Before:
After:
Confidential to Nance:
**************
Note: The cards on my desk are a combo of sympathy and birthday cards and I can't bear to look at them. They've been on my desk for months. I'm going to leave them there until I decide what the proper course of action is.
**************
What's the last cleaning project you did? Please brag here. I will compliment your housekeeping skillz.
I've written about making vanilla extract and my special gluten-free flour before, but I think I have some new readers who might now know about it, so let's do it all over again before I talk about my Great Cookie Plan of 2025 based on comments from last week's post.
My husband has celiac disease and is very sensitive to cross contamination. Because I didn't realize that the vanilla extract I was using was not labelled gluten free and I glutened my husband once and the stuff that was labelled gluten free was super expensive, I started making my own.
Ingredients: Gluten free vodka and vanilla beans
Basically you just split the beans and put them in the vodka. Let that marinate for 6-8 weeks (or longer - the longer the better, so if you have it in there for a year, so much the better) in the darkest recesses of your pantry.
 |
| (I have been using Tito's because it's labelled gluten free. I have recently read a couple of concerning things about them supporting Republican candidates, but it doesn't actually look too bad on OpenSecrets.) |
The on the left is just poured. The one on the right has been hiding in my pantry for a few months.
Someone asked me how much vanilla I need and I'm going to be honest with you, I use one of these bottles every few months. I bake a lot of cookies and granola!!I will use King Arthur measure-for-measure gluten-free flour in a pinch, but I don't think it tastes as good.
********************
Have you ever made your own vanilla extract? How often do you have to buy a new bottle?
One of my goals for the year is to bake six new cookie recipes. This should be easy, but I am so frugal that I hate the idea of spending tons of money on ingredients to try a new recipe only for it to fail, so I always make the same three recipes repeatedly (a chocolate chip, molasses, and spiced chocolate chip). Yesterday when I wrote about this, I realized I didn't have a plan for what my new recipes would be, so let's work together to CREATE A PLAN.
Here are some picky bits about me. I do not think raisins should be in cookies, so if you DARE to suggest oatmeal raisin, I will decide you are an unreliable advice-giver re: cookies. Also, oats are basically off the table - Gluten Free Watchdog has found gluten in every oatmeal they have tested, so they do not recommend oats for GF people AT ALL. Oat-based cookies are OUT. I do not like chocolate to be the dominant flavor of a cookie - I'm fine with chocolate as a part of the cookie, but I am not a fan of things like chocolate chocolate chip cookies or whatever.
Whatever cookies I make I will make with GF flour, but I'll figure out those substitutions, so just pretend that's not a thing.
So, based on those caveats, what are your favorite cookies? Do you have specific recipes you'd like to send to me?
Currently I think of the following for my six "new" cookies:
1) Those peanut butter cookies with the Hershey Kiss in the middle
2) Iced lemon cookies
3) Thumbprint cookies with the jam in the middle
4) White chocolate macadamia nut, although to be honest I don't think my husband would like these
5) Snowball cookies
6) ?????
I am not wedded to any of these, though. If you were going to make a cookie today, what would it be? If you're not a baker, tell me what kind of cookie you would eat right now if a cookie could magically appear in front of you?
1) Go to the office/place of work?
I go to the office five days a week. It says in my contract that I can work from home one day a week and if something comes up that means I have to be at home, I do occasionally work at home. However, I hate working at home because it means it's harder for students to do walk-ins and I don't have an extra monitor so it's hard to do some of my work.
2) Text your best friend? Your parents? Your siblings? Your children?
My BFF and I usually text 2-3 times a week. I text my mom at least once a week. I don't talk to my sister. I have no children.
3) Vacuum the floor? Clean the shower? Completely replace the litter?
I vacuum the floor once a week. I probably should do it two or three times a week, but I need natural light to do it and I just run out of natural light when I'm at home during the week. Hmm. Maybe this is making a case for me to work from home once a week. It's generally a Sunday chore.
I rarely clean the shower. Maybe every few months? It's gross because we have hard water and it's impossible to get it to look clean even when it is clean. We use Scrubbing Bubbles Daily Shower Cleaner after every shower to increase the amount of time between cleanings.
We rarely completely replace the litter in the litter box. We scoop the box once or twice a day.
4) Read a book?
Every day. I generally spend at least an hour reading every day - at least half an hour first thing and at least half an hour before bed. Most days I fit in reading whenever I can.
5) Go "shopping"?
Two weekends ago I was on State Street in Madison and I found myself just wandering around adorable stores and buying funny greeting cards and stickers about being the grammar police. It occurred to me that the last time I leisurely walked around stores was pre-pandemic. I'm very mission oriented and always have a list when I go to any store. I went to Walgreen's the other day and my list read - fish oil, magnesium, water, Dove scrub, and ELF (I wanted to see what ELF products I could buy there instead of going to Ulta). I looked at nothing else.
