Maintaining the Kitchen and Ugh!

I found a post on The Organizing Mama blog titled "Are You Under Water?". This post really hits home with me today. As a mom to three boys, the youngest not yet two years old, I feel under water often. I start a lot of projects, some cleaning related, some not, that I can't finish. I sometimes get a minute into my routine when I need to stop and take care of the toddler or clean up something that he spilled.

That's life for me right now. For days now, I've been avoiding the section of the kitchen counter where I keep all the paperwork that I need to deal with. Today, I couldn't put it off any longer. I had to go through the receipts, balance the checkbook, pay bills and organize all the other random things that get piled up in this space. It took longer than 15 minutes and I had to stop and start several times, but I finally got it done. At least, it's done enough that I feel I can move on to other things. My head was hurting just looking at this mess.

Someday, I'll find a better spot to keep this stuff, but for now, here it is. It is organized, even when it's a mess, even though it doesn't look like it.

Back to the Family Room...

This weekend was the perfect example of why I shouldn't be eating sugar. It sucks my energy away almost completely and makes me irritable. The house suffered, the laundry suffered and I was as grumpy as a hungry bear with my poor kids for a couple of days. Yesterday, I swore off sugar again. I've done this several times before. The longest I've ever gone with no sugar is about a month. After that, it slowly creeps back in little by little until I'm gorging myself on candy or baked goods again. Ugh! I would love to make this a permanent thing this time. I've got three boys, I can't afford to have anything steal my energy away. I need every last drop!


Anyway, my energy is coming back, though I still feel crabby and irritable. I got caught up on my laundry yesterday and tackled another spot in the downstairs family room today.
Check out that old Atari! My husband's grandmother found this when she was cleaning out her basement. She said it used to be his, so she thought he might like it back. He really wants to get it working again, but he doesn't have the time or the right adapter to hook it up to the TV. For now, I put it in the utility room. We don't need to leave it out where we can trip over it.



About 20 minutes later, this looks much better. Isn't that woodwork pretty? I can't wait until we can afford to fix this room up a bit. I think it can be made into a nice, cozy spot someday.

New Articles: Coupon Books and Price Books

Here are my two latest Suite101 articles:

How to Make a Coupon Book

How to Use a Grocery Price Book

Happy Halloween...

Yesterday was hectic at best. I had to go to a Halloween parade and school party for my 5 year old, then a school party for my 10 year old and finished off the day with a Halloween party at the elementary school for the whole family. In between, I had a toddler that wouldn't nap until very late in the afternoon. By then, he was desperate for some sleep, but only got about 45 minutes. And, because it was a late nap, he was pretty sure he was good to go for the evening. He stayed up late last night. I'm not even sure who fell asleep first - me or him.

Today, I'm not feeling like cleaning or organizing. But, I am feeling crafty and wish I had time to do some sewing or crocheting!

Instead, I've been surfing the net while I insist that the whole house stay quiet for the toddler's nap. I don't want him waking up until he's had 3 hours of good, solid sleep. I've found some really awesome blogs about remaking clothing into something much cuter and much more wearable. I think it's a great idea to use some of that clothing clutter that's still taking up closet space.

Here's a link to Obsessively Stiching with directions to remake a t-shirt into a flattering peasant top! I love it!

Updating the Coupon Book

I went grocery shopping today. In my renewed effort to be frugal, I took my coupon book and my price list. I also found a website that had lots of great on-line coupons that I printed. And, I got a few from the cash register when I checked out. I really want to stay on top of the coupon book so I don't end up with another disorganized mess.

I spent today's 15 minutes updating the coupon book with all the new additions. I also quickly wrote an aritcle for Suite101 about making a coupon book. I'll probably upload it to their site later tonight.
Here it is in all it's organized glory! I really like it when I can be organized about something. I know it's only been a week, but I'm feeling pretty good about the coupon book. lol

Here is the link to the site where I found the grocery coupons. They also have an address and directions for sending expired coupons to military bases. Tree Hugging Mama let me know that military bases will take coupons that are no more than six months expired. Thanks, Tree Hugging Mama!

