I had plans for tonight's post – but things come up and I almost forgot what I had planned to write about.
We were suppose to take mom back to her cancer surgeon today for a second follow up visit. I have spent part of the last two weeks getting the wellness center at mom's assisted living residence to do the blood tests requested by this and also by mom's oncologist and send the results to them. My sister who sees mom a lot more than we do as mom lives near her, had to go in and talk to the staff to get the results sent. I checked with this doctor and the blood work results were finally there – great, we could take her there today. Oh heck, I had not realized that today was Ash Wednesday when I made the appointment. Why does that matter? Well husband is Catholic and cannot eat meat today – so for lunch he had to have Wendys fish instead of his usual lunch. So? Well, often eating fried foods makes his stomach ill and we were concerned about eating lunch, then having to drive out, pick up mom, take her to the doctor, take her back to her residence and then drive home if his stomach was bad. But he figured he would be okay, but was not happy about taking mom to the doctor today.
Yesterday, the day before the appointment, I was called by the doctor's office - though they thought they were calling mom as we gave them my phone number instead – why? - you will see in a later paragraph. They wanted to move her appointment an hour earlier. Big problem. It takes, from the time we arrive at mom's residence, an hour and a half to get her to an appointment 15-30 minutes from there. We have to go up to up to her room, take the big wheels off her wheel chair (or it is terribly heavy and does not fit in the back of our car and she cannot deal with getting in out van). Stop at the wellness office for a list of her meds for the doctor (easier than trying to remember). Get her through the building to the front (only) entrance. (Mom's apartment is literally the furthest in the building – top floor, end of the hall.) We then have to sign her out of the building – and we have to sign in as we run through the lobby coming in and then again when we leave. We have found it easier to take mom to our parked car than try to get her in or out of the car in front of the building – curbs and sidewalk cuts are problems. So we have to push her – uphill – to the parking area – either together or me as too hard for husband to do. Then we have to get her into the car and stow her wheelchair. Then the drive. Then on the other end we have to park – where there is room for mom to get out into her wheelchair (we have to get her a handicapped permit so we can park in those spaces with her) and then get her into the building. This last can be very easy to do – or hard – one building was on a hill with the building at the bottom of the hill and we had trouble finding the doctor's office – out and down hill, then back up hill – with both of us pushing. Most of the doctors offices require one to sign in 15 minutes or 30 minutes before the appointment time or they cancel it. Mom's lunch is at 11:45 am. Her dinner at 4:45 pm. If I make the appointment for 2:30 - it allows us to each lunch, drive out there, pick her at 1 pm and get her to the doctor – after she has eaten lunch. Other than the “doctor with the office from h*ell” she will be back at her residence, with the big wheels back on her wheelchair and settled in, in time for her dinner. So 1:30 pm was a big problem. We compromised on 2 pm.
So now mom was going to have a problem with her lunch, husband was going to have a problem with his lunch – so I had a problem in general. Then I had a thought. I telephoned the doctor's office back and asked about moving the appointment to a different day. Doctor would have plenty of time to her surgery and not rush us, husband did not have to worry about his stomach after lunch, and mom would not miss lunch. First date offered was next Wednesday – my embroidery meeting and my only day out – no way. We settled on a date in mid March. Doctor's office happy. Husband happy. I had to call mom and let her know of the change. I had been texting my sister as I went along in case she spoke to mom before I did, she could let mom know. Mom is hard to reach, at least for me, by telephone. By the time that generally I can call her in the afternoon – she is at dinner. I figured that the best time to call was around 7:30 pm as that is when she calls me. First time I left a message – but knew she would never get it. I called another 4 times as time passed. I went down to cook dinner. Mom called, “Did you call me?” I explained. “No, I never hear that there are messages.” Huh, hear that there is a message, she has to look at the machine – and has being doing so for over 40 years. Okay, go on there from there. She remembered we suppose to go the next day and I explained about the change. Fine with her. We discussed it four times. I also told her that if my sister called and said it was to be earlier tomorrow – that was old news and changed. We did not get a call from her today asking where we were so apparently all went well with the change. Mom is 90 and a year ago I would not question that she understood and would remember the appointment and the change, but a year can make a big difference.
Next wonderfulness was our basement freezer. We have a small freezer that we bought probably 30 years ago or more (it has out lived at least 2 refrigerators, probably 3). We used to grow vegetables in our back yard in summer and would freeze the excess in this freezer. Have not done so in at least a decade and it was being used for backup frozen vegetables and meat since, until about 3 years ago when we somehow switched to buy the food for dinner that day. So it has mostly sat in the basement with some commercial frozen vegetables in it and a few other items. Last year we used it when our refrigerator died and we had some items in its freezer. It had about 4-5 inches of ice on the top coils. Husband will not let me put frozen items at the back of the freezer in the new refrigerator – he read an article that the back needs lots of space for air to circulate – so I have (somehow) a smaller freezer in this refrigerator than our old and I cannot use about 1/6-1/4 of the space in it. I figured I would melt the ice in the basement freezer so it could go back to being used – and since there was nothing in it as we used the last item stored in it about a month ago – this was the time to do it.
I knew it would take a long time and would be messy. I had a plan. I needed to remember to do this when we come home fairly early from running errands. Today was the day. We were home early and I would be making many trips to the basement at night to do laundry and could combine the trips down for both purposes. When we came home I went to the basement and shut off the freezer. I put in two large, deep baking pans – one on the right of one shelf and one on the left of the other shelf to catch the dripping water as I knew the bottom drip pan would not hold anywhere near enough and would be a mess to empty. I grabbed lots of old used for junk purposes towels and spread them in front of the freezer. I propped the door open, set an alarm for an hour and went upstairs to work. An hour later – nothing had started – reset the alarm and back upstairs. An hour later – still no melting, reset again and started to cook dinner. After dinner while watching TV in the kitchen the alarm went off again. I went back down – goody!! Two small puddles (dots) of water in one of the baking pans – it was working. I went back to the kitchen – husband asked what I was doing. I told him. He had to inspect the situation. He decided that what I was doing would never work. He was going to use his heat gun. Luckily he decided that was too hot. We sat there for a couple of hours as he melted the ice with his hairdryer. Dumping the baking pans and a couple of times the bottom drip pan into a bucket. (I have done this before – just with a lot less ice – and knew that I would not be able to carry the baking pans or the drip pan to the sink without spilling. Finally the last big piece of ice was loose and fell free. After dumping the last of the water and ice into the basement sink he went upstairs and I dried the inside of the freezer. It is sitting with the door ajar to dry out before being plugged back in.
Sooo, my post on doing your income taxes will be delayed until at least next week.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Plans are plans - until they go awry. Whether the appointment has to be changed for someone else's convenience or needs or what you plan to do in the house needs to be done differently than you think it will - and takes more of your time as a result, or have you plans to write something and other items come up which need to be written about first - they go awry.
One has to deal with the changes and see what can be done. If nothing else – the appointment change and the change in how we had to defrost the freezer gave me something to write about and you get out of hearing about income taxes for at least a week!
Showing posts with label pans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pans. Show all posts
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Thursday, November 30, 2017
THANKSGIVING TURNING INTO CHRISTMAS
I hope you all had a pleasant Thanksgiving (if you are here in the U.S.) last week. Did you run out to shop during the day or the night - or did you at least wait until “Black Friday” to shop? Or are you waiting still to start shopping?
We had our Thanksgiving dinner, the two of us. I managed to bang my head - not once but twice - on the corner of the dining room table while putting away a table cover which should have been put away months and months ago - I bent over to put it in a bag and hit my head. I really screamed. Husband came in, “are you okay, and there, there’d” me and then gave me a lecture on making sure it was clear in front of me before bending over. He went back to cooking in the kitchen and I took 2 steps back and bent over again to put away the cover. I hit my head again on the same corner and same spot on my head - just less of the corner and got to listen to the lecture again. Worst of all it was the same spot on my head that I hit last month in our RV.
It was relatively easy to take out the china and items we needed. I had gone through the cabinet where it is all stored last year and donated a lot of items we did not need. Instead of needing to take out stacks and stacks of items, only one or two had to removed. How pleasant. I plan to work on the serving pieces stored in the living room next - I have better uses for the storage space there than bowls and platters we bought or received as gifts and have never used. Hmm, maybe I can finally get husband to hang two handled cups from when we were each a kid that match which are stored in the living room. He had the juice cup, I had the orange juice cup - but they match. They must have been popular cups for children back then.
