So how is everyone holding up? Is your area coming out of having to stay home? Stores, parks, beaches, barber shops, beauty parlors, restaurants starting to open where you are?
If your area is opening up – are you going to be running out to go everywhere? Or do you feel it is not safe enough yet and maybe you should stay home awhile longer?
We tend towards the second choice. Since he bought all the food we have plenty to eat in the house – maybe for the rest of the year or longer. Okay, we have been thinking of looking for sales on Diet Coke 2 liter – presuming the store actually has some when they advertise it – as we are down to 3 full bottles and one almost empty one and have been drinking diet orange drink and diet grape drink alternating which one I mix – and he has iced tea for lunch. He likes the orange better and I like the grape better. Yes, we have lots of good water from our tap and drank water only for the first month – I finally had the idea to fill 2 quart plastic bottles and keep them in our refrigerator to keep the water cold for drinking(which are used for same in our RV when traveling so water cold on a hot day and water to drink is from home – as is the water in our water tanks in the RV). We have been drinking the Diet Coke very sparingly – not at all until I pointed out to him in early May that the best by date was May 18 – so we would not drink it so we did not finish it off – or we could drink it slowly before it got too old and the taste is gone.
One big problem we have had is mail – coming in and going out. In the late 1980s or early 1990s we opened up a box at a USPS office for our craft business. We lived in an apartment back then and did not want mail addressed to a business coming to our apartment. There was a Post Office about a block and a half from our apartment – but no boxes were available, so we went to the next nearest Post Office and opened the box there – where it still is. Our home is in close to where our apartment was, but is in a third community which shares a Post Office (and zip code) a different community and that Post Office is far from our house – further than the one near our old apartment (which is in fairly easy walking distance) and than the one where our businesses' box was. We started having problems with mail delivery to our house maybe 7 or 10 years ago and have changed the address on most of our personal mail which used to come to our house to the box, as well as the mail that I receive as Treasurer of both my embroidery club and our reenactment unit. In normal times we basically went to the Post Office where our box is every day Monday to Friday to check for incoming mail and mail outgoing mail. If we went on a trip we could put a hold on the mail in the box. If we needed something delivered – it has been sent to the box and was inside the Post Office and safe. This system worked great. Today I am talking about the problem with the mail coming in to us.
The last two Sundays in March we went to the Post Office late Sunday night (forgive me if I repeating myself here) and picked up the mail for the entire week and mailed the outgoing mail for the week. I had figured out that since this Post Office closed on Saturdays at 1pm and was not open on Sundays – there were the fewest people in it for the longest time at that point and would have the least chance of us catching the corona virus then. Unfortunately our local paper started publishing the number of people who were ill by community and the community that Post Office and the Wendys we normally went to for daily lunch – are in had rather a high count of people who were ill and husband decided we should not go there for some time.
So – all our mail was nice and safe in our Post Office box – but we had no access to it! Aha!! Have the mail what I called forwarded and the Post Office calls “Temporary change of address”. I went online and set the mail up to be sent to us – since I did it online it cost $1.05 by credit card for verification that we are the box owners. We were only able to enter the name of our craft business – the name the box is in - as it is a “business” box. The wording implied that all mail would be sent to us and we were then responsible to forward it to those who it was addressed to - great, they are all us.
We waited for the forwarded mail to come. I had called and checked the second day of the forwarding to make sure that the Post Office had received the paperwork and they had. We kept waiting – it should take 7-10 days for each item to reach us from the Post Office – after 2 weeks of no mail I called. Since it is a “business” box only mail in the name of the business can be forwarded (okay, most months a bank statement and a credit card statement – and we are not currently using the latter). The woman I spoke with was very nice and offered to mail the accumulated mail in an envelope to us to give us a chance to figure it out. I had hoped we would be going again in a week or two and thanked her profusely. I did go online and change the mailing address for the two main magazines I get to come straight here. I also emailed the members of my embroidery group and told them to only mail things – such as the dues I was collecting in April and May for end of May annual renewal – to me at home and not at the box and did the same with my accounting clients for anything they would need to mail to me. Husband did the same with the members of our reenacting unit.
Two weeks later – same problem. I called again and offered to pay for the mail be mailed to us again – she said she would do so at no charge. I made a third call – this time waiting over 3 weeks and again she was able to mail us the mail. Then it was 3 weeks again – this time I asked her if there was some way to - without having to go into the Post Office – there was some way to close the box in the business name and reopen it immediately in one of our names – even if we had pay the annual fee again. This started a multi-day discussion involving her, two other employees at the Post Office and the Postmaster. What they finally worked out is for them to change the name on the box and change it from business to personal. It would take a couple of weeks – at that point – 2 weeks no problem. They have mailed us our mail twice since then. I was suppose to call yesterday and check how it was coming – but ran out of time. Today I was going to call – but I was called and it suppose to all be changed and all the mail set up to be forwarded – we will know for sure in about in a week – and the accumulated mail is again being mailed to us.
Since I use a Quicken to keep track of our finances I had the advantage of having all the bills we pay being memorized with the day of the month I normally sent out the payment (such as a bill due 30th of the month – would be dated to be written on 23rd of the month) and it repeats monthly, quarterly, or annually – bi-monthly I have to adjust myself and have bills due same set as monthly as change the date due – I knew I would not miss paying any bills. I also figured that bank statements can always be reconciled after the fact. It was the unexpected item that I was concerned about – luckily there have not been any surprises. When a bill will be do I call and, generally by computer on their end, check the balance due – if any – and due date. If I do not have the bill I write a cover letter giving the name on the account, account number, amount I am paying and the check number and letting them know that I am doing this as I can't get to the Post Office to pick up mail.
Hopefully we will be getting the mail forwarded and all will even off – of course we are depending on the same Post Office that we were having trouble with to deliver the mail from the box to us when it is forwarded, but the mail carrier has been doing well so far with the mail when it comes from the the Box, as well mail which does come here.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Sometimes what seems like the perfect thing to do – is no longer good at all when the situation changes. One has to figure out what to do, to make things work as needed. It sometimes takes a bit of creative thinking to do this.
Plus – we should be grateful for our Post Office employees who are doing their best to help us keep getting our mail despite the health risks to them (next time you lick an envelope to seal it – remembering people will be touching that envelope and many others and risk getting ill from them. They are making sure we have bills so we can timely pay them, checks so we have the money to pay the bills, plus the cards, photos and letters (yes, people still mail send same) that are sent to us by loved ones and friends. (I just found out that my mom does not have to go out of her apartment and downstairs to the mail boxes to get her mail – it is being brought to her – I am going to mail her some “cute” photos of my Teddy bear village under the stay home at order – the summer setup also when I get it set up later this month – I hope the photos make her smile.)
Please all stay well and return next week for the problems sending mail out we have had.
Showing posts with label magazines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magazines. Show all posts
Thursday, June 4, 2020
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
LISTS FOR REPETITIVE TASKS
Husband has spent the last week and a half with cold - which we are guessing he caught from me. I had been feeling fine and was doing things he would normally do concerning food - such as when we went to Wendys for lunch I would order, pay and pickup the food instead of him - this intended to keep me from catching back the cold. Well, it worked for a while.
I had planned to be telling you about our being in our little RV and dealing with the problems of organizing it for the trip. We had planned on leaving this past Monday and coming home on Friday as the weather was suppose to be nice there all week. As the trip date came closer, Monday and Tuesday were to have RAIN there. Wednesday would be okay there, but there might be some rain on the drive down. Since one cannot cancel RV park reservations this close to a trip, we waited to make same.
Our idea was that we wake early (for us) today and call and make reservations. During the night I started having cold symptoms again - bad and heavy ones. I had trouble sleeping. When we woke earlier than the alarm, husband was concerned about reaching the RV park to make the reservations as the office opens at 9 am, but it is hard to speak to someone before 11 am usually and we had to be on the road by 9 am to try to avoid the dreaded Belt Parkway and the construction along the entire length. I was trying to breathe. We sadly decided to not go today.
