April 16th, 2012

The Simple-ing: Stage One

Somehow, I thought just announcing my desire to Real Simplify My Life by blogging it from the rooftops would solve all of my problems and magical elves would swoop in to reorganize my house, color block my wardrobe and fold paper into random objects. Guess what? Didn’t happen. However, I did make some little changes and try some things out. I also started boards on pinterest if anyone wants to follow along with what I have tried and what is on deck.

Snapshot of my morning studies.

The cover stories in April were:

1. Act Small Save Big everyday strategies to save $5,000 this year
2. Food Storage 101
3. The Organized Home Office
4. How to be More Optimistic
5. Where did your Free Time Go?

I started with 1, kept 2 for future reference, don’t even recall 3-4 and 5 seemed to be more for people who worked or were much busier than I am (how I get more free time: spend less time on the internet. how I get productive free time: take Spencer to school), but I’ll look at it again.

The financial article was disappointing. There were a few gems here and there (Tried to find one to insert in these parenthesis, so on second thought, maybe nothing groundbreaking), but it mostly focused on stating the obvious. The food and drink/home section had 25 items and basically just said: use coupons, buy in bulk and shred your own cheese. There were a few recommendations for shopping at specific stores for specific savings (like shopping at drug stores from milk). I always find that surprising, but I guess it depends on perspective. They suggest that going a separate place for milk could save up 20%. I would only recommend doing this if you were already going to the store. Otherwise it doesn’t seem worth the time, gas or possibility to buy something else in the store. I’ve also found that Target, Fresh & Easy and Trader Joe’s all sell milk at least 25% cheaper than our chain grocery stores.

The other thing I found very surprising was that they suggested a big savings ($668) by buying bottled water by the case instead of at gas stations. I’m pretty surprised that there isn’t a recommendation to not buy bottled water. The monthly bills section is a little better. Many people don’t know they can appeal property taxes and get reassessed, so good to include that. And they said to dump extras on your landline and somewhere else to bundle your landline, but never to drop your landline, so I sense a corporate hand in some of this. So basically, if you’ve never read an article on little ways to save money, check this one out. Otherwise, skip or scan it. It’s mostly common sense.

I had a lot more luck with the food sections this month. 10 ways to cook chicken thighs! We like chicken! Lemon desserts! We like lemons! I had less luck with an online pot roast recipe, though. So, maybe I should stick to print. Starting up with menu planning was my biggest change, which wasn’t in the magazine per se, but inspired by the project. I’m sure they’ve mentioned it at some point… I did 4 days and stuck to them, with some minor rearranging. It even rolled into a 5th day when I decided to use my leftover pot roast to make chili. If you are looking for a pot roast recipe, don’t use this one. I do, however, highly recommend making chili from left over roast. Delicious!

Purchases/Trends

I only really did 2 things from here this month: purple eye shadow and the magic hairbrush. Seriously, this hairbrush is a life changer. I don’t blow dry my hair and would put it up out of the shower to keep my clothes from getting wet and then hours later, I would end up with bumpy, still damp hair. Now, I get out of the shower, towel dry, brush through and I can leave my hair down or braid it and no wet shirt. Score!  I thought I could test run the lacy bra feature when I found one that still had tags on in my dresser drawer, but it didn’t fit. I’m quite curious about preppy clothes – maybe if I need a new thing or two for BlogHer in august.

This Month’s Question: What change to your routine has save you the most time?

I found this section way more helpful than the article. This is where readers write in answers to a question posited in the issue prior. Maybe I should make it my mission to get one published.  The tips were really good: sort silverware in the dishwasher while you are loading it (I tried this – way harder than it sounds). don’t put it down, put it away (I’m trying this, but it is brutally hard. I’m a stuff abandoner.), choose kid’s clothes the night before (I did this myself for work, will use for Spence when he cares more.)

I also cleaned my kitchen cabinet that was on my 12 in 2012 list for April, but I got the extra motivation from reading such an organization-focused magazine. Baby steps, people. Baby steps. I realized that I can’t focus all of my energy of just the magazine and the website has a lot of listings, although not the current issues recipes (?), so I am going to consult it when I have a question. Like right now, I am thinking about changing out the liners in my kitchen drawers, I will definitely check the site for tips. Maybe I should make myself a WWRSD bracelet.

March 27th, 2012

Wordless Wednesday: In the Garden

We’re getting ready to garden for the summer. Living in coastal Southern California means a lot of plants can go in the ground in March and seeds can be started for sure. Spencer and I picked out some seed packetss at the store: strawberries, corn, green beans and a lettuce mix. Possibly carrots too. We’ll get tomato plants in May.

Rather than weed the side yard (ugh), I decided to just turn the relatively weed free former herb garden into a strawberry patch. Spencer helped, with varying degrees of success. Much dirt was thrown, most stay out of eyes, so yay?