****************
What about you? How often do you do these things?
Not to brag, but I don't have to go into the office again until January 2. I might check my email once or twice just to make sure I'm not heading back into absolute chaos, but I've checked out of work. Sorry, students, your "emergency" is going to have to wait (I do not deal in emergencies).
Saturday was a cold, cold day in Wisconsin. It had snowed on Friday and then the temperatures dropped into the single-digits and I forced poor Hannah to wear all of her clothes - boots and coat. Boy was she ever embarrassed.
On Saturday morning, I met up briefly with Anne to collect our holiday ceramics. I'll let her share hers if she wants, but here's my before:
And after:
And, then, get this, I hung out with Zelda on the couch. It was in the schedule.
Despite the single-digit temps, we walked over to our friends' house and hung out by a solstice bonfire. They do it every year and most years we go for about an hour and leave because we have work the next day, but this was SATURDAY NIGHT. Woot woot! We stayed for a few hours and had fun chatting with people.
I built in more couch and kitty time on Sunday, but we also did laundry and Dr. BB wrapped presents and there were chores. But the weather was into the 30s, so Hannah no longer had to wear her coat, but the shoes are still a thing because of all the salt people have put out.
If you ask Hannah, she's treated very poorly, you know?
Wish me luck today as I am head to our regular grocery store and Costco. Dr. BB is going to meet up with some friends later in the day, so I'm going to wrap his presents, clean the vacuum, and make cookies while he's gone. Don't say I don't know how to live it up when I have the house to myself.
****************
Tomorrow's Christmas Eve! Can you believe it?
 |
| I did not ask my friends if I could post their photos, so I am protecting their privacy. Not my husband's though. If you see him around, maybe don't mention you saw his photo on my blog? |
.heif)
1) Do you want to make a delicious five ingredient bake that will make people think you slaved in the kitchen? Diane put me on to these easy Brazilian cheesy bread rolls and they are So Good. I recommend them to you. Egg, tapioca flour, oil, milk, cheese, and salt. I guess that's six ingredients, but do we even include oil and salt as actual ingredients? Regardless, these are easy and delicious and I recommend them even if you don't need to eat gluten-free foods.
2) Jules recently posted a photo of an ad from Facebook with a Hannah doppelganger:
And then our local Humane Society posted a photo of some recently arrived dogs, including Rusty:
If you just glance at these dogs quickly, you might think they're Hannah! But they're not! Craziness. And listen to the description of Rusty on the Humane Society website!
I'm a loyal boy who just wants to be by your side. While you work, I'll chill out nearby, taking naps or enjoying a Kong. But when it's playtime, get ready for some epic zoomies in the yard—I'll run circles around you! I might not fetch balls, but I sure love chasing them. My ears are pretty expressive, too; they go up, down, and sideways whenever I hear something interesting. I'm a bit of an alarm barker, so I might not be the best fit for an apartment, but I'm great with other dogs and I haven't shown much interest in the low-energy cat I've met, but I do like chasing birds and chipmunks outside, so shelter staff isn't sure how I'd react to a more active feline. I'm also potty trained, know my basic commands, and I'm ready to find my new best friend!
Rusty could be Hannah's brother!! Someone please adopt him so I don't make an appointment to go meet him.
3) Speaking of Hannah, guess who got really, really sick on Tuesday night? Like explosive poop all over the mudroom sick? When people ask why we don't give Hannah free roam of the house at night (so many people seem to think the boundaries we set with Hannah make us mean and I swear to you we are not mean to her!), I'm going to share this story with them. Imagine if she had free roam of our entire downstairs!
Here is a photo of what our mudroom normally looks like (taken from the Day In Life of Hannah post earlier this week):
and let me tell you that I would not have said our mudroom needed to be decluttered, but it has been decluttered now. The welcome mat and fringed rug have been tossed. Three pairs of shoes were tossed (one was an old pair of running shoes I used as my gardening shoes and they were already in bad shape, so I didn't even try to salvage them, the other two were leather sandals with cork beds and as soon as we started to clean them, the cork immediately started to break down). We're still deciding exactly what do about my work bag. Everything else from Zelda's bed to Hannah's mat and the mats in Hannah's kennel was washed. I used a Swiffer wet before I went in with bleach and then I got on my hands and knees and used dish soap and then rinsed and it still smelled like gross, so I threw some Pine Sol on the floor and now it smells like bleachy woods and that's not something I recommend, friends.