As we thought about this during the day - and I started to feel a bit better (amazing what 2 little aspirins can do in getting rid of a headache) and able to breathe again. We decided that I would call the RV park and make reservations for tomorrow night and Friday night and have a 3 day trip. We tend try not to be in Lancaster, PA on Saturdays - especially in summer - as there are too many tourists. (Yes, I know we are tourists also, but we are polite ones who try to blend in, not act rudely as many of our fellow New Yorkers and those from New Jersey do. We go there not for the novelty of the visit, but because it feels like a second home to us.) I was only able to get a reservation in a space that we know (and know it will be level) for tomorrow night, so we are going for just 2 days - and will hope that along the way there will a space we like for Friday night also. Oddly the 6 spaces that they had available for the 2 nights in the section we like, were all ones we have had problems with in the past - maybe others know that they are not level? (For those who have never stayed in an RV or trailer, if the RV or trailer is not level one feels off - walking uphill and down, the cabinet doors either swing shut or swing open, most of the refrigerators for same need to be level to work, etc. Most units have automatic levelers; ours does not. So we will go and see what happens as to how long we will stay.
Yesterday I packed the RV. As I have mentioned before, we keep basic items in it so we don’t need to remember or pack them - toothpaste, soap, dish soap, shampoo, an electric razor for husband, cleaning supplies, office supplies (pens, pencils, paper, stamps, clear tape, stapler...), dishes, pots, tableware, blankets & bedding (bed is still made up from last time as we only used it two nights then - covered the pillows on the bed with the blankets), towels - hand & dish, flashlights, sun hats, rain gear and the like. It is much easier to buy extras of these items than to have to remember to bring them each time - and then remember to put them away when we get home. We filled the water tanks on Monday - this gives us 25 gallons of water for drinking, cleaning, flushing, etc. Yesterday I packed clothing for us for 4 days (we always bring an extra days clothing on a short trip, 2 days worth on a longer one) into the shelves in the RV “closet” (a small cabinet). I packed snacks for us into plastic boxes which snap lock closed and put them into one of the “kitchen cabinets” - two thin shelves one about a foot long and the other about 18 inches long which have doors that snap closed. When we first got the RV we would fill both of these cabinets. Now I use only one for food as we have learned that we do not need as much as thought we did. (Heck, there are supermarkets and farmers’ markets everywhere there - including 24 hour Walmarts.) The other cabinet gets used to hold items such as plastic shopping bags, sweaters, whatever. The refrigerator gets soda - a big bottle to use at night and some cans in case we have lunch at a farmer’s market - which is common - or such, we will not have to buy something to drink.
Shoes were brought in and stored - I bring or wear sneakers and bring leather shoes in case of rain. We keep slippers in the RV. I have a pair of slip on sneakers that I keep in it - in colder weather I might be wearing shoe boots and if I need to run outside, it is easier to slip on these sneakers. We also each keep shower slippers in the RV.
I put the batteries in the thermometer for the fridge - better to find out I need new batteries then, rather than find out when we are leaving. I also put the toll reader into place in the front window. I bring in the store coupons from our car.
How do I keep track of all of this - what needs to be put in the RV when. I have a list of course. I have it memorized in my computer in a spreadsheet. I have a “Do Ahead” section - put water in the tanks, fill bottles of water to bring in the fridge, fill our travel medication boxes and such. I also have a “Check Ahead” section - this is for items which get used up on trips - paper plates, cups, bathroom cups, napkins (well, okay generally these don’t run out as we end up picking up some at different places as we travel) is there enough paper towels, toilet paper and tissues; soaps and related items; did the towels go back in after laundering after the last trip; and such.
I then have categories of what to pack -
What clothing items we need; what snack/food items we need/want.
Items to take from our car and bring - sunglasses, glasses.
Electronics - you know, tablets, laptops, extra or old cell phones as backups (we would not forget our current ones of course), camera if it is touring trip.
Household items - laundry bags (we bring our clothes into the RV in 2 laundry bags to unpack them. One is stored away until the end of the trip and is used to take unworn clothing back into the house. The other is used as a - well - laundry bag and then the dirty clothing goes back into house in it and tossed down the stairs to the basement.
I have some coupons which were picked up on earlier trips or came in the mail related to where we are going and I keep them in an envelope that I bring (it’s on the list of course). Also for our regular main trips (well they used to be regular and main) I have an envelope for each that labeled on the outside on a edge with the name and approximate date of the trip. For example - Labor Day trip- September, Fourth of July trip, etc. I keep them in date order with the next trip in the front of the stack in the same 3 section holder on the wall next to my desk as I keep our unpaid bills (the travel coupon holder is mixed in the same section as these envelopes. If say we pick up coupons for the Kutztown festival in advance - they are put in the envelope for same and will be there when we need them. I also have backpack
Things to do - magazines, my embroidery, etc. Generally they are not touched while we are away, but I always bring them. Husband gives me whatever he wants of same.
Finally, our “last minute bag”. This contains items we might need at home until the moment we leave. I have 3 plastic boxes in the bag. One has OTC medications - if we our stomachs feel bad at home, we take the pill out of the box. If ditto while on a trip, well, ditto. I don’t like to buy these items special for the RV as we use them so rarely, that even the one bottle is not used up by any stretch of when the expiration date is or beyond that seems safe. One has a bit more of same and our thermometer - one can get ill even on a trip and again, we did not want to buy 2 of them. The last box has items we will need on the trip - prescription medications for example - and will taken out of the bag the first night of our trip and stored in the cubby that has our personal items needed for the evening and the morning. We add other items as we use them for the final time at home before the trip. Much of what is in the bag will stay in the bag for the trip and it is stored where it can be more or less easily accessed.
The list also has a section for what we need to on our return to make sure that everything that needs to be is out of the RV and back into the house - and there are always items that we bought on the trip in addition to what we brought. I have a pattern for taking everything out of the RV - but don’t worry I am not going into that now. The list for our return reminds me of what needs to come out and that we need to shut off the refrigerator, air conditioning, inside light, and the RV battery - and put a towel into the refrigerator in case there is any leaking from the small freezer section. (There is a quick version of what absolutely has to come out/be done in case it is raining.
So, everything but the last minute bag, this laptop, and the rain jackets we might have needed for the trip is packed in our RV. Tomorrow we will bring these items, turn on the RV batteries, start the refrigerator in the RV, back out of our driveway and be on our way.
Oh, that sounds so easy. To back out into 2 lanes of traffic on our side of the road involves me standing in the road with a walkie talkie and telling him when he can pull out - talk about needing planning and organization!
I also have a short list, kept on a little clipboard that we use to check off each day of the trip that we have done everything we need to do before pulling out. We would not want to forget to unplug the RV from the electricity so the system is not broken or to lock a cabinet or the refrigerator door and have everything in it go flying when we drive. A common thing that we husband forgets is after we disconnect from the camp’s sources he needs to open the curtain at the back of the RV so he can see out same - good thing it is on my list and I turn around see that it is open and if not send him to open it. Even odd things are on my list. We have an outside light next to the side door. (Same as the light next to your front/back door at home.) We don’t turn it on. One day after driving around much of the day I realized it was on - it must have gotten turned on by accident the night before - I turned it off of course and I added it to the check off list. This short list has several columns so that on a trip up to 4 days can be marked off on the same form.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
If you do something that has many steps or many parts as a repeated thing, make up a list on your computer for what you need to do. Print it out each time you are doing to do the task and actually cross the items off the list. If needed I list the items that are going to be done at the last minute on the side as I see them - and circle them on the list. If I find that there is something that I need to add - I list it on the back of the page and add it when we return home.
I had planned to be telling you about our being in our little RV and dealing with the problems of organizing it for the trip. We had planned on leaving this past Monday and coming home on Friday as the weather was suppose to be nice there all week. As the trip date came closer, Monday and Tuesday were to have RAIN there. Wednesday would be okay there, but there might be some rain on the drive down. Since one cannot cancel RV park reservations this close to a trip, we waited to make same.
