yes, if I followed this book I would have to go and buy things I did not have or want because the author listed these items as what one needed - she never did get around to dealing with anything I have excess of and I certainly would not go out and buy more clothes and shoes or pots and pans to match her list!
Those of us with organizing and clutter problems did not get these problems overnight and will not get rid of them overnight. What I have is the result of almost 37 years of marriage plus 26 years of my life before that plus 27 years of my husband’s life before our marriage. 60 plus years of stuff is not going to be resolved in a month!
I tend to work in fits and starts. I get one section of the house finished and when I am ready to move on to the next part of the house, something comes up - family illness, death, bed bugs, vacation, cold weather, hot weather... Or something causes an excess of stuff to accumulate for a particular project. Currently projects which are all first on my list is to finish organizing our studio - it was pulled apart for the bed bug treatment in 2009 and I finally started putting it back together, better than before, but then we needed a new dresser for storage (this is craft supplies I am talking about storing) and it took a while to find one which fit the space available and the items to go in it, almost immediately after we found one, we had mice in the adjacent kitchen and all sorts of items were stored in front of the new dresser in the studio - but I finally got most of the kitchen stuff back in the kitchen and need to work on the studio - right away - priority one. Oh, but then I have to finish a tax return for our business, clean out the folders from last year which had items only needed related to that year - which means I have to go through a box of papers from 10 years ago and shred what it is in, so that I have a box to store last year’s papers in - priority one. Oh, and I had to pull out a few folders of instructions and warranty papers to look for something for my husband and rather than try to fit it all back in, I am scanning in much of the papers as I have been planning to do and tossing out what has been scanned - I will only keep large instruction manuals and major (such as the siding, windows and roof) warranties - priority one. Plus of course one has to keep up with day to day matters.
People also work differently at projects. Some people like to do a project all the way through and work on nothing else. Others do part and then return to do the rest - often in more part sessions. Still others try to do everything at once (the dreaded multi-tasking)
I, myself, work in a combination of these techniques depending on what I am doing and my time constraints. My latest crazy idea is to scan the warranty and instruction papers into the computer, while simultaneously working on regular matters on the computer. I wondered why I never used my laptop for scanning - then I remembered, I had no scanning software in it. I went to download a freeware program which I use on my desktop and my laptop decided that it’s firewall and it’s virus protection both needed to be, separately updated. I finally got all that done and downloaded the scanning software.
I have an “all in one” and to load pages into the flat top to scan I need to get up and walk around the back of my computer to the scanner. This means that I run around, put in a page, run back to my desk, hit the button to scan and then turn to my desktop computer and work for about 2 seconds and then repeat. What I did figure out after the first day of doing this (yes, there has been a second day and a third day of doing this) was to put my laptop on an adjacent printer next to the flat bed scanner - I have to go there to put the page to be scanned in anyway and this way my desk is not taken up with the laptop and I have room to do other things - in 2 second bursts.
Does this work? Sort of. I have managed to scan in a good deal of papers. I also managed to do a number of bank reconciliations for us and organizations I am treasurer of, check email, deal with renewals for a club I am in, make a revised membership list for another club, pay 2 bills and post them to Quickbooks, help husband with something he uses Quickbooks for on his computer, and do my regular backups - and backup the drive with the papers I am scanning after I finish them for the day. If I did the stuff separately would it be done in the same time? I don’t know, but I do know that if I was to sit and scan stuff in I would be bored, this way at least I am not bored. I am also getting exercise running back and forth around my computer desk. I also am doing some of the work on my desktop computer standing up and that is suppose to be healthier.
How do you prefer to work on organizing and decluttering?
Thursday, May 5, 2016
A MYSTERY ARISES - HAD I CHECKED THE SOFA OVER THE YEARS ...
Another week gone by already?
Whenever we have a problem finding something I tell my husband when I clean up, I will find it. No matter how good a schedule I set up, sooner or later I am going to fall behind for one reason or another. The secret is to catch up as soon as possible, even if it is in baby steps of a few minutes here and there.
It really is true that when I clean up I find items we haven’t been able to find, as well as items we didn’t know we were missing. An organizing book I was recently reading (at Barnes and Nobles - there you have me - one way to keep from having more of a mess is that I read organizing books at B&N and do not buy them and bring them home) talked about finding lots of cash in sofas - hundreds of dollars in some cases. This greatly confused me as I have never found any cash in any sofa or chair. I could not imagine anyone losing money into a sofa or chair and not realizing it.
No, I did not find cash in the sofa. Tonight I was talking to my mom on my cell phone. I try to call her when I can - our lives do not sync she is a morning person and I am a night person - and have found Wednesday evening a good time to call - I don’t like what husband is watching on TV and she is still awake and not watching anything. (I learned a couple of years never to call when “Downton Abbey” was on any channel in any form or any show about it as she loved the show.)
I also never keep change in my pockets - it weights them down. Today I had lunch out alone and had the coins I received in change in my pocket and had not yet tossed it into the change keeper upstairs (periodically we bring the change to the credit union and change it into “real” money). As our 2 hour conversation was winding down (mom talks like I do and I talk like I write) I felt the coins slipping out of my pocket - see, who could lose coins without knowing about it.
I slid my hand in between the cushions to get my change back and I felt something much larger and hard. I pulled out a phone. At first I thought it was the cordless phone from the house as it was about that shape and black like the one we have. I was going to walk it into the kitchen - perhaps mom or one of my sisters called me on our landline and I had sat on the sofa to talk to her and left the phone and it fell into the crack?
I looked at the phone again and it was an older Nokia cell phone. It did not ring a bell. I had a Nokia but it was not this big. I set it aside and pulled the coins out of the sofa - hey, 31 cents is nothing to sneeze at.