I refuse to talk about the mopping, the Magic Erasing, and the feeling like Cinderella that happened on Wednesday. I was "working from home," but what that really means is I was cleaning the mudroom.
And POOR HANNAH. She doesn't feel well and I keep taking her outside every hour and she just looked at me in utter misery when she was doing her business. Poor, poor baby. I had a scheduled appointment for Zelda's annual exam that afternoon, so I called and said I was bringing in Hannah instead. Poor Hannah had the indignity of a physical exam, too. It was a tough day for her.
4) So does anyone have a good recommendation for an indoor welcome mat that is machine washable? We really need a mat in front of that door, particularly when the snow starts. [*cue ominous music* Winter is coming.]
5) The end of the quarter is approaching and my quarterly goals are not going well. *sigh* But there are still TWO FULL WEEKENDS in the quarter and surely I can at least accomplish one more goal, which is to go to a museum. I think I'm going to head to Milwaukee and there are a few options.
Has anyone been to these museums? Have a strong preference about which I go to? Which one would you go to?
We're ramping up to my blog's 20th anniversary on Sunday! I'll post a list of twenty things every day between now and Sunday and it will culminate, anticlimactically, on Sunday.
Today I'm ripping off an idea Stephany had that she got from the Girl Next Door podcast. Here's where we keep things in our household.
.png)
1. Kleenex
I am befuddled by this one. We have tissue boxes in our living room, the primary bedroom, and the guest room. We buy it in bulk at Costco and keep the extras in the basement. We also have mini packs of tissues in each car, every purse I own, and in my desk upstairs. Basically we're both going to blow our noses multiple times a day. Is this not true of everybody? Or maybe this is a thing for people dealing with allergies (including allergies to our very own pets) or, if it's not allergy season, it's coming in and out from the cold multiple times each day?
2. Medicine
Most of our medicine is in the kitchen cabinet next to our fridge. All our daily meds are in there, as well as Tylenol and ibuprofen. We do keep some Dayquil in the bathroom.
3. Bandaids
We have clear plastic tote that is about shoebox sized that holds all our first aid things, including Bandaids, Nexcare bandages, wrap, guaze, several finger splints, and a sling. Neosporin and Cortisol are also in the clear plastic tote.
4. Heating pad
We don't own a heating pad, but I have a bear that can be heated and it lives on my nightstand.
5. Nail polish
I have one bottle of nail polish and it's in the fridge.
6. Winter hats/gloves/accessories
We have a giant blue tote in the basement packed with scarves, hats, and gloves. If you come visit us and you're not dressed appropriately, we've got you covered.
 |
| Hannah's coat is on top because it was the last item put away. |
7. Scissors
We have kitchen shears in the kitchen, as well as a pair of regular old scissors in the cutlery drawer. We have scissors in the downstairs and upstairs bathroom, a pair in the desk in our living room, a pair in each of our desks upstairs, and a pair in the guest room. I also have a pair of sewing shears that are just for fabric in our sewing room, as well as two or three mini pairs that I use for snipping thread and the like. I WILL NOT BE UNABLE TO FIND SCISSORS.
8. Tweezers
We have tweezers in the downstairs bathroom, the upstairs bathroom, there's a pair in my makeup bag, and a pair in my travel toiletry bag.
9. Slow cooker/air fryer
We don't have an air fryer, but the slow cooker lives in a bottom cabinet in our kitchen. The Instant Pot lives in an upper cabinet that is easy to access because we use it nearly daily.
 |
| Our slow cooker is pretty big and it works well for stews. |
10. Dirty towels
In a laundry basket in the linen closet in the downstairs bathroom with all our other dirty clothes? Do some people have a different place for dirty towels?
11. Tape measure
We each have a fabric tape measure (like for measuring bodies) in our desks, there’s one in the sewing room, one in our downstairs desk, and one in my purse. There’s also hard tape measures (like for measuring floors and walls and such) in the basement, the living room, and there’s one in my husband’s desk upstairs.
12. Gifts bags/tissue paper/wrapping paper
All this stuff is under the bed in the guest room. And we have a lot. Some of you may remember that "organize the totes under the beds" was a perpetual goal of mine in 2023 and it never got done. Now you can sort of see why it needs to get done. (I'm never going to do it.)
13. Library books
Library books that need to be returned (I'm talking about you, I Capture the Castle) are kept in my library tote bag which I hang on the hall tree in our mudroom. Library books that I have borrowed and haven't read yet are kept in a bookshelf in the mudroom. Library books I'm currently reading are strewn around the house.
15. Bookmarks
I don't have very many, to be honest. I use one to mark the place in my goal tracking journal and that's really the only formal bookmark I have. I have some old library cards a librarian friend gave me as bookmarks and I keep those in my desk upstairs.