Our idea was that we wake early (for us) today and call and make reservations. During the night I started having cold symptoms again - bad and heavy ones. I had trouble sleeping. When we woke earlier than the alarm, husband was concerned about reaching the RV park to make the reservations as the office opens at 9 am, but it is hard to speak to someone before 11 am usually and we had to be on the road by 9 am to try to avoid the dreaded Belt Parkway and the construction along the entire length. I was trying to breathe. We sadly decided to not go today.
As we thought about this during the day - and I started to feel a bit better (amazing what 2 little aspirins can do in getting rid of a headache) and able to breathe again. We decided that I would call the RV park and make reservations for tomorrow night and Friday night and have a 3 day trip. We tend try not to be in Lancaster, PA on Saturdays - especially in summer - as there are too many tourists. (Yes, I know we are tourists also, but we are polite ones who try to blend in, not act rudely as many of our fellow New Yorkers and those from New Jersey do. We go there not for the novelty of the visit, but because it feels like a second home to us.) I was only able to get a reservation in a space that we know (and know it will be level) for tomorrow night, so we are going for just 2 days - and will hope that along the way there will a space we like for Friday night also. Oddly the 6 spaces that they had available for the 2 nights in the section we like, were all ones we have had problems with in the past - maybe others know that they are not level? (For those who have never stayed in an RV or trailer, if the RV or trailer is not level one feels off - walking uphill and down, the cabinet doors either swing shut or swing open, most of the refrigerators for same need to be level to work, etc. Most units have automatic levelers; ours does not. So we will go and see what happens as to how long we will stay.
Yesterday I packed the RV. As I have mentioned before, we keep basic items in it so we don’t need to remember or pack them - toothpaste, soap, dish soap, shampoo, an electric razor for husband, cleaning supplies, office supplies (pens, pencils, paper, stamps, clear tape, stapler...), dishes, pots, tableware, blankets & bedding (bed is still made up from last time as we only used it two nights then - covered the pillows on the bed with the blankets), towels - hand & dish, flashlights, sun hats, rain gear and the like. It is much easier to buy extras of these items than to have to remember to bring them each time - and then remember to put them away when we get home. We filled the water tanks on Monday - this gives us 25 gallons of water for drinking, cleaning, flushing, etc. Yesterday I packed clothing for us for 4 days (we always bring an extra days clothing on a short trip, 2 days worth on a longer one) into the shelves in the RV “closet” (a small cabinet). I packed snacks for us into plastic boxes which snap lock closed and put them into one of the “kitchen cabinets” - two thin shelves one about a foot long and the other about 18 inches long which have doors that snap closed. When we first got the RV we would fill both of these cabinets. Now I use only one for food as we have learned that we do not need as much as thought we did. (Heck, there are supermarkets and farmers’ markets everywhere there - including 24 hour Walmarts.) The other cabinet gets used to hold items such as plastic shopping bags, sweaters, whatever. The refrigerator gets soda - a big bottle to use at night and some cans in case we have lunch at a farmer’s market - which is common - or such, we will not have to buy something to drink.
Shoes were brought in and stored - I bring or wear sneakers and bring leather shoes in case of rain. We keep slippers in the RV. I have a pair of slip on sneakers that I keep in it - in colder weather I might be wearing shoe boots and if I need to run outside, it is easier to slip on these sneakers. We also each keep shower slippers in the RV.
I put the batteries in the thermometer for the fridge - better to find out I need new batteries then, rather than find out when we are leaving. I also put the toll reader into place in the front window. I bring in the store coupons from our car.
How do I keep track of all of this - what needs to be put in the RV when. I have a list of course. I have it memorized in my computer in a spreadsheet. I have a “Do Ahead” section - put water in the tanks, fill bottles of water to bring in the fridge, fill our travel medication boxes and such. I also have a “Check Ahead” section - this is for items which get used up on trips - paper plates, cups, bathroom cups, napkins (well, okay generally these don’t run out as we end up picking up some at different places as we travel) is there enough paper towels, toilet paper and tissues; soaps and related items; did the towels go back in after laundering after the last trip; and such.
I then have categories of what to pack -
What clothing items we need; what snack/food items we need/want.
Items to take from our car and bring - sunglasses, glasses.
Electronics - you know, tablets, laptops, extra or old cell phones as backups (we would not forget our current ones of course), camera if it is touring trip.
Household items - laundry bags (we bring our clothes into the RV in 2 laundry bags to unpack them. One is stored away until the end of the trip and is used to take unworn clothing back into the house. The other is used as a - well - laundry bag and then the dirty clothing goes back into house in it and tossed down the stairs to the basement.
I have some coupons which were picked up on earlier trips or came in the mail related to where we are going and I keep them in an envelope that I bring (it’s on the list of course). Also for our regular main trips (well they used to be regular and main) I have an envelope for each that labeled on the outside on a edge with the name and approximate date of the trip. For example - Labor Day trip- September, Fourth of July trip, etc. I keep them in date order with the next trip in the front of the stack in the same 3 section holder on the wall next to my desk as I keep our unpaid bills (the travel coupon holder is mixed in the same section as these envelopes. If say we pick up coupons for the Kutztown festival in advance - they are put in the envelope for same and will be there when we need them. I also have backpack
Things to do - magazines, my embroidery, etc. Generally they are not touched while we are away, but I always bring them. Husband gives me whatever he wants of same.
Finally, our “last minute bag”. This contains items we might need at home until the moment we leave. I have 3 plastic boxes in the bag. One has OTC medications - if we our stomachs feel bad at home, we take the pill out of the box. If ditto while on a trip, well, ditto. I don’t like to buy these items special for the RV as we use them so rarely, that even the one bottle is not used up by any stretch of when the expiration date is or beyond that seems safe. One has a bit more of same and our thermometer - one can get ill even on a trip and again, we did not want to buy 2 of them. The last box has items we will need on the trip - prescription medications for example - and will taken out of the bag the first night of our trip and stored in the cubby that has our personal items needed for the evening and the morning. We add other items as we use them for the final time at home before the trip. Much of what is in the bag will stay in the bag for the trip and it is stored where it can be more or less easily accessed.
The list also has a section for what we need to on our return to make sure that everything that needs to be is out of the RV and back into the house - and there are always items that we bought on the trip in addition to what we brought. I have a pattern for taking everything out of the RV - but don’t worry I am not going into that now. The list for our return reminds me of what needs to come out and that we need to shut off the refrigerator, air conditioning, inside light, and the RV battery - and put a towel into the refrigerator in case there is any leaking from the small freezer section. (There is a quick version of what absolutely has to come out/be done in case it is raining.
So, everything but the last minute bag, this laptop, and the rain jackets we might have needed for the trip is packed in our RV. Tomorrow we will bring these items, turn on the RV batteries, start the refrigerator in the RV, back out of our driveway and be on our way.
Oh, that sounds so easy. To back out into 2 lanes of traffic on our side of the road involves me standing in the road with a walkie talkie and telling him when he can pull out - talk about needing planning and organization!
I also have a short list, kept on a little clipboard that we use to check off each day of the trip that we have done everything we need to do before pulling out. We would not want to forget to unplug the RV from the electricity so the system is not broken or to lock a cabinet or the refrigerator door and have everything in it go flying when we drive. A common thing that we husband forgets is after we disconnect from the camp’s sources he needs to open the curtain at the back of the RV so he can see out same - good thing it is on my list and I turn around see that it is open and if not send him to open it. Even odd things are on my list. We have an outside light next to the side door. (Same as the light next to your front/back door at home.) We don’t turn it on. One day after driving around much of the day I realized it was on - it must have gotten turned on by accident the night before - I turned it off of course and I added it to the check off list. This short list has several columns so that on a trip up to 4 days can be marked off on the same form.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
If you do something that has many steps or many parts as a repeated thing, make up a list on your computer for what you need to do. Print it out each time you are doing to do the task and actually cross the items off the list. If needed I list the items that are going to be done at the last minute on the side as I see them - and circle them on the list. If I find that there is something that I need to add - I list it on the back of the page and add it when we return home.