Pointy rake is pointy

Do you have a wordless wednesday post? Link up below!

March 22nd, 2012

Work-Life Discord

I don’t talk about my old job very much on here, mostly because I quit almost two years ago (holy crap!), but it’s been on my mind lately as I have been thinking hard about how I can organize and streamline my life, which is my ultimate goal for trying to knock out 12 things every month. It’s a recurring theme on the blog because just about once ever quarter, I think that I can’t go on this way and I post about cleaning, or organizing* how I am really changing this time. And then… I never do.

In my former worker-bee life, I held a position that required organization and focused on improvement and I was good at it. So, my utter failure of this at home is sort of hilariously ironic. Last night I was working on gathering our documents for taxes and I swear I went through the mail stack on our counter for the fourth time in a month to find some of the 1099s. I pulled out at least a shoe box full of recyclable junk mail. I couldn’t help but think that I never would have let this happen at my old job. I had a touch it once, then act or file when ever possibly and I kept as little paper around as possible. It helped that I had a shred box a few steps from my doorway and I didn’t have to do the actual shredding myself, but that excuse only covers the confidential/financial papers.

I need a plan and maybe need to start with some baby steps. I need to be realistic, we have a toddler who can reach most of our counters: piles are out of the question. My gut instinct is to run to target and buy some delightfully cute organizing bins and maybe I will but I am writing this post as a way of hitting the pause button first. I need to think about what I need, what I would like to accomplish and what I would like to prevent.

I need to organize my life. Apps are a start, but that is only my digital life. Unless an app is going to magically sort my paperwork, I need to get on the ball at home too and start keeping my household paperwork in order like it is my job, because essentially, it is.

Look! I drafted this post Wednesday morning and by Wednesday evening, I had done all this planning:

You know it is fancy because it is written in crayon on old paper from a work conference to make it all official. So, basically I don’t know what I want to do, but I know I want to organize all the things. It’s like a sickness, happens every year when tax gathering take forever and I think I should never let this happen again.

Edited to add: I should clarify: we have a system for bills: they are immediately pulled from the mail, we open and write the due date on the envelope and they are tucked (date sticking out) into a paper monthly calendar we keep in the kitchen. My issue is with all the other mail – bank statements that need to be filed, miscellaneous offers and business-type mail, magazines, catalogs, that sort of things. 

How do you organize mail and papers? If your answer is I process everything into color coordinated bins the second I bring it in the house, don’t tell me. Well, you can tell me, but now how sad it is making me – clubbing baby seals sad, thinking there was one more cookie when there isn’t sad.

*this room is finally clean. After photos to come – a year later…

March 19th, 2012

An App A Day…

keeps the doctor away? I don’t even know what that means.

I need some app help. I have an iphone, macbook and an ipad, so am looking for apple functionality although Spencer basically stole the ipad so I am not even sure I should be counting that one. Well, anyway. I have needs.

Sporty:

As I said in my 12 in 2012 redux post, I would like to start logging calories and exercise again, but I can’t find an app I love. I’ve tried the sparkpeople app, which is ok there are lots of foods and I like being able to search the user added foods, but a lot of the time those are wrong. Also, the exercise part seems to grossly overestimate the calories burned using the elliptical machine. I tried the Losing It app, but it doesn’t have most of the food I eat and I am too lazy to manually add a certain type of granola bar so I just pick something else and I’m not sure how accurate that might be. So, still looking.

Organize:

Looking for a list or to do list app, but mostly for grocery store and target list. I tried Errands, but don’t like the interface to enter things or go get them. This needs to be easy because I can barely remember to write things on the board, let alone remember to look at the list before I go. Someone on twitter recommended Out of Milk, which sounded perfect, but I couldn’t find it in the app store.  I need a grocery app with the ability to make a list by store and have multiple stores: ie make a target list, a trader joe’s list, etc. In an ideal world, they would be linked in some way and I could put something on a list in more than one store and it would take it of any list when i checked it off.

This isn’t really an app so much as I am looking for a cleaning schedule. I really want to get better about routine cleaning things, like fridge, mini blinds, medicine cabinets, that sort of thing. I don’t know how often these sorts of things are supposed to be cleaned. If I could find even a chart (that isn’t quite as overwhelming as Martha or the Fly Lady) I could input reminders into google calendar or something. But an app would be awesome.

Efficiency:

I need to move beyond laptop stickies and rouge word files for blog management. What to people use to keep track of stuff? I use a calendar for deadlines, but what about for ideas, links, inspiration stuff? I’m all over the place with where I read things online so I don’t have a consistent method and I end up losing things because some are pinned, some are bookmarked and some are starred in my reader.

And what do people think about link posts? I was thinking about bringing back 5 things I love this week (I think it has been over a year, I think, since I have done one), but I feel like link posts are all over the place right now. I’m starting to think that unless they have a specific them or are from a really good curator, the posts can be a little boring.