The turkey had directions on it - basically we were to cook it at 325F, when the little popper popped we should test the breast with a thermometer and make sure it was at least 180F. There were also instructions to tent the turkey with foil and then remove same, and brush will oil a few times. Also on the turkey wrapping was a list of times to cook the turkey - only this said for a turkey cooked at 350F - 25 degrees higher than the instructions said to cook at. We discussed this - for a quite awhile. In the back of my head it seemed to me that I remember the same problem with the turkey from the same place last year, but could not remember what I did. We cooked it at the 325F with the logic that it could always be cooked more, but cooked not be cooked less if it was overcooked. About a half hour longer than the chart said (for cooking at 350F) the popper popped and I checked the turkey breast with a thermometer and it was 180F and rising. We took the turkey out and set it aside on the kitchen table to “set”.
In the interim we finished cooking other food items and had our soup. Husband then went to carve the turkey. The turkey breast looked wonderful as he carved into it - but as he went beyond the breast - the turkey was terribly undercooked. He finished carving the breast - moving it to another platter to do so. He then cut up the rest of the turkey - wings, legs, dark meat - and we placed it all on two oven trays to heat it further. I ended up with the 2 extra trays and 2 extra platters as a result of all this. We are not sure what went wrong - should we have cooked it at 350F instead? But the popper popped and it was the correct temperature on the thermometer. Husband has written a letter to the supermarket’s owner (this is one of those of stores where the owner’s photo is all off and he does the ads himself and is actually involved in his company day to day) asking what happened.
The dishes and all were washed Thanksgiving night. I have put all away. When I put my large platter back in the basement, I took out my “everyday” Christmas dishes and glasses. I washed them and we are using them. I move some of my normal everyday dishes higher in the cabinet - where I can’t normally reach stuff - to make room for these to fit in.
We had the leftover turkey etc for the second set of leftovers tonight. There is at least one dinner’s worth of turkey left - but that is all. It will either be eaten early next week or will be frozen.
We do not go shopping on Thanksgiving. We don’t go out for Black Friday sales either. Okay, one time husband wanted a small laptop that was going on Black Friday sale at a chain electronics store and we went and waited in line for it. He did get the laptop, but then again, it was still on sale at the same price - and in stock - the following week. It was not worth standing in line in the freezing cold. This store was rather well organized. There was a line. Items which were limited had coupons for them handed out to people by employees walking along the line, so the coupons were handed out to people based on where they were in line.
We have many times, including this year, while out on Friday to have lunch (at Wendys of course) and run errands gone past empty looking stores and malls by the time we went out. I had needed to renew a medication at the Walmart pharmacy and figured it would be ready over the weekend, but we were called Friday afternoon that it was ready decided to see how bad the crowds were. It was empty! Items which had been put out late Wednesday sealed up until the sales started, were still plentiful for the most part - husband started rooting through the DVDs. We have been in Walmarts again since then and still sale items are still in their displays - either less people came in than they thought would do so, or they intended for the sale items to be available long beyond last Friday.
When we woke up today I noticed the temperature was 61F - 61! I pointed this out to husband and suggested that today was the day to put up our outdoor Christmas decorations. He agreed. We checked our box at the post office, had lunch at Wendys and came home. We keep our outdoor decorations on a platform in the top of the garage. We used to have everything there for Christmas, but as we have aged and it is not that easy for husband to climb on a ladder and get everything - much is heavy - down, I moved the rest into our basement. He can now stand on his worktable (after clearing it off enough) and get the, only, two boxes of lights and wires, three potted artificial poinsettia, and 3 light up candy canes down. No more balancing on a ladder to hand me things. Much safer. We have some wreaths, swags, and such in our shed, but are not putting them up any longer - maybe again in the future.
We put the poinsettia in the same stands that hold our flowers the rest of the year. Husband made these poinsettia in pots. We bought artificial poinsettia which could go outside in the weather and 3 pots to fit the holders. He then bought a couple of cans of spray insulation - the kind that is a foam and expands to fit what it is in. He filled the pots and we added a poinsettia to each. The foam was topped with fake greens and they look great. 5 minutes and they are out in place.
We put lights on our bushes and a dwarf spruce tree. (The dwarf tree is now over 6 ft tall, I am so glad that I talked him out of a full size one.) Of course two set of lights did not work when tested - one of the ones which goes on the bushes and one that is red and white and goes around the white plastic pillar of our mailbox a bit of a candy cane look. We have in the boxes with the lights two electric boxes which stick into the ground. One is placed on one side of the front of our house and the other is placed on the other side of the front of our house. A long flat outdoor extension cord is plugged into the outdoor outlet and run across the front of the house, over the top of the stairs (under the door mat so no one trips) and the electric box on the side away from the outlet is plugged into it - and then the lights are plugged into the electric box. The electric box on the side of the house near the outlet is plugged into the other outlet in the wall box and the lights on that side of the front of the house plug into it.
After we put out and plugged in the lights that worked, we drove to Walmart to buy replacement. No white and red lights - no red lights on their own. We came back, put up the new light set on the bush that was short a set. Husband then took the red and white set into the garage, plugged it in and started shaking it. One half started working. So we wrapped the lit half of the strand around the mail box pillar and dropped the rest on the ground.
The wreath we bought last year for the front door was in the basement with the rest of the “in the house” decorations. The former one was decorated by husband as a copy of one we saw and liked at Colonial Williamsburg - only we used plastic fruit instead of real fruit so we could keep reusing it. The problem is that it had to hung on the outside of the storm door as it did not fit between the door and storm door - this involved annually rigging strands of fishing line around screws in the storm door and trying to adjust it so we could still see through the peep hole of the door - and remember we both on the short side. The new wreath has lights on it - lit by batteries with a timer so it is on for 6 hours every night at the same on and off time. Went up in less than 20 minutes with a magnetic hook on the door - and it is out of the weather, unlike the old wreath which if got covered snow might break free and fall.
So our house now looks presentable to the world. Husband is still trying to figure out where we could put one of those projector decorations - but the front of our house is just not set up for it.
Notice that because fixed place for the Christmas decorations in the garage and plastic boxes to hold the lights, wires, and plug in boxes for them, as well as an assigned spot in the basement to hold the Christmas decorations, it was easy and quick to find everything and put it out. The empty boxes in the garage were stacked on each other with the bags that the lights were kept in stored inside, relatively out of the way so that when we go to take down the lights - they will be easy to find again and then they will be put back up in garage along with poinsettia and the candy canes so that next week we will find them again.
Sometime next week I will put away my few Thanksgiving decorations in the house and then I will start putting out the Christmas ones. This year the holidays seem to be going okay.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
As you take out your holiday decorations and other items try to leave the packing in a way that it will be easy to find and put everything away after the holiday. If it is all a mess - try to figure out while you unpack items how you can better store them away at the end of the season to make them either to access next year, while not being in your way all year.
We had our Thanksgiving dinner, the two of us. I managed to bang my head - not once but twice - on the corner of the dining room table while putting away a table cover which should have been put away months and months ago - I bent over to put it in a bag and hit my head. I really screamed. Husband came in, “are you okay, and there, there’d” me and then gave me a lecture on making sure it was clear in front of me before bending over. He went back to cooking in the kitchen and I took 2 steps back and bent over again to put away the cover. I hit my head again on the same corner and same spot on my head - just less of the corner and got to listen to the lecture again. Worst of all it was the same spot on my head that I hit last month in our RV.
It was relatively easy to take out the china and items we needed. I had gone through the cabinet where it is all stored last year and donated a lot of items we did not need. Instead of needing to take out stacks and stacks of items, only one or two had to removed. How pleasant. I plan to work on the serving pieces stored in the living room next - I have better uses for the storage space there than bowls and platters we bought or received as gifts and have never used. Hmm, maybe I can finally get husband to hang two handled cups from when we were each a kid that match which are stored in the living room. He had the juice cup, I had the orange juice cup - but they match. They must have been popular cups for children back then.
The turkey had directions on it - basically we were to cook it at 325F, when the little popper popped we should test the breast with a thermometer and make sure it was at least 180F. There were also instructions to tent the turkey with foil and then remove same, and brush will oil a few times. Also on the turkey wrapping was a list of times to cook the turkey - only this said for a turkey cooked at 350F - 25 degrees higher than the instructions said to cook at. We discussed this - for a quite awhile. In the back of my head it seemed to me that I remember the same problem with the turkey from the same place last year, but could not remember what I did. We cooked it at the 325F with the logic that it could always be cooked more, but cooked not be cooked less if it was overcooked. About a half hour longer than the chart said (for cooking at 350F) the popper popped and I checked the turkey breast with a thermometer and it was 180F and rising. We took the turkey out and set it aside on the kitchen table to “set”.