Thursday, June 7, 2018
TINY BATHROOMS - I MEAN REALLY TINY!
Okay, let’s get back to the idea of trying to get organized. We have a full bathroom upstairs and and a half bath downstairs. For those from other places, this means that our bathroom upstairs has a commode, sink, and bathtub/shower, while our downstairs bathroom has only a commode and sink. They are small. The downstairs bathroom is just less than 4 feet by 4 feet. The upstairs one is about 6 feet by 5 feet - the 5 feet being the cross measurement of the bathtub. I am not sure that in some of the new houses being built the “toilet room” in the bathrooms are not larger than our bathrooms themselves.
When we moved in the downstairs bathroom had a decent sink and fairly new small vanity. At some point the floor had been retiled as it ceramic tile and based on what I know of tile at different points in my life, I would say it had put in within 10 years of when we bought. The walls in both bathrooms have plastic tile - something I have never otherwise seen and I presume is older. The vanity had a drawer below the door section.
The upstairs sink and vanity were not that nice - and much older looking. At some point we decided to replace them. We then found out that our bathroom sinks are below the smallest standard size. Back then we had a choice of two, now I am not sure that this size is still made. We looked and looked and managed to find a duplicate of the downstairs vanity - with a drawer at the bottom. No other vanities in this size had any drawer and there were maybe 3 of them to choose from. Understand I don’t mean that we went to a store and the store had 3 of them. We went to ALL the stores and found 3 total. We replaced the upstairs sink and vanity, putting in the new setup ourselves. When we moved in there was no electric outlet in either bathroom - yes, I just said that there was no outlet in either bathroom when we moved in. We are not sure how the families before us dried their hair and the men must have shaved with blades, not an electric shaver. We are not sure this would be allowed under the current electric code where we live.
When I read organizing books there is an assumption that there are lots of drawers, a large cabinet and a counter top. We have no counter in either bathroom. We also cannot put an “over john” in the upstairs bathroom. (This is a set of shelves intended to stand around the commode and put shelves over it.) Why? Well, the window is over the commode and it would be blocked by the over john unit. What we did end up doing is making a 2 shelved wheeled cart that just squeezes in opposite the sink and next to the bathtub. It can be wheeled out when one is taking a shower or cleaning the bathroom and then wheeled back in. The bottom is used for storage and the top for counter space. Spare towels and related are kept in a small closet in the hall outside of the bathroom. We also put up a wooden ladder shaped hanging, that we made, on the wall adjacent to the commode - this is for magazines, but they get a bit icky where it is located, so very little is placed there.
The drawer in upstairs bathroom is husband’s. He has to put his razor and related items somewhere and the drawer is where they are. Since he gets dizzy when he bends over, it is not the best place, but it is what we have. In the cabinet I have a plastic shoe box without a lid. This holds our first aid stuff for upstairs. It can be pulled out to be taken to where it is needed. We have spare toilet paper and mouthwash in the cabinet, as well as a spray bottle of shower cleaner. That fills it. In the “medicine cabinet” over the sink, husband has his teeth related items on the top shelf in what is sold as drawer divider box. He can take the entire divider box out, put it on the cart to use it, and then put it back. Small bathroom related items - including over the counter pain killers - are on the other two shelves. We do not keep any prescription medication upstairs. Why? I have to count it out once a week into boxes (so if one of us says “hey, did I take my pills?” we can easily check if it was taken) and I do this in the kitchen, so the prescription medications are kept in the kitchen. I keep my teeth related items in the hall closet - it just leads to much less arguing.
We do have this closet just outside our bathroom and bedroom. It had shelves so it is used as a linen closet for the bedrooms and the upstairs bathroom. We put a wire shelving unit on the inside of the door and I try to keep the items there in sections by what they are for to be able to find them - such as all of the “Band aid” type items are on the same door shelf. Cleaning items for the bathroom are on the bottom door shelf. A roll of paper towels is also kept in this closet for upstairs use.
The hand towels in use hang on a towel bar on the door - we went to change this when we moved in, but it is set into a cut into the tile around the tub/shower and could not be changed. The started shower towels hang on the door of the shower. I also have 2 “utility” towels in the bathroom. These are towels to wipe up spills and messes.
I keep the box of tissues on the top of the commode. Also there and on the window sill are pump hand soap and pump hand sanitizer . For fun and decoration there are some small “rubber” duckies in a line across the window sill. There is a holder for small paper cups on the wall between the sink area and the tub.
When it is time to clean the bathroom, I wheel the cart out of it. I do have to lie across the (closed) commode seat to be able to reach behind it to clean it and the floor. To clean the tiny space between the sink/cabinet and the tub, I have to kneel in the tub to be able to reach the floor there to clean it.
The day after we moved in we had an electrician in to put in an electric outlet. The choices were limited. It could be on the wall that is behind one, when one is standing at the sink - not convenient. or we could move the lighting fixture and put the outlet where the light had been. The light was moved to the eave angle of the ceiling and an outlet put in. I can sort of reach the outlet, but not really.
The upstairs does have ceramic tile on the wall and on the tub surround so they must have been replaced as they are not plastic, although they look older than the ones in the downstairs bathroom.
Ah yes - I wanted to mention that we always seem to manage to drip some water off the back corner of the sink onto the floor (on the commode side) and I have started folding a paper towel in quarters and putting it this corner of the floor to absorb any water that drips.
The downstairs sink has a bit more flat surface around it and I have the pump soap and pump hand sanitizer on the back corners of the sink. I cut a paper towel in half and then cut it to match the curve of the sink and keep the pieces under the two pumps to keep the sink top clean - I change them when I clean the bathroom.
I also have to lie down on the commode to clean behind it. There is a perhaps 1 inch to 1.5 inch space between the vanity and the side wall - it is next to impossible to clean. A damp paper towel folded and shoved in and moved with a yard stick is about the best that can be done. The cleaners are kept in the vanity. The drawer here holds some magazines (BBC History magazine to be specific.) The hand towels and some utility towels (no other towels needed for here) are also kept in the vanity. I hang a set of hand towels on a towel bar. The owner before us also had 2 large rings for towels and I hang a utility towel in one of them for wiping up. There is a cup holder attached to the wall with a metal cup in it. We use this bathroom when cleaning up from doing crafts and the cup holds paint brushes that need to dry.
For an electric outlet in this bathroom we installed (ourselves) a combination piece which has one outlet and the light switch in what would be the second outlet area. It has not been working right lately (only when I am using it of course) and we have bought a new matching unit to replace the old one.
The medicine cabinet has more of the same over the counter medicines. (We keep older bottles of them when we buy new and split the new between the upstairs and downstairs bottles, putting the new expiration dates on the older bottles as we never use them up before they go bad and do not want to buy 2 bottles.) We get our prescription medications in 90 day supplies and I keep the bottles in this cabinet. Since it is not a shower bathroom, it does not get steamy so we can do this. I count the pills into smaller bottles (again ones from earlier prescriptions that match what is in them) of a month’s worth when I use up the month’s worth in them. These smaller bottles are kept in the kitchen cabinet. There is first aid stuff in this cabinet also - not as much as upstairs, just so we don’t have to always run upstairs for stuff.
Again the tissue box is kept on the back of the commode. A basket with “for show”guest soaps is also on the back of the commode. Over the commode (which is a wall here, not a window) we have a shelving piece with odd shape small shelves for husband’s small glass animals collection.
This room seems to have originally had a window. Above the plastic tile is wood paneling and there is a ceiling exhaust fan that does not seem to be original. There was a room added to the back of the house that sits behind this room and we assume that there was a window and was covered by the paneling when it was blocked off by the addition of the back room and the exhaust fan was installed at that time.