16. Pens
Where aren't there pens? They're in every desk in the house (three desks) and on every table in the house.
17. Suitcases
These are kept in my husband's closet upstairs. I do have a Detroit Lions duffle that I keep under the bed in the primary bedroom. That duffle is ripped and the zipper only works in one direction, but I'm holding on to it.
18. Water bottles
We have a drawer in our kitchen where water bottles go to die. We each have a thermos we take to work each day and those are either actively being used or are in the process of being washed. I have a thing about water bottles and hate to drink with plastic ones, so we're in a constant battle with trying to find metal ones that I approve of.
19. Dog leash
Hanging up on the hall tree in the mudroom unless there's a walk in progress.
20. Jewelry
I keep jewelry in the closet of the guest room and hanging up on a jewelry organizer in our bedroom. My engagement and wedding rings are in a lockbox we keep in the sewing room.
**********************
How many boxes of Kleenex do you have in your house? Where do you store winter gear when it's not winter? Do you want to come over and clean out the totes under our beds?
I recently paid an enterprising young man $250 to just come and make my biggest yard problems disappear. Our yard is a jungle and every week it kept getting worse and worse. Here are the big issues with the yard.
1) The compost is open almost every day, but most days it closes at 3pm and we are working adults. That means that if we do yardwork, the waste sits around in our garage for days and days until we can get it there, usually on a Saturday. The compost is not open at all on Sunday, which means that if we do yardwork on the weekends, it has to be Saturday morning/early Saturday afternoon or bust. Now, I don't know how things work in your world, but in my world, a lot of that Saturday morning time is spent sleeping in. The compost hours are a big problem.
2) When Dr. BB went into the hospital, we lost a weekend. And now he's on restricted activity and I have a full-time job and it turned into, hmmmm, a fucking nightmare. I was literally have nightmares about weeds killing me.
So, you know what? I decided that my innate frugality was going to lose the battle and I paid Trevor and he came THE NEXT DAY and now I am not having nightmares.
We were bumping into greenery with our cars trying to get in and out of the driveway. No, I'm not exaggerating that the church is right behind us.
He left the damn hostas, so I'm going to have go in there and remove them, but look! You can use the driveway. Next weekend we'll get some wood chips and we're going to roundup the plants we don't want to come back and we're just going to count this as a lost year. Sorry birds and insects.
But I don't want anyone feeling too bad for the birds and insects because there are at least four other beds just like the one we had taken down that just don't impede the driveway. Those are beds for another day.
****************
What chore have you recently given up on?
 |
| Photo taken at House on the Rock (of course) |
I meant to do a Five for Friday last week, but I just ran out of time because last week was a WEEK around here and even though I took off Thursday and Friday (floating holidays that had to be used by the end of June), I was mostly dealing with some medical stuff with my husband and all the "free time" I thought I had actually went to "doing important things." Anyway. Here are some things.
1) Two pieces of background knowledge that may make this story make more sense. Way back in the day before my husband and I were even dating, we were walking down the street in Minneapolis and came upon some raccoons in a tree staring at us. As some of you may know, Hannah the Dog is not the bravest of dogs and she freaks out when things in her immediate area change. I have encouraged her to be curious and sniff things that are unusual (new yard decorations, signs, and trash at the curb are common things I will encourage her to sniff).
So we're walking down the street and Hannah is super interested in sniffing the storm drain on the corner of the street. You know the kind - it looks like this?
 |
| Not the actual drain in question - I'm scared that one has a family of raccoons living in it. |
I'm not opposed to her sniffing because I want her to be brave, but I don't want her to go in the street, so I gave her enough lead to get to the edge of the curb, but not enough for her paws to actually go in the street. I spied something sitting in the storm drain and I thought it was a black and white stuffed toy - maybe a panda or a really badly done husky? I stepped closer to take a look and then it moved and I realized it was a real-life raccoon waving its freaky hands and I screamed and pulled Hannah away as fast as I can. And that, friends, is how you undo training you've been working on for years.
2) We're halfway through the year, so let me do a brief report to you on how the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge is going for me this year. There are fifty prompts and I have completed 25. I feel pretty amazing for being spot-on in terms of number of books read. Unfortunately, I've done all the easy prompts and now things are going to get harder. If I start to review some books and seem really down on them, you'll know why!
3) At work we have these magnetic nametags. It's nice that they aren't the kind that pin into your clothes and leave holes, but they also fall off all the time if, say, you are the type of person who flails your limbs around wildly while you are talking and you hit your nametag with some frequency.