In the interim we finished cooking other food items and had our soup. Husband then went to carve the turkey. The turkey breast looked wonderful as he carved into it - but as he went beyond the breast - the turkey was terribly undercooked. He finished carving the breast - moving it to another platter to do so. He then cut up the rest of the turkey - wings, legs, dark meat - and we placed it all on two oven trays to heat it further. I ended up with the 2 extra trays and 2 extra platters as a result of all this. We are not sure what went wrong - should we have cooked it at 350F instead? But the popper popped and it was the correct temperature on the thermometer. Husband has written a letter to the supermarket’s owner (this is one of those of stores where the owner’s photo is all off and he does the ads himself and is actually involved in his company day to day) asking what happened.
The dishes and all were washed Thanksgiving night. I have put all away. When I put my large platter back in the basement, I took out my “everyday” Christmas dishes and glasses. I washed them and we are using them. I move some of my normal everyday dishes higher in the cabinet - where I can’t normally reach stuff - to make room for these to fit in.
We had the leftover turkey etc for the second set of leftovers tonight. There is at least one dinner’s worth of turkey left - but that is all. It will either be eaten early next week or will be frozen.
We do not go shopping on Thanksgiving. We don’t go out for Black Friday sales either. Okay, one time husband wanted a small laptop that was going on Black Friday sale at a chain electronics store and we went and waited in line for it. He did get the laptop, but then again, it was still on sale at the same price - and in stock - the following week. It was not worth standing in line in the freezing cold. This store was rather well organized. There was a line. Items which were limited had coupons for them handed out to people by employees walking along the line, so the coupons were handed out to people based on where they were in line.
We have many times, including this year, while out on Friday to have lunch (at Wendys of course) and run errands gone past empty looking stores and malls by the time we went out. I had needed to renew a medication at the Walmart pharmacy and figured it would be ready over the weekend, but we were called Friday afternoon that it was ready decided to see how bad the crowds were. It was empty! Items which had been put out late Wednesday sealed up until the sales started, were still plentiful for the most part - husband started rooting through the DVDs. We have been in Walmarts again since then and still sale items are still in their displays - either less people came in than they thought would do so, or they intended for the sale items to be available long beyond last Friday.
When we woke up today I noticed the temperature was 61F - 61! I pointed this out to husband and suggested that today was the day to put up our outdoor Christmas decorations. He agreed. We checked our box at the post office, had lunch at Wendys and came home. We keep our outdoor decorations on a platform in the top of the garage. We used to have everything there for Christmas, but as we have aged and it is not that easy for husband to climb on a ladder and get everything - much is heavy - down, I moved the rest into our basement. He can now stand on his worktable (after clearing it off enough) and get the, only, two boxes of lights and wires, three potted artificial poinsettia, and 3 light up candy canes down. No more balancing on a ladder to hand me things. Much safer. We have some wreaths, swags, and such in our shed, but are not putting them up any longer - maybe again in the future.
We put the poinsettia in the same stands that hold our flowers the rest of the year. Husband made these poinsettia in pots. We bought artificial poinsettia which could go outside in the weather and 3 pots to fit the holders. He then bought a couple of cans of spray insulation - the kind that is a foam and expands to fit what it is in. He filled the pots and we added a poinsettia to each. The foam was topped with fake greens and they look great. 5 minutes and they are out in place.
We put lights on our bushes and a dwarf spruce tree. (The dwarf tree is now over 6 ft tall, I am so glad that I talked him out of a full size one.) Of course two set of lights did not work when tested - one of the ones which goes on the bushes and one that is red and white and goes around the white plastic pillar of our mailbox a bit of a candy cane look. We have in the boxes with the lights two electric boxes which stick into the ground. One is placed on one side of the front of our house and the other is placed on the other side of the front of our house. A long flat outdoor extension cord is plugged into the outdoor outlet and run across the front of the house, over the top of the stairs (under the door mat so no one trips) and the electric box on the side away from the outlet is plugged into it - and then the lights are plugged into the electric box. The electric box on the side of the house near the outlet is plugged into the other outlet in the wall box and the lights on that side of the front of the house plug into it.
After we put out and plugged in the lights that worked, we drove to Walmart to buy replacement. No white and red lights - no red lights on their own. We came back, put up the new light set on the bush that was short a set. Husband then took the red and white set into the garage, plugged it in and started shaking it. One half started working. So we wrapped the lit half of the strand around the mail box pillar and dropped the rest on the ground.
The wreath we bought last year for the front door was in the basement with the rest of the “in the house” decorations. The former one was decorated by husband as a copy of one we saw and liked at Colonial Williamsburg - only we used plastic fruit instead of real fruit so we could keep reusing it. The problem is that it had to hung on the outside of the storm door as it did not fit between the door and storm door - this involved annually rigging strands of fishing line around screws in the storm door and trying to adjust it so we could still see through the peep hole of the door - and remember we both on the short side. The new wreath has lights on it - lit by batteries with a timer so it is on for 6 hours every night at the same on and off time. Went up in less than 20 minutes with a magnetic hook on the door - and it is out of the weather, unlike the old wreath which if got covered snow might break free and fall.
So our house now looks presentable to the world. Husband is still trying to figure out where we could put one of those projector decorations - but the front of our house is just not set up for it.
Notice that because fixed place for the Christmas decorations in the garage and plastic boxes to hold the lights, wires, and plug in boxes for them, as well as an assigned spot in the basement to hold the Christmas decorations, it was easy and quick to find everything and put it out. The empty boxes in the garage were stacked on each other with the bags that the lights were kept in stored inside, relatively out of the way so that when we go to take down the lights - they will be easy to find again and then they will be put back up in garage along with poinsettia and the candy canes so that next week we will find them again.
Sometime next week I will put away my few Thanksgiving decorations in the house and then I will start putting out the Christmas ones. This year the holidays seem to be going okay.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
As you take out your holiday decorations and other items try to leave the packing in a way that it will be easy to find and put everything away after the holiday. If it is all a mess - try to figure out while you unpack items how you can better store them away at the end of the season to make them either to access next year, while not being in your way all year.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
DIFFERENT METHODS OF ORGANIZING FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE
We are all different. A statement of fact. As a result our problems with organizing and clutter as well as how we try to deal with them are different. Our “stuff” is different.
What anyone says to do to deal with organizing/decluttering problems may or may not work for you as a result. I read one book which gave “what one needs to keep” and one should get rid of everything else. As I read the book I thought of the expensive of going out and buying the items the author, a noted professional organizer, said I should have. Yes, if I followed this book I would have to go and buy things I did not have or want because the author listed these items as what one needed - she never did get around to dealing with anything I have excess of and I certainly would not go out and buy more clothes and shoes or pots and pans to match her list!
Those of us with organizing and clutter problems did not get these problems overnight and will not get rid of them overnight. What I have is the result of almost 37 years of marriage plus 26 years of my life before that plus 27 years of my husband’s life before our marriage. 60 plus years of stuff is not going to be resolved in a month!
I tend to work in fits and starts. I get one section of the house finished and when I am ready to move on to the next part of the house, something comes up - family illness, death, bed bugs, vacation, cold weather, hot weather... Or something causes an excess of stuff to accumulate for a particular project. Currently projects which are all first on my list is to finish organizing our studio - it was pulled apart for the bed bug treatment in 2009 and I finally started putting it back together, better than before, but then we needed a new dresser for storage (this is craft supplies I am talking about storing) and it took a while to find one which fit the space available and the items to go in it, almost immediately after we found one, we had mice in the adjacent kitchen and all sorts of items were stored in front of the new dresser in the studio - but I finally got most of the kitchen stuff back in the kitchen and need to work on the studio - right away - priority one. Oh, but then I have to finish a tax return for our business, clean out the folders from last year which had items only needed related to that year - which means I have to go through a box of papers from 10 years ago and shred what it is in, so that I have a box to store last year’s papers in - priority one. Oh, and I had to pull out a few folders of instructions and warranty papers to look for something for my husband and rather than try to fit it all back in, I am scanning in much of the papers as I have been planning to do and tossing out what has been scanned - I will only keep large instruction manuals and major (such as the siding, windows and roof) warranties - priority one. Plus of course one has to keep up with day to day matters.