So that is our bathrooms. Each of them is probably smaller than a closet in the world of organizing books. Do you have a bathroom like our ours or do you have a nice big one.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
If you have small room you have to figure out how to make them work for you. When we started we were not sure what to do. Over the years we have managed to make them work for us. They are far from perfect or convenient, but they work. (And, as small as they are, they are bigger and more convenient than our RV bathroom - if you can call it that.)
I would love to hear from you about your bathroom and what you do to organize it.
Both bathrooms are at the back of the house.
When we moved in the downstairs bathroom had a decent sink and fairly new small vanity. At some point the floor had been retiled as it ceramic tile and based on what I know of tile at different points in my life, I would say it had put in within 10 years of when we bought. The walls in both bathrooms have plastic tile - something I have never otherwise seen and I presume is older. The vanity had a drawer below the door section.
The upstairs sink and vanity were not that nice - and much older looking. At some point we decided to replace them. We then found out that our bathroom sinks are below the smallest standard size. Back then we had a choice of two, now I am not sure that this size is still made. We looked and looked and managed to find a duplicate of the downstairs vanity - with a drawer at the bottom. No other vanities in this size had any drawer and there were maybe 3 of them to choose from. Understand I don’t mean that we went to a store and the store had 3 of them. We went to ALL the stores and found 3 total. We replaced the upstairs sink and vanity, putting in the new setup ourselves. When we moved in there was no electric outlet in either bathroom - yes, I just said that there was no outlet in either bathroom when we moved in. We are not sure how the families before us dried their hair and the men must have shaved with blades, not an electric shaver. We are not sure this would be allowed under the current electric code where we live.
When I read organizing books there is an assumption that there are lots of drawers, a large cabinet and a counter top. We have no counter in either bathroom. We also cannot put an “over john” in the upstairs bathroom. (This is a set of shelves intended to stand around the commode and put shelves over it.) Why? Well, the window is over the commode and it would be blocked by the over john unit. What we did end up doing is making a 2 shelved wheeled cart that just squeezes in opposite the sink and next to the bathtub. It can be wheeled out when one is taking a shower or cleaning the bathroom and then wheeled back in. The bottom is used for storage and the top for counter space. Spare towels and related are kept in a small closet in the hall outside of the bathroom. We also put up a wooden ladder shaped hanging, that we made, on the wall adjacent to the commode - this is for magazines, but they get a bit icky where it is located, so very little is placed there.
The drawer in upstairs bathroom is husband’s. He has to put his razor and related items somewhere and the drawer is where they are. Since he gets dizzy when he bends over, it is not the best place, but it is what we have. In the cabinet I have a plastic shoe box without a lid. This holds our first aid stuff for upstairs. It can be pulled out to be taken to where it is needed. We have spare toilet paper and mouthwash in the cabinet, as well as a spray bottle of shower cleaner. That fills it. In the “medicine cabinet” over the sink, husband has his teeth related items on the top shelf in what is sold as drawer divider box. He can take the entire divider box out, put it on the cart to use it, and then put it back. Small bathroom related items - including over the counter pain killers - are on the other two shelves. We do not keep any prescription medication upstairs. Why? I have to count it out once a week into boxes (so if one of us says “hey, did I take my pills?” we can easily check if it was taken) and I do this in the kitchen, so the prescription medications are kept in the kitchen. I keep my teeth related items in the hall closet - it just leads to much less arguing.
We do have this closet just outside our bathroom and bedroom. It had shelves so it is used as a linen closet for the bedrooms and the upstairs bathroom. We put a wire shelving unit on the inside of the door and I try to keep the items there in sections by what they are for to be able to find them - such as all of the “Band aid” type items are on the same door shelf. Cleaning items for the bathroom are on the bottom door shelf. A roll of paper towels is also kept in this closet for upstairs use.
The hand towels in use hang on a towel bar on the door - we went to change this when we moved in, but it is set into a cut into the tile around the tub/shower and could not be changed. The started shower towels hang on the door of the shower. I also have 2 “utility” towels in the bathroom. These are towels to wipe up spills and messes.
I keep the box of tissues on the top of the commode. Also there and on the window sill are pump hand soap and pump hand sanitizer . For fun and decoration there are some small “rubber” duckies in a line across the window sill. There is a holder for small paper cups on the wall between the sink area and the tub.
When it is time to clean the bathroom, I wheel the cart out of it. I do have to lie across the (closed) commode seat to be able to reach behind it to clean it and the floor. To clean the tiny space between the sink/cabinet and the tub, I have to kneel in the tub to be able to reach the floor there to clean it.
The day after we moved in we had an electrician in to put in an electric outlet. The choices were limited. It could be on the wall that is behind one, when one is standing at the sink - not convenient. or we could move the lighting fixture and put the outlet where the light had been. The light was moved to the eave angle of the ceiling and an outlet put in. I can sort of reach the outlet, but not really.
The upstairs does have ceramic tile on the wall and on the tub surround so they must have been replaced as they are not plastic, although they look older than the ones in the downstairs bathroom.
Ah yes - I wanted to mention that we always seem to manage to drip some water off the back corner of the sink onto the floor (on the commode side) and I have started folding a paper towel in quarters and putting it this corner of the floor to absorb any water that drips.
The downstairs sink has a bit more flat surface around it and I have the pump soap and pump hand sanitizer on the back corners of the sink. I cut a paper towel in half and then cut it to match the curve of the sink and keep the pieces under the two pumps to keep the sink top clean - I change them when I clean the bathroom.
I also have to lie down on the commode to clean behind it. There is a perhaps 1 inch to 1.5 inch space between the vanity and the side wall - it is next to impossible to clean. A damp paper towel folded and shoved in and moved with a yard stick is about the best that can be done. The cleaners are kept in the vanity. The drawer here holds some magazines (BBC History magazine to be specific.) The hand towels and some utility towels (no other towels needed for here) are also kept in the vanity. I hang a set of hand towels on a towel bar. The owner before us also had 2 large rings for towels and I hang a utility towel in one of them for wiping up. There is a cup holder attached to the wall with a metal cup in it. We use this bathroom when cleaning up from doing crafts and the cup holds paint brushes that need to dry.
For an electric outlet in this bathroom we installed (ourselves) a combination piece which has one outlet and the light switch in what would be the second outlet area. It has not been working right lately (only when I am using it of course) and we have bought a new matching unit to replace the old one.
The medicine cabinet has more of the same over the counter medicines. (We keep older bottles of them when we buy new and split the new between the upstairs and downstairs bottles, putting the new expiration dates on the older bottles as we never use them up before they go bad and do not want to buy 2 bottles.) We get our prescription medications in 90 day supplies and I keep the bottles in this cabinet. Since it is not a shower bathroom, it does not get steamy so we can do this. I count the pills into smaller bottles (again ones from earlier prescriptions that match what is in them) of a month’s worth when I use up the month’s worth in them. These smaller bottles are kept in the kitchen cabinet. There is first aid stuff in this cabinet also - not as much as upstairs, just so we don’t have to always run upstairs for stuff.
Again the tissue box is kept on the back of the commode. A basket with “for show”guest soaps is also on the back of the commode. Over the commode (which is a wall here, not a window) we have a shelving piece with odd shape small shelves for husband’s small glass animals collection.
This room seems to have originally had a window. Above the plastic tile is wood paneling and there is a ceiling exhaust fan that does not seem to be original. There was a room added to the back of the house that sits behind this room and we assume that there was a window and was covered by the paneling when it was blocked off by the addition of the back room and the exhaust fan was installed at that time.
So that is our bathrooms. Each of them is probably smaller than a closet in the world of organizing books. Do you have a bathroom like our ours or do you have a nice big one.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
If you have small room you have to figure out how to make them work for you. When we started we were not sure what to do. Over the years we have managed to make them work for us. They are far from perfect or convenient, but they work. (And, as small as they are, they are bigger and more convenient than our RV bathroom - if you can call it that.)
I would love to hear from you about your bathroom and what you do to organize it.
Both bathrooms are at the back of the house.