(Note: I've learned that most human adults are at least partially aware of where their limbs are in relation to things/people around them most of the time. I am not one of those people. Just today I was doing something with stickers in the unorganized totes under the bed in the primary bedroom and I stood up and absolutely whacked my CHIN on the wooden foot of our bed. It's super tender and I'm concerned it's going to bruise and how in the hell am I going to explain that?!)
ANYWAY. I am not the only one with this problem. The problem I am seeking your help with is placement of said nametag. Do I put it way up over my boobs? Honestly, when I do that, it seems like my nametag is by my neck, which I do not want to draw attention to. (This is not to say my boobs are super perky - I have great bras to yank those babies up.) Do I put it over my boobs? That seems...distracting for some folks who may the information on the nametag. How in the world do people wear nametags?!
4) Pantry/fridge tour: Awhile back, I asked Sarah for a tour of her fridge and food storage because she feeds a family of seven!! She provided that tour and I said I would do the same, only I never did. Mostly because we have two adults here and it's just not as interesting. But here goes.
a. Fridge and freezer. You'll note the only things in the freezer are a bag of blueberries, a bag of chicken for the dog, and a bottle of limoncello that we got as a gift at a party more than a decade ago that has been moved three times. If you come over and I offer you some limoncello, please take it. Take the whole damn bottle. On top of the fridge, I store food with gluten - right now it has some questionable tortilla chips (they're labeled gluten free, but Gluten Free Watchdog gives them a bad rating) and a bag of pumpernickel pretzels (so good!).
.png){kind=spacer}
b. Pantry. Our pantry is small, but tall. On the left you have the bottom of the pantry and on the right you have the top which requires me to use a stepstool to use, so it mostly has baking supplies.
.png){kind=spacer} |
.png){kind=spacer}
d. Basement overflow. Generally we don't need the overflow, but sometimes when we come back from Costco with flats of chickpeas, black beans, stock, and fizzy water, we end up resorting to the creepy basement. Right now it's all paper products except for some chicken stock.
 |
| The basement is terrible. |
How are your reading goals for the year going? Do you have a dessert cupboard? What's the closest you've been to a raccoon in the wild? Where do you wear a nametag?
There are things I notice that I let slide when things get tough in my life. I stop worrying about things like personal care (if I go too long without a haircut, take notice!), keeping on top of the mail, and household chores. So I took a photo of the dining room table this morning because it is an indication that things are going off the rails for me.
Our dining room table usually has four placemats and a notebook each of us keeps on the table. That's what belongs on the table. We occasionally put things on the table as a reminder to do something (pay a bill, reorder a prescription, etc.), but the idea is that those things get done within 24 hours and the item is removed from the dining room table because if no other room in the house is neat and tidy, the dining room is.
Well...
1. My heated vest - This has been sitting here for weeks. I need to take out the battery to store it for summer, put a reminder for me to recharge the battery in July on the calendar, wash the vest, and store all of it for the season. This seems like a lot of work, honestly.
2. This is the bag of merch I bought at my alma mater. I need to take off all the tags and wash everything (or, at the very least, put all the things in a laundry basket so they will get washed when we next do laundry).
3. Paperwork #1 - This is on my husband's side of the table. It's a warranty card or something that he needs to fill out and return. No action needed on my behalf.
4. Paperwork #2 - This is a card to remind my husband to buy something. I think there's a coupon or something on it. No action needed on my behalf.
5. Paperwork #3 - Mystifying paperwork about a class action lawsuit regarding our new car. I am not sure we are qualified for it and so we have spent about an hour between the two of us trying to decipher the language in this document. I think I'm just going to recycle it when I get home.
6. $40 - This was cash money we had to buy honey at the Farmers' Market last Saturday. The honey people weren't there, though, and we can't go to the Market this Saturday and now we're out of honey. I need to either call the honey people and go to their house to buy it or just buy honey at the grocery store.
7. Mail - A bloggy friend mailed me a note and I should write back. This involves finding the perfect card/stationery and hunting down an international stamp. This is FUN and I'm happy to do it, but it seems like a lot right now.
8. Library book - I need to write up a review for this book on my blog and take it back to the library.
9. Makeup - I have three items of makeup that I needed to reorder: foundation, eyelid primer, and primer. This should have been an easy chore, but my foundation is impossible to find. It's not available at Sephora or Ulta anymore and while it's on the Laura Mercier site, it's sold out in my shade and I'm starting to wonder if it's going to be discontinued. Meanwhile, I was uncomfortable making foundation decisions at the computer, so while I meant to complete this chore yesterday, I did not. I am not certain what I'm going to do about this. I did order primer last night, but the eyeshadow primer and foundation remain an issue.
10. REI discount coupons -I am going to buy some new cross trainers with one of the coupons. They expire next week, so I have some time to get to this.