People also work differently at projects. Some people like to do a project all the way through and work on nothing else. Others do part and then return to do the rest - often in more part sessions. Still others try to do everything at once (the dreaded multi-tasking)
I, myself, work in a combination of these techniques depending on what I am doing and my time constraints. My latest crazy idea is to scan the warranty and instruction papers into the computer, while simultaneously working on regular matters on the computer. I wondered why I never used my laptop for scanning - then I remembered, I had no scanning software in it. I went to download a freeware program which I use on my desktop and my laptop decided that it’s firewall and it’s virus protection both needed to be, separately updated. I finally got all that done and downloaded the scanning software.
I have an “all in one” and to load pages into the flat top to scan I need to get up and walk around the back of my computer to the scanner. This means that I run around, put in a page, run back to my desk, hit the button to scan and then turn to my desktop computer and work for about 2 seconds and then repeat. What I did figure out after the first day of doing this (yes, there has been a second day and a third day of doing this) was to put my laptop on an adjacent printer next to the flat bed scanner - I have to go there to put the page to be scanned in anyway and this way my desk is not taken up with the laptop and I have room to do other things - in 2 second bursts.
Does this work? Sort of. I have managed to scan in a good deal of papers. I also managed to do a number of bank reconciliations for us and organizations I am treasurer of, check email, deal with renewals for a club I am in, make a revised membership list for another club, pay 2 bills and post them to Quickbooks, help husband with something he uses Quickbooks for on his computer, and do my regular backups - and backup the drive with the papers I am scanning after I finish them for the day. If I did the stuff separately would it be done in the same time? I don’t know, but I do know that if I was to sit and scan stuff in I would be bored, this way at least I am not bored. I am also getting exercise running back and forth around my computer desk. I also am doing some of the work on my desktop computer standing up and that is suppose to be healthier.
How do you prefer to work on organizing and decluttering?
What anyone says to do to deal with organizing/decluttering problems may or may not work for you as a result. I read one book which gave “what one needs to keep” and one should get rid of everything else. As I read the book I thought of the expensive of going out and buying the items the author, a noted professional organizer, said I should have. Yes, if I followed this book I would have to go and buy things I did not have or want because the author listed these items as what one needed - she never did get around to dealing with anything I have excess of and I certainly would not go out and buy more clothes and shoes or pots and pans to match her list!
Those of us with organizing and clutter problems did not get these problems overnight and will not get rid of them overnight. What I have is the result of almost 37 years of marriage plus 26 years of my life before that plus 27 years of my husband’s life before our marriage. 60 plus years of stuff is not going to be resolved in a month!
I tend to work in fits and starts. I get one section of the house finished and when I am ready to move on to the next part of the house, something comes up - family illness, death, bed bugs, vacation, cold weather, hot weather... Or something causes an excess of stuff to accumulate for a particular project. Currently projects which are all first on my list is to finish organizing our studio - it was pulled apart for the bed bug treatment in 2009 and I finally started putting it back together, better than before, but then we needed a new dresser for storage (this is craft supplies I am talking about storing) and it took a while to find one which fit the space available and the items to go in it, almost immediately after we found one, we had mice in the adjacent kitchen and all sorts of items were stored in front of the new dresser in the studio - but I finally got most of the kitchen stuff back in the kitchen and need to work on the studio - right away - priority one. Oh, but then I have to finish a tax return for our business, clean out the folders from last year which had items only needed related to that year - which means I have to go through a box of papers from 10 years ago and shred what it is in, so that I have a box to store last year’s papers in - priority one. Oh, and I had to pull out a few folders of instructions and warranty papers to look for something for my husband and rather than try to fit it all back in, I am scanning in much of the papers as I have been planning to do and tossing out what has been scanned - I will only keep large instruction manuals and major (such as the siding, windows and roof) warranties - priority one. Plus of course one has to keep up with day to day matters.
People also work differently at projects. Some people like to do a project all the way through and work on nothing else. Others do part and then return to do the rest - often in more part sessions. Still others try to do everything at once (the dreaded multi-tasking)
I, myself, work in a combination of these techniques depending on what I am doing and my time constraints. My latest crazy idea is to scan the warranty and instruction papers into the computer, while simultaneously working on regular matters on the computer. I wondered why I never used my laptop for scanning - then I remembered, I had no scanning software in it. I went to download a freeware program which I use on my desktop and my laptop decided that it’s firewall and it’s virus protection both needed to be, separately updated. I finally got all that done and downloaded the scanning software.
I have an “all in one” and to load pages into the flat top to scan I need to get up and walk around the back of my computer to the scanner. This means that I run around, put in a page, run back to my desk, hit the button to scan and then turn to my desktop computer and work for about 2 seconds and then repeat. What I did figure out after the first day of doing this (yes, there has been a second day and a third day of doing this) was to put my laptop on an adjacent printer next to the flat bed scanner - I have to go there to put the page to be scanned in anyway and this way my desk is not taken up with the laptop and I have room to do other things - in 2 second bursts.
Does this work? Sort of. I have managed to scan in a good deal of papers. I also managed to do a number of bank reconciliations for us and organizations I am treasurer of, check email, deal with renewals for a club I am in, make a revised membership list for another club, pay 2 bills and post them to Quickbooks, help husband with something he uses Quickbooks for on his computer, and do my regular backups - and backup the drive with the papers I am scanning after I finish them for the day. If I did the stuff separately would it be done in the same time? I don’t know, but I do know that if I was to sit and scan stuff in I would be bored, this way at least I am not bored. I am also getting exercise running back and forth around my computer desk. I also am doing some of the work on my desktop computer standing up and that is suppose to be healthier.
How do you prefer to work on organizing and decluttering?
Thursday, April 14, 2016
PROCRASTINATION AND CLEANING UP
I finished our tax return yesterday and I only have left extensions for 1 of my clients to prepare. I would say I finished record early, but my practice has gotten so small, that it is easy to be finished earlier. Have you finished your tax return? If not file for an extension of time to file, but make sure you have paid enough to cover the amount of your taxes, as it is not an extension of time to pay. Oh, and this year the Federal returns and many, if not all, state returns are not due until April 18 - two states not until April 19! Okay, I know, enough with taxes already.
Now, on to today’s subject. Keeping up with what you are doing. I am a major procrastinator. I know many other people with organizing or clutter problems are also procrastinators. I try to keep up with what I am doing and clean up from what I am doing right after I do it. I am on several Yahoo groups about organizing and someone on one of the groups was talking about having to wash the dishes - apparently there are stacks of dirty dishes. It reminded me of a children’s book when I was young - The Man Who Did Not Wash His Dishes. It is, of course about a man who does not wash his dishes as he uses them and by the end of the book he is using soap dishes to eat out of and ends up piling all his dishes on his truck and leaving them out in the rain. (Obviously the book was enough of an explanation of why one needs to do their dishes on a regular basis that some 55 years later I still remember it.)
Our dishwasher died several years ago (the machine, not a person). I went out looking for a new one. I am a cheap person and looked at dishwashers towards the bottom of the middle of the range of dishwashers. I was not seeing ones that did what I wanted them to do. Finally I saw it - a dishwasher with tines which looked far enough apart for my ceramic dishes, a timer to start it, the silverware basket was in sections so I did not have to use the entire basket and waste space for a few pieces of silverware and the tines folded down for putting in pots. Even better ,when I pulled the bottom rack out it did not fall off the track and need to be picked up and put back in place (there is major company highly recommended and when we looked at their dishwashers the bottom rack did not stay on the track and had to be picked up and put back on - try that with it loaded with dishes and pots!) Then I saw the problem with my dream dishwasher - it was almost twice the price of the others. I was not in a rush to buy one and we kept looking. I had just about decided to spend the extra money for the one I liked and then I checked reviews - it came in dead last on one major reviewer! So now I was really confused. I read further online and found out that there is a problem with the dishwashers being made and they do not clean and do not dry. So over my husband’s protests (imagine a husband who wants his wife to spend money - that’s how cheap I am) I decided I did not need to replace the dishwasher. After all it is not a refrigerator or a stove, I can wash the dishes by hand. He protested this idea with the comment - “Wash them every day? You can’t do that.” I reminded him that the first 9 years we were married and living in an apartment I did that. He swore we had a dishwasher in the apartment until I asked where it was and he realized we had not had one.