Thursday, November 9, 2017
I HATE THE AFTERMATH OF TRIPS
Just in case anyone was wondering - after a week my head barely hurts if I touch where I hit it last week. ( I mean if I touch my head where it was hurt, not the board I hit it on.) My dad, a man of great wisdom, would say - “If your head hurts when you touch it, then don’t touch it.
The worst part of a trip, to me, is when I come home I have to do everything I didn’t do while away (and, of course, things I didn’t do before we went away). Husband never understands this idea.
We are pretty good at emptying out the RV when we return home - I have a system. There are two plans for emptying it, the regular plan and the “its raining and we can’t bring it all in plan”. In the normal plan, I start packing stuff and husband becomes a beast of burden running it all into the house. I am basically working in sections in a circle around where I am standing in the RV. First is the refrigerator, followed by food in plastic boxes in the cabinet. Husband will unpack the refrigerator items into the one in the house. I shut off the refrigerator in the RV and put a thick towel under the freezer section just in case any ice buildup melts and drips. (It does not have a separate freezer section, but a “cold” box as refrigerators did in “the olden days” - like the 1950s. Ice cream purchased in the evening will be soft ice cream when eaten at 2 am - cold soup beyond that. I take the batteries of the refrigerator thermometer and its remote read device.
The towels are added to the laundry bag of clothes and when the bag goes into the house it is tossed down the stairs to the basement. I pack the clean clothes (we always over pack - doesn’t everyone) and bring an extra day or two of clothes in case something happens to something we are wearing while away and we need to change clothes unexpectedly, they go into the other laundry bag and go by the stairs in the house so they go up the same night. Jackets, sweatshirts and such are taken in loose. Shoes are put into supermarket/Walmart shopping bags to be taken in.
Husband will take various laptops and other devices into the house in a couple of trips. Similarly he will take in my embroidery holder. The “last minute bag” is pulled out from under the bed and the items removed from it go back into it. This trip we also pulled toothpaste and such as we don’t want to leave them in all winter - we did that the first year and they did not survive well.
Any items we purchased while away and stored inside the main part of the TV are brought into the house and left on the table to be sorted and stored. (Hey, I just noticed that sorted and stored are anagrams - the same letters rearranged - is why they go together so well?)
On the “third seat” (seat behind the front passenger seat) we have a pocket with a folder in it which holds papers we pick up during the trip - tourist handouts, maps, local tourist magazines, and such, as well as magazines we brought from home to read - they go in similar bag to the shoes.
Assorted spare eyeglasses (reading, sun, etc.) that are needed and/or kept elsewhere are removed from the glove compartment as are the snacks I keep in the front door map pocket in case of a glucose low for either of us while in transit. In there is also the coupon holder from our car (if I need, for example, tissues while away, why shouldn’t I have the coupon with me to use) and the travel related coupons we brought with us. My old Palm and Blackberry cell phones which come along for the trip for other features of the phones have to be removed also. The EZ Pass (to pay tolls electronically) is removed from the windshield and stored away.
The various curtains in the RV are closed. The lights are shut off and the RV battery is shut off.
Between trips with items I had for him, husband has removing items we purchased and stored in he back of the RV (technically under the head of the bed) and adding them to what is on the kitchen table in the house.
I stop and get the mail from our mailbox on the way in. If it is a short trip and we did not stop the newspaper (yes, I still get and read a newspaper) I will bring them in also.
If it is raining - the food and stuff in the last minute bag go in and not much else unless it is needed.
Now I enter the house kitchen . I have to sort what has come in - food which does not need to be in the refrigerator goes on the counter. Food that goes in the refrigerator should already have been put there by Robert. Clean clothes, laptops & similar, mail, shoes, and such are put on the stairs or adjacent to them to be taken upstairs. Jackets and such are put in the front closet - or at least over the post at the foot of the stairs in the front hall. And the pile of stuff on the table.
The stuff on the table has to be sorted - stuff to go upstairs, stuff to stay in the kitchen/dinning room, stuff for the basement, stuff for our studio - or the garage workshop. I sort them into shopping bags and try to at least get them into the room they belong in - or hang them on the door knob to outside if the item goes outside.
But of course this is just the first step. The next day I will have to go through the mail- shred the junk mail, pull out and check bills, collect bank statements (if any) to reconcile, magazines to where they will be read, and so on. We will also go to the Post Office and pick up the mail which has accumulated in our box there, which also has to be sorted.
Food in boxes will have to be stored - I tend to do it slowly and use what is in the boxes. They are basically snacks so I use the cereal which was not used on the trip instead of storing it away, use the tea bag from the ones I brought with us, etc.
Since this was our last trip of the year that we will make with running water in the RV, I said to husband that I presume we will winterize the RV this week - he said we could wait. For those who might not understand this, in areas like this where it can get close to freezing and below it, the water pipes and valves might freeze and break. So we have to run a non-toxic anti freeze, made for this purpose for RVs and boats, through the water system. This keeps it all from freezing, but also means that we cannot use the system as that would be adding water which could freeze back in the system. Well, the not so cold weather we were having and were to have is to change by this weekend. So the winterizing must be done this week.
In addition, we needed a small closet type shed to keep our snowblower in by our side door. (It is currently in the garage workshop and not only does it take up room, but if it snow we have to shovel our way to the garage and clear a path in front of the garage door so a shed near the door would be very good to have.) Last year we waited too long to buy one - they have to be assembled above a certain temperature so that plastic gives and bends and does not break in the assembling. Husband kept forgetting to order one from a well known home store and finally decided this was it. We wanted to order one to pick up at the store. The program would not let us as it said the store already had “one”. So we went to the store. It took about an hour and a half for them to find the shed, get someone to take it down from the top shelf (maybe 20 feet or more up), us to take it to the register and pay for it (well, husband did while I got the van), have no one come to help us load it, realize the box inside the sealed plastic was soaked, find the assistant manager again, get the other one (yes, per the computer they had one, but actually they had two), and get someone to help us load it. It then sat in our van on the driveway until we could assemble it.
Monday was too cold, Tuesday it rained. (And of course we went and voted Tuesday.)So today we assembled it - mostly. We had to get the huge box out of our van - we managed to push it so it was in the rear of the van (behind the back seat) and on a work stand and unloaded. Today was already getting colder so we took all the pieces into the garage and turned on the hanging space heaters to keep the plastic pieces warm and pliable. We moved our car to the curved part of our driveway, then backed the RV to the spot the car normally is so we would have room to work. Somehow we were able to assemble most of the shed. Husband then got ill from bending over, as he does, and had to go in and go to sleep for awhile. I finished getting the roof ready to go on - screwing parts onto the inside of the room, putting things into the body of the shed to hold the roof in place, putting the handles on the doors. (The doors were about the worse part of the assembly except...) When it was all done, I went and woke husband who after about a half hour more, was able to come out and we put the roof on - yay! The last thing which had to be done and is a problem is two metal bars have to be slid into the roof and across into the sides to hold the front end of the roof on - we got one in, then gave up and will try again tomorrow as it was getting colder and dark.
Remember he said that we don’t have to winterize this week when I said I assumed we were going to? Tomorrow we will be winterizing the RV.
Luckily when he said that we would be doing these “little chores” today and tomorrow, I managed to write checks for all bills due out on Friday and figure out how much we have to transfer into checking to cover them - it is all finished and sitting in my “out” box for Friday.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - When going on a trip - even a short, relatively local one as we take - try to be as caught up as possible before the trip. Try to plan when you will catch up on bills, other paperwork, unpacking, laundry (I am doing a week and a half’s laundry tonight and tomorrow night), and such, when you return.
For those who are Veterans or who are still on active service, Friday is Veteran’s Day here in the U.S. and is a holiday for many of those who live in the World War II allies countries (Armistice Day, Remembrance Day...) as Saturday is November 11, I thank you all for your service to your country - whether the U.S. or other. For those of you still on active service, I wish you a safe tour and return home.
The worst part of a trip, to me, is when I come home I have to do everything I didn’t do while away (and, of course, things I didn’t do before we went away). Husband never understands this idea.