11. Greeting card - I should have sent this out on Monday to get to the person in time, but is still sitting on my table. FFS. Why am I like this?
The truth is that I'm exhausted right now. I came home from work yesterday and took a nap. Then I went to bed at about 9. I just don't know what's wrong. I feel otherwise fine, but I am so tired. Excuse me for this pity party. I am FINE, I think. I am somewhat young, somewhat fit, and definitely privileged to just have one job and a partner to help with chores at home. But boy could I use 48 hours in bed.
*******************
What's a chore you've been putting off? (Please tell me I'm not alone.)
Hello, all. I'm writing with some odds and ends from the kitchen. Some are hot takes and some are me asking for advice. Let's dive in.
1. Hot take #1: I don't think garlic adds to anything. We have been having a hard time finding garlic cloves that aren't sprouting and for about a week and a half, I just didn't have any and I didn't add it to the recipes that call for it and the recipes tasted the same. *shrug* It's such a pain to chop and, well, I'm not sure that I really need it my life. Am I wrong?
2. Advice needed: I am looking for a post-workout protein shake. We bought some protein powder (vanilla). A few caveats. I find pineapple and bananas disgusting. I also sort of don't like chocolate in my beverages. What should I be doing?
3. More advice needed: I like a good crispy chickpea. We sometimes make a traybake that's just chickpeas, carrots, and a green (asparagus, usually, but sometimes broccoli), some cheese, and a delicious sauce. But the reason we only *sometimes* make it is that peeling the chickpeas so they are crispy takes like eleventy billion years. We rub the chickpeas between some towels, but we still have to go through each one individually. I'd like to eat more chickpeas (particularly when I'm home from lunch and I could make some roasted veggies with chickpeas), but this process is a boring time vortex. How are you all peeling your chickpeas efficiently?
4. Opinions requested: What's too much tea to drink? During the week, I drink a 20 ounce tea with breakfast and 20 ounces at work. But when we're home, my husband just constantly puts the kettle on and makes it and I think I drank like 100 ounces of tea yesterday. LOL. I'm drinking herbal teas that are sweetened with a little bit of honey, so it's not terrible, but it's also probably not as good as drinking water.
*****************
Thank you for all your advice!
In general, I'm pretty detail-oriented in my life. I keep track of a lot of things, including an endless list of my husband's dietary restrictions and preferences, what food and medications each of my girls is taking, what groceries we have run out of, which items of clothing go in the dryer and which do not, and how many birthday cards are in my box of greeting cards.
But do you know what I am seriously terrible about?
Calendars.
I don't know, my friends. Calendars aren't hard and yet I fuck up about 25% of the time I'm interacting with them. I put the event at the wrong time (literally did this on Tuesday - the meeting was at noon, but I had it as 9am). I put the wrong Zoom password in the description. I put it on the wrong month. I put it on the wrong year. I'm a calendar fuck up.
So National Clean Your Desk Day was Monday, but I had it on my editorial calendar for today, so Happy National Clean Your Desk Day three days late!
Before:
A huge stack of papers that had to mostly with community center business. I shredded what needed to be shredded, cut up the rest to use as scratch paper, and called it good. I also took the bottle of sunscreen (like, yo? why is it on my desk?) and put in the bathroom where normal people put their sunscreen. I also moved the power cord for my computer behind my desk because that's how normal people do it. I am pretending to be normal.
After:
 |
| The post-it note stays until I can track down the book it's reminding me to look for. |
If you're super curious, I've been able to keep my work office desk in pretty good shape.
When's the last time you cleared off your desk? How often do you make mistakes with calendars?
Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the twenty-first day of the month is "Safety."
*****************
Last week, Elisabeth posted about how her morning routine wasn't very routine and I mentioned that the first hour and a half I was awake was probably the most predictable part of my entire day. Here's how it shakes out.
The alarm goes off at either 6 or 6:30am. This depends mostly on if it's a weekend or weekday. When the alarm goes off, I get out of bed to turn it off because my alarm is on my phone and we live in a 100-year-old house, so the only two outlets in our bedroom are far from our bed. This is key. I get up when the alarm goes off. (This will change in a couple of weeks, I suspect. The SAD lamp usually makes an appearance in September and then I'll set the alarm for half an hour earlier so I can bask in the glow of the SAD lamp.)