So now I wash the dishes (and pots and pans, and bowls and glasses and tablewear and cooking utensils and serving pieces) by hand. I figured out it takes me about the same time to wash them and put them in a rack to dry as it did to load the dishwasher. When I started washing them by hand I used a dish rack next to the sink to let them dry. After we had mice I started using the dead dishwasher as a drying rack as everything is safely inside and unexposed while drying.
So I suggested to the person on Yahoo who was having a problem with her dishes that it might be easier to wash the dishes after each time they were used. I explained that after we have lunch I wash the 2 plates, 2 drinking glasses, and (generally) 2 knives and a spoon from lunch. This takes perhaps 5 minutes and then we are free to do whatever we need to do in the afternoon and the dishes are finished with.
After dinner we watch TV in the kitchen (well, we watch it during dinner also as we eat on the late side, around 8 pm). I read the newspaper while the TV is on and when I am done with the newspaper I wash the dishes. Pots, pans (my major pan for cooking is a cast iron skillet - it has to be washed by hand anyway), silverware, dinner dishes, soup bowls and plates, salad bowl, sometimes a gravy boat or small pitcher or a serving bowl or platter. Notice I did not wash the drinking glasses this time. We use them during the evening and for late night snack, so I leave them on the table. This takes about 20 minutes and all is done with.
Later in the evening we have our late night snack. We go to bed late and wake late, so lunch is our first meal of the day and this is our third meal of the day and substitutes for breakfast. When we are done and ready to go up to bed, I wash the glasses, cereal bowls (I told you it was a substitute for breakfast), silverware and anything else we have used. Again, it takes maybe 10 minutes to wash up. When we get up the next day I open the dishwasher “drying rack” and all is clean, dry and ready to go.
When I think about the idea of the dishwasher running for a couple of hours and using electricity, even if the new ones do use less water and electricity (which is why they apparently have problems washing and drying properly), hand washing seems like a better idea for me. I have nothing against dishwashers and will probably get one again (my husband always worries when one of us is ill about the dishes being sanitized enough without a dishwasher), so don’t think that this is a screed against them. It is a suggestion to keep current on washing dishes, etc. to make it easier to keep your kitchen clean and neat.
The person I posted this to replied that “I guess it is a good idea to wash the dishes as we use them. It would be easier.” I sort of hope that this is not someone who is stuck eating out of soap dishes and will have to take their dishes out to the car when it rains to get them cleaned.
Dirty dishes (etc) have other problems too - they will attract bugs and mice, but this idea works for other problems also. Take taxes (sorry, I guess I am mentioning them again) - when I finish a tax return I assemble all of the papers to go back to a client and staple the stack together. I write up the instructions, cover letter, invoice (you didn’t think I did it for fun did you? Well I do like filling in forms, but...) and put it all together to mail to the client, put it in the envelope, put a mailing label on the envelope, seal it up and put it where I keep the outgoing mail. (If the envelope is too big I have a card which says “Mail in bag” and I put that in with the outgoing mail and put the large piece in the bag used to carry the mail to the post office so I remember it.) I also gather together all of the papers which I want to keep for my records - a copy of the return, information notes I made, copies of some forms the client received, information the client wrote and sent to me, etc. I scan them into the computer and save the file to a “Current Clients” file and then staple the papers together and put them in my “to file” box. This way I have a hard copy to work from next year and permanent copy on the computer (of which I will make several backups which are kept in different places and on different media). I shred last year’s return’s hard copy as it was also stored on the computer last year. This way everything which needs to be sent to the client is done and everything I need to keep for myself is done. No lost papers.
After a craft project I try to clear up from it. I store any usable supplies left over, throw out what is not usable or too small an amount to used, and put the finished piece where it will be or where it will be held until it goes somewhere else (gifts, exhibitions, items to be sold).
So give it a try. Yes, I know you have heard it before, when you finish with something don’t leave it lying about - clean up! Each time you clean up as you finish or as you go there is that much less which will be needed to do something with in the future. Sometimes it even encourages me to clean up something else related - if I am putting away left over embroidery floss (thread) from a project and I see some other floss about or scissors or needles - I put them away too. The less new clutter, the easier to clear the old clutter bit by bit.
Now, on to today’s subject. Keeping up with what you are doing. I am a major procrastinator. I know many other people with organizing or clutter problems are also procrastinators. I try to keep up with what I am doing and clean up from what I am doing right after I do it. I am on several Yahoo groups about organizing and someone on one of the groups was talking about having to wash the dishes - apparently there are stacks of dirty dishes. It reminded me of a children’s book when I was young - The Man Who Did Not Wash His Dishes. It is, of course about a man who does not wash his dishes as he uses them and by the end of the book he is using soap dishes to eat out of and ends up piling all his dishes on his truck and leaving them out in the rain. (Obviously the book was enough of an explanation of why one needs to do their dishes on a regular basis that some 55 years later I still remember it.)
Our dishwasher died several years ago (the machine, not a person). I went out looking for a new one. I am a cheap person and looked at dishwashers towards the bottom of the middle of the range of dishwashers. I was not seeing ones that did what I wanted them to do. Finally I saw it - a dishwasher with tines which looked far enough apart for my ceramic dishes, a timer to start it, the silverware basket was in sections so I did not have to use the entire basket and waste space for a few pieces of silverware and the tines folded down for putting in pots. Even better ,when I pulled the bottom rack out it did not fall off the track and need to be picked up and put back in place (there is major company highly recommended and when we looked at their dishwashers the bottom rack did not stay on the track and had to be picked up and put back on - try that with it loaded with dishes and pots!) Then I saw the problem with my dream dishwasher - it was almost twice the price of the others. I was not in a rush to buy one and we kept looking. I had just about decided to spend the extra money for the one I liked and then I checked reviews - it came in dead last on one major reviewer! So now I was really confused. I read further online and found out that there is a problem with the dishwashers being made and they do not clean and do not dry. So over my husband’s protests (imagine a husband who wants his wife to spend money - that’s how cheap I am) I decided I did not need to replace the dishwasher. After all it is not a refrigerator or a stove, I can wash the dishes by hand. He protested this idea with the comment - “Wash them every day? You can’t do that.” I reminded him that the first 9 years we were married and living in an apartment I did that. He swore we had a dishwasher in the apartment until I asked where it was and he realized we had not had one.
So now I wash the dishes (and pots and pans, and bowls and glasses and tablewear and cooking utensils and serving pieces) by hand. I figured out it takes me about the same time to wash them and put them in a rack to dry as it did to load the dishwasher. When I started washing them by hand I used a dish rack next to the sink to let them dry. After we had mice I started using the dead dishwasher as a drying rack as everything is safely inside and unexposed while drying.
So I suggested to the person on Yahoo who was having a problem with her dishes that it might be easier to wash the dishes after each time they were used. I explained that after we have lunch I wash the 2 plates, 2 drinking glasses, and (generally) 2 knives and a spoon from lunch. This takes perhaps 5 minutes and then we are free to do whatever we need to do in the afternoon and the dishes are finished with.
After dinner we watch TV in the kitchen (well, we watch it during dinner also as we eat on the late side, around 8 pm). I read the newspaper while the TV is on and when I am done with the newspaper I wash the dishes. Pots, pans (my major pan for cooking is a cast iron skillet - it has to be washed by hand anyway), silverware, dinner dishes, soup bowls and plates, salad bowl, sometimes a gravy boat or small pitcher or a serving bowl or platter. Notice I did not wash the drinking glasses this time. We use them during the evening and for late night snack, so I leave them on the table. This takes about 20 minutes and all is done with.
Later in the evening we have our late night snack. We go to bed late and wake late, so lunch is our first meal of the day and this is our third meal of the day and substitutes for breakfast. When we are done and ready to go up to bed, I wash the glasses, cereal bowls (I told you it was a substitute for breakfast), silverware and anything else we have used. Again, it takes maybe 10 minutes to wash up. When we get up the next day I open the dishwasher “drying rack” and all is clean, dry and ready to go.
When I think about the idea of the dishwasher running for a couple of hours and using electricity, even if the new ones do use less water and electricity (which is why they apparently have problems washing and drying properly), hand washing seems like a better idea for me. I have nothing against dishwashers and will probably get one again (my husband always worries when one of us is ill about the dishes being sanitized enough without a dishwasher), so don’t think that this is a screed against them. It is a suggestion to keep current on washing dishes, etc. to make it easier to keep your kitchen clean and neat.