We are pretty good at emptying out the RV when we return home - I have a system. There are two plans for emptying it, the regular plan and the “its raining and we can’t bring it all in plan”. In the normal plan, I start packing stuff and husband becomes a beast of burden running it all into the house. I am basically working in sections in a circle around where I am standing in the RV. First is the refrigerator, followed by food in plastic boxes in the cabinet. Husband will unpack the refrigerator items into the one in the house. I shut off the refrigerator in the RV and put a thick towel under the freezer section just in case any ice buildup melts and drips. (It does not have a separate freezer section, but a “cold” box as refrigerators did in “the olden days” - like the 1950s. Ice cream purchased in the evening will be soft ice cream when eaten at 2 am - cold soup beyond that. I take the batteries of the refrigerator thermometer and its remote read device.
The towels are added to the laundry bag of clothes and when the bag goes into the house it is tossed down the stairs to the basement. I pack the clean clothes (we always over pack - doesn’t everyone) and bring an extra day or two of clothes in case something happens to something we are wearing while away and we need to change clothes unexpectedly, they go into the other laundry bag and go by the stairs in the house so they go up the same night. Jackets, sweatshirts and such are taken in loose. Shoes are put into supermarket/Walmart shopping bags to be taken in.
Husband will take various laptops and other devices into the house in a couple of trips. Similarly he will take in my embroidery holder. The “last minute bag” is pulled out from under the bed and the items removed from it go back into it. This trip we also pulled toothpaste and such as we don’t want to leave them in all winter - we did that the first year and they did not survive well.
Any items we purchased while away and stored inside the main part of the TV are brought into the house and left on the table to be sorted and stored. (Hey, I just noticed that sorted and stored are anagrams - the same letters rearranged - is why they go together so well?)
On the “third seat” (seat behind the front passenger seat) we have a pocket with a folder in it which holds papers we pick up during the trip - tourist handouts, maps, local tourist magazines, and such, as well as magazines we brought from home to read - they go in similar bag to the shoes.
Assorted spare eyeglasses (reading, sun, etc.) that are needed and/or kept elsewhere are removed from the glove compartment as are the snacks I keep in the front door map pocket in case of a glucose low for either of us while in transit. In there is also the coupon holder from our car (if I need, for example, tissues while away, why shouldn’t I have the coupon with me to use) and the travel related coupons we brought with us. My old Palm and Blackberry cell phones which come along for the trip for other features of the phones have to be removed also. The EZ Pass (to pay tolls electronically) is removed from the windshield and stored away.
The various curtains in the RV are closed. The lights are shut off and the RV battery is shut off.
Between trips with items I had for him, husband has removing items we purchased and stored in he back of the RV (technically under the head of the bed) and adding them to what is on the kitchen table in the house.
I stop and get the mail from our mailbox on the way in. If it is a short trip and we did not stop the newspaper (yes, I still get and read a newspaper) I will bring them in also.
If it is raining - the food and stuff in the last minute bag go in and not much else unless it is needed.
Now I enter the house kitchen . I have to sort what has come in - food which does not need to be in the refrigerator goes on the counter. Food that goes in the refrigerator should already have been put there by Robert. Clean clothes, laptops & similar, mail, shoes, and such are put on the stairs or adjacent to them to be taken upstairs. Jackets and such are put in the front closet - or at least over the post at the foot of the stairs in the front hall. And the pile of stuff on the table.
The stuff on the table has to be sorted - stuff to go upstairs, stuff to stay in the kitchen/dinning room, stuff for the basement, stuff for our studio - or the garage workshop. I sort them into shopping bags and try to at least get them into the room they belong in - or hang them on the door knob to outside if the item goes outside.
But of course this is just the first step. The next day I will have to go through the mail- shred the junk mail, pull out and check bills, collect bank statements (if any) to reconcile, magazines to where they will be read, and so on. We will also go to the Post Office and pick up the mail which has accumulated in our box there, which also has to be sorted.
Food in boxes will have to be stored - I tend to do it slowly and use what is in the boxes. They are basically snacks so I use the cereal which was not used on the trip instead of storing it away, use the tea bag from the ones I brought with us, etc.
Since this was our last trip of the year that we will make with running water in the RV, I said to husband that I presume we will winterize the RV this week - he said we could wait. For those who might not understand this, in areas like this where it can get close to freezing and below it, the water pipes and valves might freeze and break. So we have to run a non-toxic anti freeze, made for this purpose for RVs and boats, through the water system. This keeps it all from freezing, but also means that we cannot use the system as that would be adding water which could freeze back in the system. Well, the not so cold weather we were having and were to have is to change by this weekend. So the winterizing must be done this week.
In addition, we needed a small closet type shed to keep our snowblower in by our side door. (It is currently in the garage workshop and not only does it take up room, but if it snow we have to shovel our way to the garage and clear a path in front of the garage door so a shed near the door would be very good to have.) Last year we waited too long to buy one - they have to be assembled above a certain temperature so that plastic gives and bends and does not break in the assembling. Husband kept forgetting to order one from a well known home store and finally decided this was it. We wanted to order one to pick up at the store. The program would not let us as it said the store already had “one”. So we went to the store. It took about an hour and a half for them to find the shed, get someone to take it down from the top shelf (maybe 20 feet or more up), us to take it to the register and pay for it (well, husband did while I got the van), have no one come to help us load it, realize the box inside the sealed plastic was soaked, find the assistant manager again, get the other one (yes, per the computer they had one, but actually they had two), and get someone to help us load it. It then sat in our van on the driveway until we could assemble it.
Monday was too cold, Tuesday it rained. (And of course we went and voted Tuesday.)So today we assembled it - mostly. We had to get the huge box out of our van - we managed to push it so it was in the rear of the van (behind the back seat) and on a work stand and unloaded. Today was already getting colder so we took all the pieces into the garage and turned on the hanging space heaters to keep the plastic pieces warm and pliable. We moved our car to the curved part of our driveway, then backed the RV to the spot the car normally is so we would have room to work. Somehow we were able to assemble most of the shed. Husband then got ill from bending over, as he does, and had to go in and go to sleep for awhile. I finished getting the roof ready to go on - screwing parts onto the inside of the room, putting things into the body of the shed to hold the roof in place, putting the handles on the doors. (The doors were about the worse part of the assembly except...) When it was all done, I went and woke husband who after about a half hour more, was able to come out and we put the roof on - yay! The last thing which had to be done and is a problem is two metal bars have to be slid into the roof and across into the sides to hold the front end of the roof on - we got one in, then gave up and will try again tomorrow as it was getting colder and dark.
Remember he said that we don’t have to winterize this week when I said I assumed we were going to? Tomorrow we will be winterizing the RV.
Luckily when he said that we would be doing these “little chores” today and tomorrow, I managed to write checks for all bills due out on Friday and figure out how much we have to transfer into checking to cover them - it is all finished and sitting in my “out” box for Friday.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - When going on a trip - even a short, relatively local one as we take - try to be as caught up as possible before the trip. Try to plan when you will catch up on bills, other paperwork, unpacking, laundry (I am doing a week and a half’s laundry tonight and tomorrow night), and such, when you return.
For those who are Veterans or who are still on active service, Friday is Veteran’s Day here in the U.S. and is a holiday for many of those who live in the World War II allies countries (Armistice Day, Remembrance Day...) as Saturday is November 11, I thank you all for your service to your country - whether the U.S. or other. For those of you still on active service, I wish you a safe tour and return home.
Thursday, October 26, 2017
A QUICK TRIP AND I CAUGHT UP ON MY PILE OF STUFF TO DO
Well, I had a bit of a chance to catch up this past week. The pile on top of my desk which has to be done before I get to the folder of things to do, is down to scanning in articles from various issues of a magazine related to reenacting that I convinced my husband that we don’t need to keep in full. Much of these magazines are ads for items related to “the hobby”. There seems to be 3-5 articles of varying length that he wants to keep. He has gone through the magazines and circled in the table of contents those articles he wants. I am scanning in the articles here and there as I get a chance - luckily they are not in color so they scan a lot faster.