When I was done talking to mom I walked into the kitchen and handed the old cell phone to my husband. He looked at me, I shrugged. He did not recognize the phone either. He thought it was my oldest one. I told him that mine was much smaller - it fit in the front pocket of my jeans as all my cell phones have. I then had a flip phone of unremembered make, and then a Razr, followed by my beloved Palm Centro and now my Blackberry. Not my phone.
He kept looking at it and trying to remember. Perhaps it was his first cell phone from work? He had the case he made for it in a drawer in our studio (we keep charging cords and other cell phone related items in this drawer) - but the case was much too small for the phone. His second cell phone from work was turned in when he left and then he also had the Razr followed by the Centro and since then, being a normal person as opposed to me, an Android.
So we have this strange cell phone. We have no idea where it came from. Could someone have been visiting back when the phone was new and we still had never thought we would ever have bedbugs and we still had people in the house? I guess it is possible. But then wouldn’t the person have called and tried to track down their missing phone when they realized it was missing?
I just did a quick search of Nokia phones online (amazing how one can waste time when one is curious about something - not exactly a “ripping good” mystery, but it is a mystery). I now know that it is a Nokia 918 and came out in 1997 - almost 20 years ago. I hope it has not been in the sofa that long.
So where did it come from? Here’s a thought - I think 1997 is before we bought the sofa - or just around when we did. Maybe it has been there all along and was left by someone from the company we bought it from?
Well, of course it could be left later than 1997 as that is when it came out and it could be any time after then. Perhaps one of the few children we have had in our house sometime after 1997 was playing with mom or dad’s old phone and left it? We did have meetings for a craft guild we belonged to in the 1990's and some meetings were in the living room - maybe one of them? I am pretty sure this is a mystery which will not be solved.
I guess if I had thought to check between the cushions of the sofa years ago, we would have a better idea.
Have you ever had a mystery item such as this?
Whenever we have a problem finding something I tell my husband when I clean up, I will find it. No matter how good a schedule I set up, sooner or later I am going to fall behind for one reason or another. The secret is to catch up as soon as possible, even if it is in baby steps of a few minutes here and there.
It really is true that when I clean up I find items we haven’t been able to find, as well as items we didn’t know we were missing. An organizing book I was recently reading (at Barnes and Nobles - there you have me - one way to keep from having more of a mess is that I read organizing books at B&N and do not buy them and bring them home) talked about finding lots of cash in sofas - hundreds of dollars in some cases. This greatly confused me as I have never found any cash in any sofa or chair. I could not imagine anyone losing money into a sofa or chair and not realizing it.
No, I did not find cash in the sofa. Tonight I was talking to my mom on my cell phone. I try to call her when I can - our lives do not sync she is a morning person and I am a night person - and have found Wednesday evening a good time to call - I don’t like what husband is watching on TV and she is still awake and not watching anything. (I learned a couple of years never to call when “Downton Abbey” was on any channel in any form or any show about it as she loved the show.)
I also never keep change in my pockets - it weights them down. Today I had lunch out alone and had the coins I received in change in my pocket and had not yet tossed it into the change keeper upstairs (periodically we bring the change to the credit union and change it into “real” money). As our 2 hour conversation was winding down (mom talks like I do and I talk like I write) I felt the coins slipping out of my pocket - see, who could lose coins without knowing about it.
I slid my hand in between the cushions to get my change back and I felt something much larger and hard. I pulled out a phone. At first I thought it was the cordless phone from the house as it was about that shape and black like the one we have. I was going to walk it into the kitchen - perhaps mom or one of my sisters called me on our landline and I had sat on the sofa to talk to her and left the phone and it fell into the crack?
I looked at the phone again and it was an older Nokia cell phone. It did not ring a bell. I had a Nokia but it was not this big. I set it aside and pulled the coins out of the sofa - hey, 31 cents is nothing to sneeze at.
When I was done talking to mom I walked into the kitchen and handed the old cell phone to my husband. He looked at me, I shrugged. He did not recognize the phone either. He thought it was my oldest one. I told him that mine was much smaller - it fit in the front pocket of my jeans as all my cell phones have. I then had a flip phone of unremembered make, and then a Razr, followed by my beloved Palm Centro and now my Blackberry. Not my phone.
He kept looking at it and trying to remember. Perhaps it was his first cell phone from work? He had the case he made for it in a drawer in our studio (we keep charging cords and other cell phone related items in this drawer) - but the case was much too small for the phone. His second cell phone from work was turned in when he left and then he also had the Razr followed by the Centro and since then, being a normal person as opposed to me, an Android.
So we have this strange cell phone. We have no idea where it came from. Could someone have been visiting back when the phone was new and we still had never thought we would ever have bedbugs and we still had people in the house? I guess it is possible. But then wouldn’t the person have called and tried to track down their missing phone when they realized it was missing?
I just did a quick search of Nokia phones online (amazing how one can waste time when one is curious about something - not exactly a “ripping good” mystery, but it is a mystery). I now know that it is a Nokia 918 and came out in 1997 - almost 20 years ago. I hope it has not been in the sofa that long.
So where did it come from? Here’s a thought - I think 1997 is before we bought the sofa - or just around when we did. Maybe it has been there all along and was left by someone from the company we bought it from?
Well, of course it could be left later than 1997 as that is when it came out and it could be any time after then. Perhaps one of the few children we have had in our house sometime after 1997 was playing with mom or dad’s old phone and left it? We did have meetings for a craft guild we belonged to in the 1990's and some meetings were in the living room - maybe one of them? I am pretty sure this is a mystery which will not be solved.
I guess if I had thought to check between the cushions of the sofa years ago, we would have a better idea.
Have you ever had a mystery item such as this?
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