Dawn Dishwashing Liquid Cleaned My Kitchen Floor!

I hate my kitchen floor. It's an off-white, no-wax floor that collects hard-to-remove grime. I can sweep, vacuum and mop everyday but the grime that gets stuck in those little pits and grooves of the no-wax floor will still be there. I don't generally mop everyday, but I have gone through phases where I do, and it still doesn't help. I've cleaned the floor with soapy water, various types of dedicated floor cleaners, vinegar, homemade cleaners, ammonia, a Swiffer Wet Jet and a regular Swiffer. My sister even let me borrow her steam cleaner last year.

All of these things clean the surface of the floor. It feels clean afterwards and all the sticky surface dirt and dust is removed. They all get rid of the crayon marks, the coffee spills and things of that nature. But, none of them remove that ground-in, dirty grunge that fills the pits and grooves. My floor looks like it's a different color in certain areas because of the grunge. The only thing I've been able to use to get rid of it is a Magic Eraser and some elbow grease. To clean the whole floor this way takes a couple of hours and two brand new Magic Erasers, which are completely used up by the end. Needless to say, I don't do it very often.

However, today the toddler was playing at the sink and managed to get his hands on my open bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid. Being a toddler, he promptly spilled it down his front, onto the floor. There was a puddle of Dawn on the floor in front of the sink. It sat there for a few minutes before I could get to it. Then, I cleaned it up with a wet rag. There were suds everywhere! Just when I was realizing that I should have used a dry papertowel to get it off the floor, I noticed that the grunge under the sudsy areas was gone!

Seriously, it was gone. No scrubbing was involved. I spread the suds around as much as I could, let them sit for a minute or two and wiped them up. All the ground-in dirt in that area was completely gone! Unfortunately, the bottle of Dawn was almost empty when he spilled it, so I didn't have anymore to clean the rest of the floor.

My theory is that the concentrated suds lifted the dirt right out of the grooves, just like a sudsy carpet shampoo lifts the dirt right out of the carpet. Either that or there is something special about the Dawn itself.

Now I'm wondering if this is some old housewive's secret that I don't know about. Anyone ever heard of using Dawn to clean kitchen floors before?

I'm going to buy more Dawn and a sponge, get the kitchen floor really sudsy and mop it up sometime soon. I want to test this out again and see if it was just a fluke or if I really discovered something new. If this is the secret to a clean kitchen floor that I've been looking for, I just may learn to like that floor after all.

Holy Cobwebs, Batman! The Family Room Needs Attention...

I haven't done much cleaning other than surface cleaning in the basement family room. It's a nice room, but needs work. Last year, we replaced the old, unusable woodstove with a nice, new one and had the chimney fixed. But, we still have a lot of other work to do. We need a new ceiling, the walls need painting and we need a new carpet. And, that's just the short list.


In the meantime, I kind of let it go as far as housekeeping is concerned. The boys play down there a lot and my husband keeps a lot of his computer stuff there. Did I mention that he's not the most organized guy? And, though we are not planning on doing any of the major work this year, I do want to get it decluttered and cleaned. It's cozy on a winter night and I want to really take advantage of it over the next several months. This old desk isn't used for anything other than collecting clutter. I really want to get rid of it. The box of train tracks and the race car track in the Rubbermaid container went in the utility room. The boys haven't played with those in a long time, so there's no sense in keeping them out. I moved the ride-on horse to the center of the room for now. The toddler is growing into it. As soon as he grows out of it, we're going to get rid of it.

There were lots of cobwebs above and behind this desk! It took me 20 minutes, but this area looks much better. I want to clear a spot in the garage to store this desk until we have another garage sale. I could put a toy box or something else useful here.