We did go away for the day last Saturday to the state sheep and wool festival. We have never been there before. It went as our trips go. The ride there was suppose to be 2 hours. Husband printed the directions from Googlemaps. He also turned on the GPS app in his cell phone. They did not always agree. The road both sent us on for most of the trip is a picturesque limited access road that curves around and through mountains. It was so curvy that husband was getting motion sickness, even though he was driving. We were pretty sure we could not go home the same way as he could not deal with the curves again - especially in the dark with no street lights. When we were towards the end of the trip there the two sets of directions varied from each other. The Googlemaps version had us get off the main road sooner than the GPS. We decided to go with the GPS and stayed on the road. All of a sudden the GPS froze. (We eventually figured out that there was no cell service there!) Now we had a problem. As we kept driving and tried to remember where the GPS said to get off the road, I saw a sign to the fairgrounds we had to go to and we exited the road. 10 miles to the fairgrounds and no further signs appeared. I had out the Googlemaps directions and kept looking for roads that were listed on it. We were approaching one and I had to calculate quickly - turn right or left? Luckily I guessed correctly and we turned right and not much further on came to the road the fairgrounds were on. Fair was okay - not a worth a trip back in the future. (Very limited weaving related items - other than wool, of course, which we could not afford - and weaving items were why husband wanted to go.) Talk about disorganized - I noticed that people had a small booklet with map and vendors in it. I walked back to the gate and asked for one - I was told that they hard run out “3 hours ago”. This means that 3 hours into the first of two days of the event (which ran 9 hours the first day) they were out of their handouts - not good planning to me. After we drove to a, yes, another Golden Corral about an hour from the fairgrounds and vaguely on the way home. Dinner was another bust and I will not bother you with the details unless someone writes and asks. Now we had to get home. I looked at the (paper) map and found that an Interstate road near the restaurant headed in the general direction of home, that connected to another major road and that just left figuring out how to get to one of 3 bridges after those two roads to get us home. I have a mapping/GPS program in my other laptop (the good one) which I had brought with me (I generally take it on trips for something just like this) and I am able to find a place by looking at and moving the map and then adding a start, end, or via point there. I did that with several points so that the route would stay where I wanted it and it had no problem getting us home. It was much a quicker trip home than the one getting to the area and straight road - no curve after curve.
Just for fun - and my luck, I did get a mailing from Equifax that I am, of course, included in their latest security breach. I tried to find out how to do all the things I need to do with them as a result, by mail as I will not put my information online and don’t trust doing it by phone. I sort of got an answer from their recorded info phone line and have sent in to them about this. Now I will also send in a request for husband as our credit info is mostly joint. Then I will be calling Trans Union and Experian to do the same with them. And I have such a unique name that I have been sure that I am the only one with it in the world - now there may be many of me if my identity is being used by others. What will happen to my 843-850 (it varies some months) credit rating now?
I wrote the newsletter for my embroidery chapter in only one afternoon - first time since we changed to this new format I was able to do so, it was common before. One member’s email is suddenly bouncing back and she did not return my phone message, so I mailed her a printed copy and asked for her new email.
I am packed, my laptop is charging, and I am going to a client tomorrow. I have written checks for bills to go out in the mail on Friday. I have calculated how much I need to transfer from savings to checking to pay the bills and have cash for a trip next week (we hope). The needed papers are in my “Friday errands” envelope. I have a deposit slip with these papers as I am due to get a check from my client tomorrow and will deposit it Friday also.
Laundry is in washer. First load about to go to the dryer when my cell phone alarm rings that it is time to go down again.
I did so well that rather than take a shower tonight in a rush at the last minute and go to bed with wet hair, I was able to take a leisurely shower before dinner. Ahhhh.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Work at what is piled up little by little, try to keep more from being added and there will be less left in your “pile” of todos.
I know my stack of todos will be piled up again soon - especially if we take a short trip next week - but sooner or later it is gone again.
Don’t eat all the Halloween candy - and check what your children eat before they do. Have a safe Halloween.
We did go away for the day last Saturday to the state sheep and wool festival. We have never been there before. It went as our trips go. The ride there was suppose to be 2 hours. Husband printed the directions from Googlemaps. He also turned on the GPS app in his cell phone. They did not always agree. The road both sent us on for most of the trip is a picturesque limited access road that curves around and through mountains. It was so curvy that husband was getting motion sickness, even though he was driving. We were pretty sure we could not go home the same way as he could not deal with the curves again - especially in the dark with no street lights. When we were towards the end of the trip there the two sets of directions varied from each other. The Googlemaps version had us get off the main road sooner than the GPS. We decided to go with the GPS and stayed on the road. All of a sudden the GPS froze. (We eventually figured out that there was no cell service there!) Now we had a problem. As we kept driving and tried to remember where the GPS said to get off the road, I saw a sign to the fairgrounds we had to go to and we exited the road. 10 miles to the fairgrounds and no further signs appeared. I had out the Googlemaps directions and kept looking for roads that were listed on it. We were approaching one and I had to calculate quickly - turn right or left? Luckily I guessed correctly and we turned right and not much further on came to the road the fairgrounds were on. Fair was okay - not a worth a trip back in the future. (Very limited weaving related items - other than wool, of course, which we could not afford - and weaving items were why husband wanted to go.) Talk about disorganized - I noticed that people had a small booklet with map and vendors in it. I walked back to the gate and asked for one - I was told that they hard run out “3 hours ago”. This means that 3 hours into the first of two days of the event (which ran 9 hours the first day) they were out of their handouts - not good planning to me. After we drove to a, yes, another Golden Corral about an hour from the fairgrounds and vaguely on the way home. Dinner was another bust and I will not bother you with the details unless someone writes and asks. Now we had to get home. I looked at the (paper) map and found that an Interstate road near the restaurant headed in the general direction of home, that connected to another major road and that just left figuring out how to get to one of 3 bridges after those two roads to get us home. I have a mapping/GPS program in my other laptop (the good one) which I had brought with me (I generally take it on trips for something just like this) and I am able to find a place by looking at and moving the map and then adding a start, end, or via point there. I did that with several points so that the route would stay where I wanted it and it had no problem getting us home. It was much a quicker trip home than the one getting to the area and straight road - no curve after curve.
Just for fun - and my luck, I did get a mailing from Equifax that I am, of course, included in their latest security breach. I tried to find out how to do all the things I need to do with them as a result, by mail as I will not put my information online and don’t trust doing it by phone. I sort of got an answer from their recorded info phone line and have sent in to them about this. Now I will also send in a request for husband as our credit info is mostly joint. Then I will be calling Trans Union and Experian to do the same with them. And I have such a unique name that I have been sure that I am the only one with it in the world - now there may be many of me if my identity is being used by others. What will happen to my 843-850 (it varies some months) credit rating now?
I wrote the newsletter for my embroidery chapter in only one afternoon - first time since we changed to this new format I was able to do so, it was common before. One member’s email is suddenly bouncing back and she did not return my phone message, so I mailed her a printed copy and asked for her new email.
I am packed, my laptop is charging, and I am going to a client tomorrow. I have written checks for bills to go out in the mail on Friday. I have calculated how much I need to transfer from savings to checking to pay the bills and have cash for a trip next week (we hope). The needed papers are in my “Friday errands” envelope. I have a deposit slip with these papers as I am due to get a check from my client tomorrow and will deposit it Friday also.
Laundry is in washer. First load about to go to the dryer when my cell phone alarm rings that it is time to go down again.
I did so well that rather than take a shower tonight in a rush at the last minute and go to bed with wet hair, I was able to take a leisurely shower before dinner. Ahhhh.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Work at what is piled up little by little, try to keep more from being added and there will be less left in your “pile” of todos.
I know my stack of todos will be piled up again soon - especially if we take a short trip next week - but sooner or later it is gone again.
Don’t eat all the Halloween candy - and check what your children eat before they do. Have a safe Halloween.
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