Anyway, Dr. BB and I tag team morning chores. Here's how we do it.
|
Time |
Dr. BB |
Me |
|
First five minutes |
Takes medicine,
checks the house for cat puke |
Brush the
cat |
|
|
If it’s
applicable, we will both go around opening and closing windows as necessary. |
|
|
Next half
hour |
Feeds Zelda/cleans her bowl, empties the dishwasher, makes tea, gets Zelda’s medicines ready (he also does some boring stuff like regularly walking through the basement and attic at this time, but heaven help me, I have no idea what it really is) |
Walk Hannah |
|
Back from
walk |
We both clean
Zelda’s chin. This is a two-person job. |
|
|
After chin
cleaning |
Gets dressed |
Brush Zelda’s teeth, feed Hannah, brush Hannah’s teeth, make breakfast for myself |
|
Last half
hour |
Makes breakfast for himself, eats breakfast, makes teafills |
Eat breakfast, shower and get dressed, drink teafill while doing Duolingo |
Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the twenty-eighth day of the month is "Meaning."
********************
Suzanne recently wrote a post about how to wash your face and it was fascinating to read about everyone's habits. I came away from that post with a lot of questions about other people's linen closets.
We very occasionally have a houseguest (TJC!) and so we have enough towels for when that event happens, but this seems like plenty of towels for two.
 |
| These are washcloths designated for just the upstairs bath and are exclusively used for me to wash my face. |
We have two beds in our house, one in the guest bedroom and one in the primary bedroom. They are both full-sized beds. (Yes, we have a full-sized bed. No, I don't want a bigger one.) We have three sets of lightweight cotton sheets and one set of flannel sheets. We have a gazillion pillowcases because people insist on giving them to us as gifts.
This is enough for each bed to have a set of sheets on them and a spare in case of an emergency.
Seems okay for two people, right?
Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the seventeenth day of the month is "Method."
********************
Stephany and Sarah have both recently posted about how they do laundry. It is endlessly fascinating to see how people do different chores that we all have to do and it's even more fascinating to see how people with different size families do it (Stephany is a single lady and Sarah has FIVE children). Here's how this couple does it.
This got long very quickly. TL;DR We wash our clothes once a week.
I. Frequency
Generally speaking, we do laundry on Sundays. We might occasionally do a load in the middle of the week (this usually happens when we have five wet towels because someone rolled in scat and/or mud, but I won't name names about who rolls around in rabbit poop) or adjust the schedule if we're going to be traveling or something, but laundry is a Sunday chore. We do it once a week because I only have enough workout clothes and undergarments to last about six or seven days, so if we don't do laundry on this schedule, bad things happen in my wardrobe! On average, we do three to seven loads a week. Now, this is a wide range because there are times of the year when we use more clothes than others.
In the winter, we do a lot less laundry because we don't wash our pants and shirts/sweaters with every wear and so it ends up mostly being socks, underwear, and towels and the loads are small. In the summer, heaven help us all, we change clothes all the damn time because we get sweaty, sunscreen-y, and there are times when I change four times in one day.
We wash our clothes, towels, and placemats every week. We wash our sheets every three to four weeks. We wash our duvet cover hardly ever. There are certain items I handwash (bras, hats, scarves) and those get done on a very irregular basis when I feel like the situation is getting desperate. I probably don't need to tell you that bras get washed far more frequently in the summer than in the winter, do I? Is this unusual? Too often? Not often enough? Who knows? It's just what we do.
 |
| This is my favorite basket. I like that it fits on my hips and makes carrying it up the stairs easier. My husband, however, literally has no hips and watching him carry this basket is HILARIOUSLY awkward. |
(We were married for a couple of years before we combined our laundry. We used to do his and her laundry and never the twain met. We had separate laundry baskets, used separate coins since we didn't have washer/dryer in our unit back then, and even separate detergent! But when I broke my leg, Dr. BB temporarily took over all the laundry, threw everything into the same basket, and we've never gone back to separate laundry. It felt almost as momentous as when we got a joint banking account or bought a car together.)
II. System
A. Gather all the laundry and bring it to the downstairs bathroom. We keep laundry baskets in our bedroom, in the downstairs bathroom closet, and then we'll go around and collect towels from all the bathrooms and the kitchen and the mudroom where the vast majority of the time there's a towel or four that has been used to dry off a certain canine. Strip bed(s) if necessary.
At this time, we have to REPLACE THE TOWELS in both the bathrooms. If we don't, inevitably one of us will use the upstairs bathroom and there won't be any way to dry hands. This replacing towels step must happen before anything touches a washer or dryer.
B. Separate into whites, darks, and colors. You people who don't separate your laundry are killing me. KILLING ME. We don't have a strict order for which loads we wash, but if we are washing sheets, we do those first because then we can make the bed for dumping out the rest of the clothes to fold them. If we are planning on working out on Sunday, we might save the darks for last so we can throw in our workout clothes into a dark load.
