Daily Chores (FAIL)

My experiment in daily chores failed - miserably. Some of the things on my list NEVER got done. I never cleaned the sink, I never cleaned the bathtub or bathroom sink. I never mopped or washed clothes (do towels count?). I guess this plan just doesn't work for me. New plan: this month I will attempt to do the same tasks, but on the weekends. I know the theory is to do a little every day, but I just can't do that. And then on Sat/Sun when I do have a little time, I only think about the 1 "little" think I'm supposed to do. I'm not saying this will work either, but it's worth a try. During the week I will try to mitgate the clutter problem by putting things away (where is away though?) and maybe keeping up with the dishes. When we eventually get a dishwasher installed, I might just do a little dance of excitement in the kitchen during the first load of dishes.

Things I did to this week:
I did finish the installation of the new porch light. It was only about 90 minutes more of work, and probably 20 min of fruitless wrangling before I caved in and got the ladder from the garage to make the final connection of the mounting plate to the ceiling bracket. 17" pendant lights are kind of heavy and my one arm can not hold it above chest height for very long.

I cleaned off one bookshelf in the living room. The two bookshelves flanking the fireplace have been a dumping ground of papers and magazines and action figures and cabinet hardware for the last two years. I took every off, organized some magazines in cardboard holders. I figured if I waited until I got around to covering the magazine holders in nice paper or fabric it would never get done. They don't look bad the way the are, although the big dissapointment is the depth of the shelves doesn't allow me to put the magazines behind the doors - so they're on the top shelf right now. I plan on having the other side done before christmas and maybe I'll even get the doors back on! Lars, I expect you to be impressed when you see them 'cause your dissapointment was a motivating factor.

I went to Miller's Hardware and spent 22 cents to buy a screw. Somehow I lost one when I was mounting the drapes in the dining room so for over a year three windows have had drapery panels, one was blank. Except for the sad brackets (one with only 1 screw).

Garlic planting

This spring when we were shopping for annual vegetable seeds I grabbed a head of garlic that was by the register. I thought I'd give it a go. Apparently around here garlic really needs to be planted in the fall (like right now) to get a head start on the growing season. That head of garlic I grabbed in the spring was planted, but wasn't doing very well when it was accidentally tilled this summer. After my experiment with this Sunset vegetable garden plan (it looked like a good idea) we're going back to raised beds in the garden. In fact they are the same raised beds I built 4 years ago. I went back to the old house and disasembled them this summer. They look so big in this backyard. I'll probably need to make new ones in a few years as these are already starting to rot out (they were made from 20+ year-old fence panels). This year we're also going to start the garlic in the fall. I don't know the exact varieties. The bulbs are purple, there are two different kinds, and they are a hardneck variety. That means we'll get the garlic scapes in the spring and I can make more of that pesto. Remember, I'm still excited that anything will grow for me.

UPDATE: I started this post a month ago, planning on getting some pictures when I planted the garlic. Well it's in, no pictures, and I still haven't found mulch for the bed which means they've probably already frozen and died. We've had several severe freezes and a few light snows. It might snow more this weekend too.

I started installing the new porch light but now it's been 2 weeks and I'm not done yet. Of course that means we've gone 2 weeks with NO porch light - and i'm one of those people who leave them on all night. For me, dark houses make an unfriendly neighborhood and that can lead to an unsafe neighborhood. I guess it's time to stop procrastinating and take that trip through the knee wall in the attic (I have to install a new junction box in the porch ceiling). I took some pictures of the porch project so maybe I'll finish and get those up this weekend.

Shopping for me

I've been thinking about buying something for myself like a new pair of shoes, or a new dress but I just can't decide. What about a new porch light instead! And it's on sale.

Cleaning up

It is getting dark so soon already, and I'm not ready for it. We had the first hard freeze really early this year too, so it already feels like the beginning of winter. I feel like everything is in shambles and I let it get that way. I've been using my down time to do absolutely nothing. Not even laundry, or putting away the last two load of clothes from the last time I did do laundry. That might have been almost a month ago. I don't know how the time passed so quickly. Really, I do know what happened. It's what happens every year. I'm not home but a few nights a week and when I am home I relish eating real food cooked in the oven or in the stove. I do not feel like cleaning, or even picking up my clutter, doing a load of laundry or breaking down those cardboard boxes that multiply in my dining room.

I really have to get something done though. That is why I need to start the chore-a-day list again. I had one of these when I was a kid and the chores alternated between my sister and me. Funny how those same chores that your mother made you do are equally important in your own home 20 years later.