The person I posted this to replied that “I guess it is a good idea to wash the dishes as we use them. It would be easier.” I sort of hope that this is not someone who is stuck eating out of soap dishes and will have to take their dishes out to the car when it rains to get them cleaned.
Dirty dishes (etc) have other problems too - they will attract bugs and mice, but this idea works for other problems also. Take taxes (sorry, I guess I am mentioning them again) - when I finish a tax return I assemble all of the papers to go back to a client and staple the stack together. I write up the instructions, cover letter, invoice (you didn’t think I did it for fun did you? Well I do like filling in forms, but...) and put it all together to mail to the client, put it in the envelope, put a mailing label on the envelope, seal it up and put it where I keep the outgoing mail. (If the envelope is too big I have a card which says “Mail in bag” and I put that in with the outgoing mail and put the large piece in the bag used to carry the mail to the post office so I remember it.) I also gather together all of the papers which I want to keep for my records - a copy of the return, information notes I made, copies of some forms the client received, information the client wrote and sent to me, etc. I scan them into the computer and save the file to a “Current Clients” file and then staple the papers together and put them in my “to file” box. This way I have a hard copy to work from next year and permanent copy on the computer (of which I will make several backups which are kept in different places and on different media). I shred last year’s return’s hard copy as it was also stored on the computer last year. This way everything which needs to be sent to the client is done and everything I need to keep for myself is done. No lost papers.
After a craft project I try to clear up from it. I store any usable supplies left over, throw out what is not usable or too small an amount to used, and put the finished piece where it will be or where it will be held until it goes somewhere else (gifts, exhibitions, items to be sold).
So give it a try. Yes, I know you have heard it before, when you finish with something don’t leave it lying about - clean up! Each time you clean up as you finish or as you go there is that much less which will be needed to do something with in the future. Sometimes it even encourages me to clean up something else related - if I am putting away left over embroidery floss (thread) from a project and I see some other floss about or scissors or needles - I put them away too. The less new clutter, the easier to clear the old clutter bit by bit.
Thursday, November 26, 2015
THANKSGIVING AND OTHER HOLIDAYS
A step aside from the kitchen, well, a little bit. With (American) Thanksgiving coming this week I thought I would talk about holidays and organizing. While I am talking about Thanksgiving, it applies to all large family (or even company) dinners.
I used to make Thanksgiving dinner for our families. Since I am Jewish and my husband is Roman Catholic most family type holidays are different for our two families. Thanksgiving being an American holiday which crosses religions and ethnic backgrounds was the only holiday for which both our families wanted us for dinner at the same time. For years we waffled at what to do and generally ended up going out to dinner with his family. Then one year his sister was married just before Thanksgiving. Dinner with just his parents and grandmother seemed too small. I suggested we make Thanksgiving dinner in our little apartment and invite both families. He took some convincing that we could and that we could fit everyone in our apartment. So for 25 years we did. The year we moved from our apartment to our house - in October - we still had Thanksgiving dinner here in November - on the good china and cooked by us. Depending on the year we had 10-14 people, ranging in age- at various times from 2 months old (my niece - when her brother first came he was 3 months old) to my grandfather in his mid 90's.
In the apartment we would have to move stuff into the bathtub and close the curtain and into the trunks of our cars to make enough clear space for the dinner, especially when we were running a crafts business in the apartment (finished goods to the car trunks...). We would take my small electric clothes dryer put it in the corner of the living room and put a table cloth on it and use it for server for cheese and crackers and soda - so it was not in the way and we had the top to use. The small washer had to be shoved in the corner of the kitchen to be out of the way.
My mom would make family dinners for holidays and I learned to organize the meal from her. We cheated and had the turkey cooked by a local deli (and later their not so local related deli when the one near us closed). My sister and her family were nice enough to pick it up for us on their way here - it was a hot pickup on Thanksgiving in midafternoon. This left our efforts and oven available for other foods.
Due to our different background our families had different foods for Thanksgiving. When people have been interviewed about what they have for Thanksgiving the answer is generally “turkey and all the trimmings”. It was only when people were questioned about “trimmings” that it came out that each area of the country, each ethnic group, and each family has a different idea of trimmings. His family, being Italian, had manicotti as a course before the turkey. My family sometimes had dinner at kosher deli, as a relative we had Thanksgiving with was kosher, and my sisters and I would order corned beef sandwiches as mom made turkey sometimes for dinner and corned beef sandwiches were much rarer to us. (The deli staff was shocked at the idea, but they were offering their full menu.) To combine our families we went with traditional American. I made Pennsylvania Dutch beef vegetable soup, mashed potatoes, Colonial Williamsburg’s recipe for sweet potatoes (no marshmallows of course), “pop open can” rolls, canned cranberry sauce, canned gravy (plus the gravy that we got with the turkey), boxed stuffing, canned pumpkin pie (the pumpkin was canned, the pie was baked by us), apple pie (crumb topping as I prefer same, also baked by me), brownies (from a mix) and vegetables. As we went along I added venetians (rainbow cookies) and the vegetables varied including green bean- wax bean-carrot mix a couple of years, and one year I made succotash as my niece had a line in the Thanksgiving performance at school “Please pass the succotash” and I thought she should know what it was.
I tried to split the shopping into 2 trips, one, the second week of the month and the other, the third week of the month. (Of course there were still midnight Wednesday night runs to the 24 hour supermarket the first few years.) Cooking started in advance. If I was making the venetians it started on Tuesday as it was a 2 day process, if not, on Wednesday when I made the soup - most of the day it was on the stove - and we baked the pies and brownies and set up the sweet potatoes to bake the next day. I knew after awhile that on Thanksgiving the white potatoes went into boil first - they were baked later and by doing them first the stove was available and they could get cold as they would be heated in the oven later. The rest followed. I preplanned which pots and baking dishes, as well as which serving bowls and pieces were to be used for each dish. I kept each year’s meal in a spiral notebook with notes for the following years. In the first few years I listed what each dish would be cooked in and served in, as the years passed I knew what I had used before and it became instinct.
Not everything went well. One early year we were making chestnut stuffing from scratch. The chestnuts had to be cooked and then shelled and peeled. Peeled? We did not know that chestnuts had a skin to be peeled inside the shell. It took hours and hours and then we just dumped them in with the skin. At one point a drinking glass fell out of the closet and broke - not only did the glass need to be cleaned up, but the chestnuts which were out at that point had to be discarded! I was near tears, but we muddled thorough and never made chestnut stuffing again - although I did think about it this year. Another year towards the beginning I decided to bake a Colonial Williamsburg recipe bread. I tried it in advanced and it came out great. The day before Thanksgiving while I was making the soup and baking, I mixed up the bread mix and put it on the back burner of the stove to let it rise “in a warm place” as I had done previously. This day the kitchen and stove were much warmer and the dough rose much more - much, much more. It rose out of the bowl and onto and into the stove! The bread ended up coming out great, but I had to stop and clean up a huge mess in mid baking/cooking. I made rolls from scratch in a later year - again the trial run was fine, but this time I had done something wrong and they did not rise. The corn muffins one year did not want to leave the muffin pans (and they would have been such cute little teddy bears too). Believe it or not with all these baking problems I am a blue ribbon winning baker at the county fair. I learned not to make anything with a cream sauce which had to be made at the last minute - too much to do in the rush of the day.
We also had one year where my niece (then in high school) had gone to a dance near us the night before Thanksgiving and we picked her up for her parents and she stayed overnight for Thanksgiving so she helped with the baking, setup and cooking. One year we were watching one of husband’s nieces, preschool age at the time, the day before Thanksgiving and I had her help me set the table.
One thing I did to make it easier was to clean as I went, yes, everyone suggests this, but it works. I had figured out back in my mom’s house when we had dinner with extended family that if we stopped leaving everything to wash after dinner was over and filled the dishwasher and ran it when full, there was much less to do after everyone else left. In our apartment and after my house dishwasher died (and I have not replaced it yet) it meant to wash when I got a sink of stuff to wash and set it aside to air dry; when I had a dishwasher I would load it as I went and start it when full - unload it when dry to have it ready to reuse.
Generally I did not get around to setting the table until late Wednesday night or on Thanksgiving day. When we first started we used 2 folding tables the length of our apartment living room. For a while when we were first in the house we had to assemble the top we made which clamped on to our kitchen table to hold everyone - eventually we got a dining room table that when open almost filled our dining room, but we could squeeze in at one end and one my sisters and a child or two children, could fit at the other end. I have been gradually clearing away items which were sitting on the dining room table and putting them where they belonged (many in our tiny RV as they came in after the last trip to be emptied and never went back out.)
