Well, the storm hit last Thursday. It was not the largest snow storm that has ever hit this areas, but it did drop over 14 inches in some areas. Husband and I went out in the late afternoon to clear our driveway. It was still lightly snowing and at first husband was just going to clear enough for us to be able to back our car out of the driveway. I should explain, we do not back our car out of the driveway as the street is much too busy for us to do so, plus we have trouble seeing up the road when we are pulling out head on as there is a curve in the road and lots of cars (something new the past 6 or so years) that block the view of the curve. So we were going to do this in case of emergency before we cleared the entire driveway. Husband kept going however, and we cleared the entire driveway. We were lucky - one of our neighbors cleared part of our driveway before we went out. Not sure why - it is not something he normally does, but we greatly appreciated it. We were using our new snowblower and the snow was too deep in some places for it to work, so I walked along cutting off a section of snow and knocking it over so husband could use the snow blower on the snow. When we finished we had two problems - the front steps were covered in deep snow which had been blown there and access to our heating oil pipe (for delivery) was also buried in snow. I cleared the steps, while husband cleared a path to the oil pipe. Our first major snowstorm and we managed to clear the driveway in an hour. The additional snow that fell as we were working was very lightly and melted quickly with salt.
I hope that any of you who might have been hit by the terrible weather this past week - the snow and wind in the northeast US, the tornados in the Lousiana/Mississippi area, or the floods and broken dam problem in California (if I left your weather problem out, I apologize, know you are included) are safe.
We were able to go out on Friday, but decided to pick up dinner locally rather than drive to where we normally go as the roads were icy. Managed to catch up on some of the assorted paperwork and housework I am behind on. During the afternoon we went out and bought another bag of melting salt. We had used up the last of one bag and husband did not want to run out - we had 2 full bags, by my estimate enough for at least 6 storms, but he does panic over snow, so we went to 2 Home Depots and a Lowes to buy a spare bag.
Saturday was a normal day - mostly out of the house and dinner (at Ikea cafeteria - great value) and movie out. Ah, normalcy so great to have once in awhile.
Sunday husband decided that rather than drive out to where we normally go, we would go to more local stores of the same chains - big mistake, everyone seemed to have decided to go out! We worked on setting preferences in my computer for the new printer again. I did not put out the garbage Sunday night for Monday morning as we were having an extremely windy day - lots of wind gusts at 50 mph. I
Monday we had a short day as we had a board meeting at night for a group we are on the board of, so we had to finish up the afternoon chores early to get there and then it took up most of the evening. This laptop suddenly had a problem with my Internet software and the rest of the night was used up with husband attempting to uninstall, giving up on same, and reinstalling the software.
Yesterday was .... Valentine’s Day! We had a fairly normal day and then treated ourselves to dinner out - at Ikea again. We have a tight budget. Plus no dressing up. No gifts. I strongly believe that the giving of gifts does not prove love. It is the day to day fixing of computers, making my ancient software and laptop work, helping my husband with his weaving when he needs the equivalent of “an apprentice”, and so on which does.
Today we changed the oil in the snow blower - it is new and hit the time it said to change the oil. We are not used to doing such things, but thought we had thought it all through. We had a disposable pan to drain the oil into. As we started I thought to put down a large piece of cardboard from the box the snow blower came in to prevent oil on the floor. Husband did not put on his disposable gloves - he was using a wrench to remove the plug to let the oil out of the blower - he scraped his finger rather badly. We had to stop and run in and deal with it. We then finished the job. The dirty oil is in the bottle it came in and we will bring it to the local service station who told us they will take it. When we went back into the house husband had bled through his bandage. We cleaned his finger again and put on more antibiotic gel and I bandaged it tighter - he did not need to bend it as he did when we were doing the oil - so far it has not bled through and it has been hours, so I guess he does not need stitches.
How does all this relate to organizing? Well, like everyone else there are weeks everything goes well and lots get done. Other weeks - such as the past few - too many things go awry and little gets done - just the minimum. How bad did we get behind? While we don’t buy Valentine cards for each other - we do buy them for my family and husband’s nieces. When we came home from dinner on Valentine’s Day we suddenly realized - we had never even bought cards for them due to all the confusion. He sent a text to his older niece apologizing to the two of them and I sent an email to my family doing the same. Next year this will not happen - we will be organized enough to buy and send the cards - I put it in my computer organizer to remind me!
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Okay, now you know not to try to reinvent the wheel, but to also think outside the box if something is not working. I wanted to point out that sometimes odd things can improve what your organizing, but there may be a learning curve for you with change.
First - growing up I had full size drawers in my dresser. I had a dresser with my underwear and my socks (stockings, related). When we married my dresser had only 3 full size drawers, the others were half size drawers, so thinking logically, I put my socks in the top half size drawer and my underwear in the drawer below it. I went along this way for years - well over a decade.
One day husband, who has all full size drawers in his chest which matches my dresser and therefore has socks and underwear together, asked me why I have my drawers set up so that every day I have to open one drawer and then a second drawer. I thought about it. I have types of socks I commonly wear - stockings and other types of socks are worn much more rarely. Similarly I have kinds of underwear I need to take out the drawer daily and other kinds of underwear which I need rarely. I thought and thought. I then put the socks and underwear I need daily in the small top drawer and the rest of both categories in the second drawer. It has been some time since this change - sometimes I still forget and open the lower drawer to get what I need, but I mostly have gotten used to the change and it is more convenient.
Second - I don’t know if I have mentioned this but last year husband made me two small replacement drawers for the kitchen. We had mice and they were through the drawers. As a combination of being grossed out at using the drawers, even after they were sanitized and cleaned for cooking related items, and the fact that the drawers might very well date back to when the house was built in the early 1950s and were not nice to begin with, he made me new drawers. Basically this is a matter of making boxes the right size and then we attached the drawer front which had not been exposed to the mice - but were cleaned and sanitized anyway. (There is still the bread box drawer where we found the mice to be remade.) Most of the items in the drawers were thrown out unless they were impossible to replace or expensive (and since they were small drawers not much was the latter). One drawer again holds my dish towels. The other I had to figure out what to use it for. I rearranged some items between my “silverware” drawer, which has all manner of small kitchen handheld items (this is elsewhere in the kitchen and not where the mice were) and some items which had been in this drawer or replaced what had been in this drawer. For the most part I have had no trouble adjusting to the change - except one item - scissors. I have a large pair of utility scissors which were in the silverware drawer. I realized that some items belonged in same and not in the small drawer and moved the scissors to the small drawer. Great idea. I also moved the flashlight from the silverware drawer to there and some other non-food use items - no problem with any of those. So when I need the scissors I open the silverware drawer, swear, close it, and then open the correct drawer. I am doing this less and less though. (By the way, I was looking for a small squarish box to hold items in this drawer and a similar one to hold items in the silverware drawer and found a small lidded plastic box during back to school season in a dollar store and I took it apart - the lid sits upside down in one drawer and the bottom in the other drawer - both perfect sized and $1 for the box!)
So think about where you keep things and why - there may be a simple change which can made a great difference in your day - just remember there might be a learning curve if you have had something someplace for years and change where you keep it.
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