Germantown Woman Hits Head and Dies After Getting Feet Tangled in Husband's Dirty Underpants6/2/2012 This was nearly a headline in my local newspaper this morning. Talk about going out with a bang! I am forever chastising my husband for leaving his dirty clothes on the floor at the foot of our bed, and last night I had a rude awakening from my half-slumber as I got tripped up in his skivvies on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Dirty clothes on the floor is just one of the many hazards I have faced in our seemingly-innocuous three-story suburban household. A barefoot stroll across the living room can feel like walking on broken glass because of all the stray Legos, and one misplaced Boys' Life or American Girl magazine on the stairs makes a heck of a slip-and-slide. So in the interest of home safety, I've set up a small basket on each set of stairs in our house and do regular sweeps throughout the day to keep the floor clear. It only takes a few seconds, and anything that isn't in current use but belongs on a different level of the house gets tossed into the appropriate upstairs or downstairs basket. You'd be amazed at how much neater a room looks with a clutter-free floor. The kids need occasional reminders to empty the baskets and put things back in their proper place, but I find that they are fairly good about it. So if you want to cut down on trips to the ER and save your vacuum cleaner, give this a try and save your 15 minutes of fame for something a little less fatal.
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I find it ironic that my husband will drive around, lost, for ages without stopping to ask for directions but will not stray from a recipe calling for a dried herb we don't have. Conclusion: Most men are good at following specific instructions as long as they don't have to ask for them.
So when it comes to keeping the house organized, assign a home for everything, make it easily accessible ('cause you know nothing will get put away if something else has to be moved first), and label, label, label! Whatever you do, don't require him to figure out where to store something unless you're okay with it left on the floor at the foot of the bed. Granted, there are some men who are very organized by nature, and if you're lucky enough to have one of them at home, you should be out buying him a GPS instead of wasting your time reading this post! You'd think her stint in the big house might have put the domestic goddess back in touch with mere mortals like us, but a quick perusal of organizing tips on her website indicates otherwise. So I've taken the liberty of modifying some of her ideas to appeal to people like me who have limited time, money, and--to put it bluntly--patience for her hoity-toity bullcrap.
Martha says: Make a handy canvas tote with lots of pockets by sewing a carpenter's nail apron... (she lost me at "sewing") EasyPeasyLiving says: Buy a gardening tote. They have lots of pockets and often come in cute patterns. Martha says: Create cute little calendar labels for your freezer bags out of my adorable clip-art files that will use up most of the ink in your printer cartridge. This way you will know by when you must consume the contents. EasyPeasyLiving says: Write the date by when you should consume the contents right on the bag with a sharpie. Martha says: Laminate a "To Do Before I Go On Vacation" list on card stock, punch with eyelet puncher and attach with decorative ribbon to your luggage so you don't forget to do anything before you go away. Laminating means you can re-use the card next time you go on vacation. EasyPeasyLiving says: Tape your handwritten "To Do" list to the front door so that you see it before you walk out the door instead of when you are checking your luggage at the airport. By the next time you are lucky enough to get away, you are sure to have a completely different set of tasks to do before you go. Martha says: Spend a little time creating stylish organizing tools that you can show off to all your friends. All those superficial little details will let them know you care about impressing them. It's a good thing. EasyPeasyLiving says: Spend the time and mental energy you save by being more organized on enjoying and laughing with your friends. It lets them know you care about them. It's the real thing. My name is Valerie and I'm a neat freak. Or so I was told by my six-year-old last week. It is pretty hard to deny.
You've met people like me before. I'm the one who sends emails around the office reminding people to clean their coffee cups and then signs them with some passive-aggressive moniker like "the Dish Fairy" (a nickname that quickly morphed into "the Kitchen Witch" in one office I worked in). I'm that co-worker everyone jokingly accuses of doing no work because there are no papers left on her desk at the end of the day. The owner of a company I used to work for once asked if he could borrow my office for a meeting because it was so much neater than his. When I offered to help him clean up his, he just got a frightened look on his face and walked (ran) away. At home I'm even worse, although contrary to popular belief, my spices are not alphabetized, nor is my closet color-coded. But I guess the mere fact that I often get asked if they are is an indication that my propensity towards order is a little excessive. Believe it or not, I was once a typical kid who shoved stuff under the bed and got nagged at for leaving dirty dishes in the sink. My mother always loved to tell the story of the night she came home after dark and could see me through my ground-level bedroom window, head under the bed and rump up in the air, digging through the huge pile of stuff under my bed like a dog searching for a bone. I'm not quite sure when the mutation started, but I have often longed for that sloppy teen to come back and teach me how to happily co-exist with mess and clutter. I have tried...truly I have. I once forced myself to leave several baskets of clean laundry in the hallway for a whole week while I took the kids on excursions to the zoo and picnics in the park, all in an effort to forget about housework in favor of spending more time with the ones I love. My best friend suggested snubbing the clean laundry as a good first test as she coached me in letting go of chores in favor of fun. She's one of those fun and easygoing moms who likes to pile her family's clean laundry at the foot of her bed. By the end of the week, after sleeping on top of it and tossing it out of the way when required, each piece has magically disappeared as the owner has claimed it and worn it again. Why waste time putting it away, she mused? It will be gone eventually and you'll always have more anyway. I have to admit that she does have a point, but by the end of my week of laundry rebellion I found myself tossing it all back into the dryer in a vain attempt to quickly eliminate the wrinkles that had infested the entire basket from everyone rummaging to find what they needed. Bottom line: As we learned at the zoo, a leopard can't change it's spots. Now don't get me wrong...I can and do make one helluva mess in the midst of some of my more creative moments or in the hub-bub of my busy life as a mother of two and loving wife of a man who couldn't find the dirty clothes hamper if it was covered in $100 bills. It's just that I can't stand to live in it for very long. To me, clutter is the visual equivalent of too much background noise and prevents me from being able to concentrate on anything else. Order calms me. Order makes me happy. Order is the vodka in the Bloody Mary of my life. Now I know what you are thinking. Valerie, you say...life is too short to spend all of it tidying up and doing chores. You need to stop and smell the roses and enjoy the people around you more. I agree! And believing it was possible to indulge my inner neat freak and be a fun and easygoing mom like my best friend, I began a quest for an orderly existence that still leaves time for the ones I love. Through this blog I hope to share some of the precious gems I have picked up along the way on how to simplify life so that yours might be a little richer too. After all, life is meant to be enjoyed and an orderly home should be a means to that end, not the beginning and the end of your existence. An organized, relaxed lifestyle is not an oxymoron, and it can be easy peasy with just a bit of planning and the right attitude. Check back often and you just might find some easy peasy solutions to your everyday challenges. |
AuthorValerie Sheridan is a professional organizer, wife, mother of two, and Founder/Owner of EasyPeasy Living. Archives
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