Today (Wednesday) I cleared the dining room of items which needed to go the basement and we had not brought down and of additional, larger items which needed to go out to the RV. The table is open and the table cloth, napkins and the table pad are waiting for the table to be set tomorrow for the two of us. Tonight I baked a pumpkin pie (low sugar) and assembled the sweet potatoes (also made with low sugar) in a casserole for tomorrow. I am trying new instructions for the turkey which involved some preparation tonight and it is done.
Each Thanksgiving night (or any other dinner I made/make) ALL of the dishes, pots, etc. (unless a pot really needed to soak) were washed that night - not necessarily put away or dried, but washed. Pots were done last. I would use extra towels to put items on to air dry as needed. In our house I also took the tablecloth outside the house and shook it out of crumbs and it and the napkins were washed in the washer and drying in the dryer before I went to bed. In the apartment it would be shaken out and all would be in the laundry bag for the next time I did laundry. I would put everything away starting Friday and have it mostly done by Sunday (some items still being used for the leftovers).
Leftovers from the main course were put into plastic containers or zipper plastic bags immediately after the main course. Family members, including children - especially children - are wonderful for helping with this, as well as clearing the table. (Children love to help, they think they are being treated special as grownups.) Leftovers from dessert and the soup were put away after the guests left. (The leftover soup needed to cool before being put back into the refrigerator.) The garbage went out Thanksgiving night.
We all have that collection of plastic containers that accumulate. Some we bought, some came filled with something and were too good to throw away, some just appeared, but they do accumulate. Since I used more of them after Thanksgiving dinner for leftovers than at any other time during the year, in the days after Thanksgiving I would look at what was left and after making sure I had a good size assortment, I would get rid of the spares which had come filled with food (ones not paid for) and passed along any excess other ones (the ones we paid for) that were not needed. By using this time of year I knew I had plenty of plastic storage containers to use during the year and more would accumulate by the following Thanksgiving.
Recently I was discussing on an online group that Thanksgiving is the unique American holiday that is celebrated across all lines. Someone posted back that it is only those with a deity who have someone to give thanks to. I pointed out that thanks may be given to mother earth, providence, the universe, one’s family, one’s friends, one’s luck, one’s self, etc. A Happy Thanksgiving to those here in the USA. Please remember that what is for sale on “Black Friday”, “Small Business Saturday”, “Cyber Monday” or any other day is just stuff and most of us have too much of it. Remember more stuff for you or those you gift it to, is more stuff to organize and deal with and the sales are not really as great as they seem.
I used to make Thanksgiving dinner for our families. Since I am Jewish and my husband is Roman Catholic most family type holidays are different for our two families. Thanksgiving being an American holiday which crosses religions and ethnic backgrounds was the only holiday for which both our families wanted us for dinner at the same time. For years we waffled at what to do and generally ended up going out to dinner with his family. Then one year his sister was married just before Thanksgiving. Dinner with just his parents and grandmother seemed too small. I suggested we make Thanksgiving dinner in our little apartment and invite both families. He took some convincing that we could and that we could fit everyone in our apartment. So for 25 years we did. The year we moved from our apartment to our house - in October - we still had Thanksgiving dinner here in November - on the good china and cooked by us. Depending on the year we had 10-14 people, ranging in age- at various times from 2 months old (my niece - when her brother first came he was 3 months old) to my grandfather in his mid 90's.
In the apartment we would have to move stuff into the bathtub and close the curtain and into the trunks of our cars to make enough clear space for the dinner, especially when we were running a crafts business in the apartment (finished goods to the car trunks...). We would take my small electric clothes dryer put it in the corner of the living room and put a table cloth on it and use it for server for cheese and crackers and soda - so it was not in the way and we had the top to use. The small washer had to be shoved in the corner of the kitchen to be out of the way.
My mom would make family dinners for holidays and I learned to organize the meal from her. We cheated and had the turkey cooked by a local deli (and later their not so local related deli when the one near us closed). My sister and her family were nice enough to pick it up for us on their way here - it was a hot pickup on Thanksgiving in midafternoon. This left our efforts and oven available for other foods.
Due to our different background our families had different foods for Thanksgiving. When people have been interviewed about what they have for Thanksgiving the answer is generally “turkey and all the trimmings”. It was only when people were questioned about “trimmings” that it came out that each area of the country, each ethnic group, and each family has a different idea of trimmings. His family, being Italian, had manicotti as a course before the turkey. My family sometimes had dinner at kosher deli, as a relative we had Thanksgiving with was kosher, and my sisters and I would order corned beef sandwiches as mom made turkey sometimes for dinner and corned beef sandwiches were much rarer to us. (The deli staff was shocked at the idea, but they were offering their full menu.) To combine our families we went with traditional American. I made Pennsylvania Dutch beef vegetable soup, mashed potatoes, Colonial Williamsburg’s recipe for sweet potatoes (no marshmallows of course), “pop open can” rolls, canned cranberry sauce, canned gravy (plus the gravy that we got with the turkey), boxed stuffing, canned pumpkin pie (the pumpkin was canned, the pie was baked by us), apple pie (crumb topping as I prefer same, also baked by me), brownies (from a mix) and vegetables. As we went along I added venetians (rainbow cookies) and the vegetables varied including green bean- wax bean-carrot mix a couple of years, and one year I made succotash as my niece had a line in the Thanksgiving performance at school “Please pass the succotash” and I thought she should know what it was.
I tried to split the shopping into 2 trips, one, the second week of the month and the other, the third week of the month. (Of course there were still midnight Wednesday night runs to the 24 hour supermarket the first few years.) Cooking started in advance. If I was making the venetians it started on Tuesday as it was a 2 day process, if not, on Wednesday when I made the soup - most of the day it was on the stove - and we baked the pies and brownies and set up the sweet potatoes to bake the next day. I knew after awhile that on Thanksgiving the white potatoes went into boil first - they were baked later and by doing them first the stove was available and they could get cold as they would be heated in the oven later. The rest followed. I preplanned which pots and baking dishes, as well as which serving bowls and pieces were to be used for each dish. I kept each year’s meal in a spiral notebook with notes for the following years. In the first few years I listed what each dish would be cooked in and served in, as the years passed I knew what I had used before and it became instinct.
Not everything went well. One early year we were making chestnut stuffing from scratch. The chestnuts had to be cooked and then shelled and peeled. Peeled? We did not know that chestnuts had a skin to be peeled inside the shell. It took hours and hours and then we just dumped them in with the skin. At one point a drinking glass fell out of the closet and broke - not only did the glass need to be cleaned up, but the chestnuts which were out at that point had to be discarded! I was near tears, but we muddled thorough and never made chestnut stuffing again - although I did think about it this year. Another year towards the beginning I decided to bake a Colonial Williamsburg recipe bread. I tried it in advanced and it came out great. The day before Thanksgiving while I was making the soup and baking, I mixed up the bread mix and put it on the back burner of the stove to let it rise “in a warm place” as I had done previously. This day the kitchen and stove were much warmer and the dough rose much more - much, much more. It rose out of the bowl and onto and into the stove! The bread ended up coming out great, but I had to stop and clean up a huge mess in mid baking/cooking. I made rolls from scratch in a later year - again the trial run was fine, but this time I had done something wrong and they did not rise. The corn muffins one year did not want to leave the muffin pans (and they would have been such cute little teddy bears too). Believe it or not with all these baking problems I am a blue ribbon winning baker at the county fair. I learned not to make anything with a cream sauce which had to be made at the last minute - too much to do in the rush of the day.
We also had one year where my niece (then in high school) had gone to a dance near us the night before Thanksgiving and we picked her up for her parents and she stayed overnight for Thanksgiving so she helped with the baking, setup and cooking. One year we were watching one of husband’s nieces, preschool age at the time, the day before Thanksgiving and I had her help me set the table.
One thing I did to make it easier was to clean as I went, yes, everyone suggests this, but it works. I had figured out back in my mom’s house when we had dinner with extended family that if we stopped leaving everything to wash after dinner was over and filled the dishwasher and ran it when full, there was much less to do after everyone else left. In our apartment and after my house dishwasher died (and I have not replaced it yet) it meant to wash when I got a sink of stuff to wash and set it aside to air dry; when I had a dishwasher I would load it as I went and start it when full - unload it when dry to have it ready to reuse.
