Category Archives: Domestic Blitz

In which we don our aprons and putter about the house.

Domestic Blitz

Baby steps to home organization

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Works-for-Me WednesdayA quick tour of my house confirms that I am what one might call Challenged in the Organizational Arts. Much as I’d like to have Molly wave her magic wand and tidy things up, I know that isn’t going to happen. What needs to happen is this: I need to start Throwing Stuff Away. I have a hard time letting go of books, and I share my home with a dedicated pack rat with a strong sentimental streak. This has made it somewhat difficult to pare down the clutter.

And so, I am taking baby steps toward an organized home. Rockford has a bowl in the living room for his wallet and pocket things. I have a tray on the kitchen counter that’s designated the Stuff Catcher. It’s small, and when it’s full it’s meant to be cleared of Stuff. Said Stuff is supposed to then be put away. (I say “supposed to” because that doesn’t always happen as planned.) I try to keep the library books in the Library Bag, and the art supplies are all confined to one space. (A very disorganized space, but at least they’re together.)

But my most favorite and definitely most successful organizational effort?

Battery organizer

It’s a battery organizer.

I bought it a few years ago using a gift card Rockford’s uncle gave me for my birthday. Making it both exciting and luxurious. Sarcasm aside, I really do love the battery organizer. It’s one of my favorite purchases ever, and it soothes my soul every time I open the doors to the laundry and see it hanging there, all organized and lovely. It makes me believe that maybe there will come a day when my house won’t be quite so cluttered. It’s also so very helpful when the kids need batteries for one of their 10,000 battery-operated gizmos.

I know there are people out there who live in clutter-free homes. My dad is one of them. Are you? What’s your best tip or product suggestion for living an organized life?

Scrapbooking

Only two months behind on the 2010 scrapbook

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I haven’t been writing much about scrapbooking lately. But then on Saturday night, I “met” Melanie on Twitter while we were both watching the Mizzou game. I clicked over to her blog and discovered that she’s a scrapbooker, too, and her (very cute) layouts inspired me to do a better job of sharing my own.

(If this is a little discombobulated: I apologize. I just woke up from a nap, and I’m still a little groggy.)

I’ve been leaning toward a more minimalistic style lately; I’m thinking about dropping the background paper altogether for next year’s album. Here’s my most-recent page:

happy birthday to you

The journaling reads “Poppy requested a ‘pigs in mud’ birthday cake.” See? Even the journaling is minimalistic.

Resources
I need to do a better job keeping track of where I get stuff. Here’s what I used for this page, though, with as much detail as I can remember.

  • The paper and most of the other elements are from a kit by Studio Flergs. It was a limited-edition thing, and I can’t find a link to it now. I have it listed in my files as “for Melissa.”
  • The frames are from Katie Pertiet’s Photo Clusters No. 12.
  • The font was a free one from Two Peas in a Bucket called “Pea Patti.” I use it for a lot of my journaling.
    • Domestic Blitz

    How to remove sticker residue from a leotard

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    Works-for-Me WednesdayAt the end of Poppy’s ballet class, the teacher rewards the girls with a sticker. Poppy usually applies it straight to her front, where it stays until laundry time.

    Except for when it stays there all the way through laundry time.

    I don’t know if you’ve ever washed a leotard with a sticker stuck to it. But if you haven’t? I’d suggest avoiding it. The sticker dissolves, I guess, leaving behind a sticky, gooey mess. It didn’t get on anything else, in our case, but it did make a great and terrible mess of Poppy’s leotard. There were little goo bits all over it. I tried to rub them away with a paper towel and some water. That made a bigger mess. Then I thought maybe washing it in hot water might sort of melt the glue away. No dice. So I did what I normally do in a pinch: I turned to the internet.

    I found a lot of product suggestions, but I didn’t want to buy anything if it wasn’t absolutely necessarily. A few people suggested rubbing alcohol, which I don’t seem to have, and vegetable oil, which required its own post-treatment treatments to remove. And then I found one final, silly-sounding idea: Peanut butter.Peanut butter love

    So I slathered the peanut butter all over the sticker residue, tossed the leotard back in the washing machine and hoped for the best. And guess what? It worked. There were a few little glue balls left on the leotard after the peanut butter wash, but the majority of the mess was gone.

    Now my ballerina might smell a little bit like peanut butter, but at least she isn’t covered with tiny dots of glue.