Some people wash all their towels in one load. We do not. We have dark grey towels (go in with the darks), white towels (go in with the whites), and colorful kitchen towels (go in with colors). If we put all the towels together, the white ones would immediately look dingy and, more importantly, our dryer could not handle an entire load of towels. They would just stay wet forever. When we first bought these towels, we washed them all at once and we literally had to line dry the towels because our dryer just couldn't take it.
C. I hang dry the vast majority of my clothing. I put socks, underwear and some tshirts in the dryer, but otherwise line dry pants, dresses, shirts, bras, and workout gear. Dryers eat your clothes and I'm too frugal to spend money on things, so line drying it is. We have two of these drying racks and they are generally full to bursting on Sundays. We place these racks in our dining room, which is inconvenient to say the least. In my dream world in which we win the lottery, we have a designated laundry room with enough space for these racks. In the real world in which I don't buy lottery tickets, it just means the dining room is a bit cramped on Sunday nights.
D. When our dryer is finally done drying (we need a new one, but this one technically still works, even if it takes three times as long as it should, so we keep on keeping on), we take the clothes upstairs and dump them all on the bed while both of us fold and put away immediately. On rare occasions when one of us is doing laundry solo, we fold the other person's clothes and put the folded items on the bed on their side. I don't honestly know which closet/dresser my husband keeps his socks and tshirts, so he has to put them away. I love that we fold clothes together because it makes it go faster AND we always end up having weird philosophical discussion like "if you were one of these items of clothing, what would you like to be and why?". Marriage, man, it's insane.
E. On Monday morning, right after breakfast, I put away everything that's hanging on the racks. If something is still damp, the racks can remain up until after work hours, but we generally like to have those racks out of our dining room as soon as possible.
III. Products
As you know, I have skin that freaks out if I try to change any product that touches my skin. There are CONSEQUENCES Let's not ever talk about the time I briefly tried to use Palmolive instead of Dawn for washing dishes - never again. So, we have used the exact same laundry products for over a decade. We once tried to change from the detergent we use to a "cleaner" detergent, but that experiment led to an emergency room visit, so now we just stay the course and hope to hell none of them ever changes their formula.
Detergent: Era - I have no idea why my skin is cool with this grocery store brand, but I am grateful because it's cheap and easy to find. Even at the height of supply chain issues in the pandemic, we could find it. My late MIL used Era and I think my husband and I take great comfort that on laundry day our house smells like hers used to.
Fabric softener: Bounce Free sheets - Honestly, most of my clothes don't get any fabric softener because I line dry so many of them.
Handwashing: Woolite Delicates - This does irritate my skin, so I have to be very diligent about rinsing these items incredibly thoroughly. I haven't really come up with a better system for handwashing delicate items, though.
Tennis balls: We have a three-pack of tennis balls that we use to wash things like coats, pillows, and the like. In particular, my down coats get washed with tennis balls in the dryer once or twice a season (and then line dried). (I don't wash our pillows very much. I generally just replace them rather than wash them. Occasionally I throw them into the dryer to freshen them up with a dryer sheet. Is this weird? Should I wash our pillows?)
Mesh bags: I have a large number of mesh bags (maybe six?) that I use for things that get tangled with other things, particularly sports bras and camisoles.
All right, let 'er rip. Tell me how wrong I am and what I'm doing wrong. I know there are strong opinions out there!
Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the fifteenth day of the month is "Volume."
*****************
I have been slowly spending my time working my way through the biggest Internet controversies. Here's what I have to say.
I. Shampoo
I do not shampoo every day. I am too cheap and too lazy for that. Shampoo is expensive and drying my hair is exhausting. Deal with it. I do not care how often you wash your hair.
 |
| I use Verb Ghost shampoo and conditioner because it's supposed to help give us thin-haired girls more volume. I think it works just fine, but I'm willing to try other brands if you have a fave. |
II. Toilet paper
I am agnostic about if it is over or under. I think under looks better and Zelda the Cat thinks over means she should play with it, but I also think it's easier to use over. There is not consistency in our house on this point. I honestly do not care what other people do.
III. Top sheets
Yes, we have a top sheet. Yes, I think you're crazy if you don't.
IV. Washing sheets
I read that you are supposed to wash your sheets and pillowcases multiple times a week. Well, if this is the case, so be it, but we wash our sheets once every three or four weeks. I think you probably know best about how often you should be washing your own sheets.
V. Is it tacky to have a "no soliciting" sign by your front door or a "pick up your dog poop/no dogs allowed" sign in your yard.
Probably.
VI. Separating laundry
I literally don't know how you savages live if you don't separate your laundry. How do you prevent your white t-shirts from looking grimy?
What other internet controversies am I missing here? Which of my takes do you vehemently disagree with?