Generally I did not get around to setting the table until late Wednesday night or on Thanksgiving day. When we first started we used 2 folding tables the length of our apartment living room. For a while when we were first in the house we had to assemble the top we made which clamped on to our kitchen table to hold everyone - eventually we got a dining room table that when open almost filled our dining room, but we could squeeze in at one end and one my sisters and a child or two children, could fit at the other end. I have been gradually clearing away items which were sitting on the dining room table and putting them where they belonged (many in our tiny RV as they came in after the last trip to be emptied and never went back out.)
Today (Wednesday) I cleared the dining room of items which needed to go the basement and we had not brought down and of additional, larger items which needed to go out to the RV. The table is open and the table cloth, napkins and the table pad are waiting for the table to be set tomorrow for the two of us. Tonight I baked a pumpkin pie (low sugar) and assembled the sweet potatoes (also made with low sugar) in a casserole for tomorrow. I am trying new instructions for the turkey which involved some preparation tonight and it is done.
Each Thanksgiving night (or any other dinner I made/make) ALL of the dishes, pots, etc. (unless a pot really needed to soak) were washed that night - not necessarily put away or dried, but washed. Pots were done last. I would use extra towels to put items on to air dry as needed. In our house I also took the tablecloth outside the house and shook it out of crumbs and it and the napkins were washed in the washer and drying in the dryer before I went to bed. In the apartment it would be shaken out and all would be in the laundry bag for the next time I did laundry. I would put everything away starting Friday and have it mostly done by Sunday (some items still being used for the leftovers).
Leftovers from the main course were put into plastic containers or zipper plastic bags immediately after the main course. Family members, including children - especially children - are wonderful for helping with this, as well as clearing the table. (Children love to help, they think they are being treated special as grownups.) Leftovers from dessert and the soup were put away after the guests left. (The leftover soup needed to cool before being put back into the refrigerator.) The garbage went out Thanksgiving night.
We all have that collection of plastic containers that accumulate. Some we bought, some came filled with something and were too good to throw away, some just appeared, but they do accumulate. Since I used more of them after Thanksgiving dinner for leftovers than at any other time during the year, in the days after Thanksgiving I would look at what was left and after making sure I had a good size assortment, I would get rid of the spares which had come filled with food (ones not paid for) and passed along any excess other ones (the ones we paid for) that were not needed. By using this time of year I knew I had plenty of plastic storage containers to use during the year and more would accumulate by the following Thanksgiving.
Recently I was discussing on an online group that Thanksgiving is the unique American holiday that is celebrated across all lines. Someone posted back that it is only those with a deity who have someone to give thanks to. I pointed out that thanks may be given to mother earth, providence, the universe, one’s family, one’s friends, one’s luck, one’s self, etc. A Happy Thanksgiving to those here in the USA. Please remember that what is for sale on “Black Friday”, “Small Business Saturday”, “Cyber Monday” or any other day is just stuff and most of us have too much of it. Remember more stuff for you or those you gift it to, is more stuff to organize and deal with and the sales are not really as great as they seem.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
LET'S START WITH MY LITTLE KITCHEN
The kitchen - everyone’s kitchen and it’s uses are different. When reading books I am told that I must make work areas. I have no room for work areas do you?
Our kitchen is allegedly an eat in kitchen. We have a small table that fits the 2 of us, possibly a guest if we sit very close. Our kitchen is what is called a galley kitchen. This means that the work area of the kitchen consists of 2 sides of an aisle, similar to what might exist in a boat, hence the term.
I have a sink in the middle of the counter on one side of the aisle, with the only window in the kitchen above the sink. There is a non-working dishwasher under a counter top on one side of the sink and a counter top on the other side. Total length of the this counter is maybe 5 ft. There is the usual cabinet under the sink, 2 small and one “bread” drawer and small cabinet under the end of the counter without the dishwasher. Above the counter there is a wall cabinet on each end with 4 shelves in it which goes to the ceiling. Across the aisle from this is a range (freestanding stove and oven) with a wall cabinet over it, a free standing floor cabinet with a drawer, a thin wall cabinet over it and the refrigerator.
I also have a small pantry closet with shelves which supplements the above for kitchen storage. It is located beyond the kitchen table, across the bathroom. Yes, I have a bathroom which is basically in part of my kitchen. When we sit at the table we are looking at the outside wall of the bathroom and the entrance faces the pantry closet. I have to turn on the light in my bathroom to see what is in my pantry closet!
The kitchen also serves as our main entry to the house. We have what used to be a den that we use as a studio, attached to the back of the house, behind the kitchen, so we walk through the kitchen to reach it. The kitchen also connects through the dining room - opposite the entry to our studio - to the rest of the house. I have never heard of a kitchen like this in any organizing book I have read.
I do suggest, as others do, going through your kitchen stuff and getting rid of items which you don’t use. I have no hard and fast rule about time - no one year limit. I am about to get rid of, for example, a set that is suppose to keep your eggs round when fried (in rings) and your bacon flat (a weight). I have never used them. We don’t eat breakfast. I don’t cook bacon. When cook eggs we do so for dinner and I make omelets. We had received decades ago a “fold in half, nonstick” omelet pan as gift. It sat around unused and was long ago donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. The egg set will soon be following it. On the other hand, I have a very large stockpot and lid which I used to use to make soup for Thanksgiving dinner and other meals I made for the extended family. We no longer have the family (or anyone) for dinner in the house (the story behind this will be written much later in time). Organizing books would say I should get rid of this pot. I hope to one day have dinners here in the house again and I would never be able to replace this pot with one I would be happy with, so I keep it. It is stored, though, not in my kitchen but in a very small closet in my basement. So my rule is that if I reasonably might use the item again, I keep it. If it gives me hope, I keep it. If I have never used it, it goes.
What do items do I have in my kitchen for use? Tune in next week. I have turned on the feature which lets you follow me - feel free to use it.
Our kitchen is allegedly an eat in kitchen. We have a small table that fits the 2 of us, possibly a guest if we sit very close. Our kitchen is what is called a galley kitchen. This means that the work area of the kitchen consists of 2 sides of an aisle, similar to what might exist in a boat, hence the term.
I have a sink in the middle of the counter on one side of the aisle, with the only window in the kitchen above the sink. There is a non-working dishwasher under a counter top on one side of the sink and a counter top on the other side. Total length of the this counter is maybe 5 ft. There is the usual cabinet under the sink, 2 small and one “bread” drawer and small cabinet under the end of the counter without the dishwasher. Above the counter there is a wall cabinet on each end with 4 shelves in it which goes to the ceiling. Across the aisle from this is a range (freestanding stove and oven) with a wall cabinet over it, a free standing floor cabinet with a drawer, a thin wall cabinet over it and the refrigerator.
I also have a small pantry closet with shelves which supplements the above for kitchen storage. It is located beyond the kitchen table, across the bathroom. Yes, I have a bathroom which is basically in part of my kitchen. When we sit at the table we are looking at the outside wall of the bathroom and the entrance faces the pantry closet. I have to turn on the light in my bathroom to see what is in my pantry closet!
The kitchen also serves as our main entry to the house. We have what used to be a den that we use as a studio, attached to the back of the house, behind the kitchen, so we walk through the kitchen to reach it. The kitchen also connects through the dining room - opposite the entry to our studio - to the rest of the house. I have never heard of a kitchen like this in any organizing book I have read.
I do suggest, as others do, going through your kitchen stuff and getting rid of items which you don’t use. I have no hard and fast rule about time - no one year limit. I am about to get rid of, for example, a set that is suppose to keep your eggs round when fried (in rings) and your bacon flat (a weight). I have never used them. We don’t eat breakfast. I don’t cook bacon. When cook eggs we do so for dinner and I make omelets. We had received decades ago a “fold in half, nonstick” omelet pan as gift. It sat around unused and was long ago donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. The egg set will soon be following it. On the other hand, I have a very large stockpot and lid which I used to use to make soup for Thanksgiving dinner and other meals I made for the extended family. We no longer have the family (or anyone) for dinner in the house (the story behind this will be written much later in time). Organizing books would say I should get rid of this pot. I hope to one day have dinners here in the house again and I would never be able to replace this pot with one I would be happy with, so I keep it. It is stored, though, not in my kitchen but in a very small closet in my basement. So my rule is that if I reasonably might use the item again, I keep it. If it gives me hope, I keep it. If I have never used it, it goes.
What do items do I have in my kitchen for use? Tune in next week. I have turned on the feature which lets you follow me - feel free to use it.
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