Sunday: Laundry
Monday: Clean Bathroom
Tuesday: Clean off Dining Table
Wednesday: Clean stove top & sink
Thursday: Water house plants
Friday: Sweep/Vaccum House
Saturday: Sweep/Mop Kitchen & Bathroom

I know it might be a little pathetic to see that I can't even do these chores on a semi-regular basis. And these all have to be things that take only about 20 minutes, because often I don't have much more time that that to tackle something. A lot of days the only time to get this done would be in the ~45 minutes I have between getting home from work and leaving for the theatre and I also need to take the dog for a walk and eat something in that time.

If I could keep this up for a month I would consider myself a success. If I get half of this stuff done two times in a month, I'm still pretty impressed. I had to try kind of hard to come up with 7 different little tasks and maybe things like watering the plants, cleaning the clutter off the dining table and scrubbing the stove top are laughably easy but in my house are rarely done.

Is it a sign of organization, or weakness that I'm putting these as reminders on my Outlook calendar so I remember? One month until status report.

Colour Trend

It's official, the newest trendy paint color is Down Pipe (farrow & ball). It is the new go-to color for designer rooms, has been used in at least two museums for gallery space, and I like it. I know the official color of the year (according to Pantone) is Mimosa but who wants a room painted that color.


Maybe an accent piece. A chair. A lamp. A dresser. In fact it would be a great accent piece in a room painted with down pipe.

All these fancy colors though just make it harder for me to pick one and paint my rooms.

Chaos and clutter

All all the "shelter" magazines are going bust and more people are turning to blogs for ideas and inspiration, it was only a matter of time I guess before an online shelter magazine appeared. Premiering today (OCT 1) Lonny is an all online magazine. Like a magazine it still has advertising and a page based layout. It won't be the same as curling up on the couch or taking a bath while reading the newest issue but I'll take it where I can get it these days. I haven't read the whole thing, in fact I've just barely gotten past the first few pages, but already I hope it sticks around. Maybe it won't be great, but maybe it needs time to find its footing.

I'm going to save the rest of the magazine until I get home and have time (saturday maybe?) to read it full screen on the television. Big!

Speaking of computers and televisions, I had grand plans, I should have been done with building the new media center by now. But alas the old compaq case was to small to fit the motherboard. Did you know that some of the "media center" cases are hundreds of dollars! Ridiculous. My plan is to find a thrift store chase that is the right size and hopefully pay very little for it. The only usable thing from the compaq machine is the case fan which will go into the now 2-year-old "regular" computer. Since I already took everything out of the compaq case, do you think the electronic recyclers would be okay with all the components in a plastic bag then secured back in the case. It just seems silly to screw everything back in. Sadly I've given myself the expansive goal of three weeks to find a new media center case (that's when my copy of Windows 7 should arrive - pre-ordered for almost 60% off) and it would just be a waste to have hundreds of dollars of computing power sitting un-assembled in the living room for want of a metal box to contain it all.

Although it is now fall, officially and weather-wise, and the theatre season has started - I have plans. I don't know what I'll get done, but I have plans. I have plans to clean out the back bedroom; plans to paint the living room, dining room, bedroom (well I guess the whole inside of the house); plans to re-arrange the vegetable garden and plant garlic before the snows come; plans to do some knitting again; plans to do something to my office space (at work, not home). I think that's plenty of plans. I like to plan. I like to think of all the possibilities and put it all together. I like to pick colors and arrange furniture and organize a space. But you wouldn't know it to look at my house. It's cluttered and plain and nothing hangs on the walls. Books are still in boxes and things don't have a home and I live with a person who's idea of cleaning up is to stash everything in a box and toss it in the back bedroom. What will it take for me to change things?

And then there were two

On Tuesday morning I took the dog out for a walk before work and I noticed a shallow hole in my front yard. It looked like a dog had been digging in the yard (or an army of squirrels). When I looked down I saw a lot of dirt on the sidewalk and it was the good dirt, the birthday present dirt* so I kind of scraped it back to the yard best I could with my flip-flop, then continued with our morning walk.

When Yoshi and I round the block from the other direction I happened to look at the yard again and noticed that one of my plants was GONE! That hole, that's where the plant was. I had three 'Autumn Joy' Sedums in the front about 8" apart in a triangle and now, there are just two of them. First, "who steals plants from people's yards?" Really, who just pulls an entire plant up? They aren't little anymore either, about 8" across and a foot tall. Then, "Who steals 'Autumn Joy' Sedum?" It's a great plant for zone 5 (where we live) and probably a lot of other places too. It's easy to grow, easy to maintain, looks cool in the winter, and easy to propagate. Just take a shovel to the plant every few years for a whole new plant. Ask anyone with an established clump and they could give you some without disturbing their landscape. So, people give this plant away, but someone stole one from my yard.

There isn't much I can do about the thievery. Nothing else had gone missing, and I can easily replace the missing clump by dividing one of my remaining ones. But it's the principle. It's things like this that make you want to put a fence up around the front yard.

*2 years ago my parents gave my a truck load of dirt for my front yard to amend the dead soil under the compacted lawn.