Trash Bowl

Posted on February 4, 2019 by admin

You know how sometimes you find these tricks that make your life easier? (Some people call them hacks, though this thing is so simple it doesn’t even count as a hack. A hack has some level of genius behind it.)

Once upon a time, I saw that Rachel Ray sells these things at Kohls that are called Trash Bowls. They’re melamine and have a rubber ring on the bottom to keep them from slipping around. Basically, instead of throwing away produce scraps and wrappings when you’re cooking, you throw everything in your trash bowl, then dump it later.

And that stopped me.

For years….YEARS… I’ve been chopping veggies, pausing- opening the drawer with the trash can, dumping everything (inevitably dropping something on the floor), closing the cabinet, and then continuing with my veggie massacre.

Why in navel oranges have I never just thrown everything in a bowl and thrown it out at once?

I mean, I was tempted to get the official Trash Bowl. It’s pretty! I like pretty! And it has color. And if my kitchen starts to lean at an advanced degree, then my bowl won’t slide of my counter because of the anti-slide rubber thingy on the bottom.

Unsurprisingly, I never bought a Trash Bowl (Sorry Rach), but I do use a large metal bowl which saves me some extra time. And you can’t beat that!

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Reduce/Reuse

Posted on January 21, 2019 by admin

Over here we are gearing up for Baby #3. Chaos and Mayhem are sharing a room now, which means that they are no longer sleeping. Okay..that’s not exactly true. We’ll get there. Sorta. Some day.

Chaos’ old room is going to become Baby’s new room. When Chaos was born, we were living in Nigeria. When Mayhem was born, we had moved into this house two months prior and had set up the room. We never really had the picturesque baby nursery. Hell, we didn’t even bother to paint the room for Mayhem and definitely didn’t have that option for Chaos.

We saved almost everything for a baby- we have the crib (dark brown), a cream and brown IKEA glider, a dresser (light brown), a bookcase (old, ugly brown), white decor shelves. Nothing matches.

And I almost care a lot about it. Almost.

(However, if I’m feeling full of pregnancy hormones, then I care a lot. Like A LOT a lot. )

I mean I care, but not enough to buy new stuff. I would rather wait and buy new bedroom stuff when we know the gender of the kid and what we really need. The kid will need furniture to grow into, so we’ll wait for that. I love the idea of matching things, but it’s just not going to happen.

The Hubs has a tendency to jump to “let’s just get another one”. He’s a problem solver and he wants me to be happy. But the No Buy January, a renewed interest in our financial health, and my (manic) decluttering may be changing his mind a little.

When we got rid of Chaos’ bed (to share the bunk beds in Mayhem’s room), we kept his bedside table. The bottom board is broken, but it doesn’t really change the function of it. When we were deciding what we need to bring in for the nursery, we agreed that we would like a table by the glider. We were trying to figure it out and decided that we would be better off fixing and painting the bedside table than buying something new. In fact, this was The Hubs’ idea. I’m proud to see changes in the way we use things and what we put back into the world.

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Buy a Minimalism Book?

Posted on January 20, 2019 by admin

Seems sort of counterintuitive, doesn’t it?

I really want the new book Josh Becker wrote (The Minimalist Home). It’s been sold out on Amazon for weeks, but now it’s back. He’s also offering a whole bunch of “extras” on his website to further the minimalist journey.

You guys. I want this book.

I want the extras too. Like a lot. I want all those things he’s offering us. Nicely marketed Mr. Becker, nicely done.

I waaaaaannnnntttttt it.

And it’s currently sitting in my Amazon cart. It’s $13.51 (Which is down from the $19.99 cover price) and I even have a gift card to cover it.

And in my mind, gift cards are sorta a freebie thing in this No Buy challenge. The money is spent already, so it’ doesn’t count.

However, on Amazon, I know that there will always be something that we need from there. So an Amazon gift card isn’t a freebie. It’s currency that I’m going to use later on. So I’m going to erase it from my cart and be just fine without the book. Perhaps our library will get a copy of it in soon!

(Update: The book is at our library now! Yay!! I’m #35 in queue for the book, so I still have some waiting to do… but it’s still a win for me. $13.51 stays on my gift card and my No Buy January isn’t in jeopardy.)

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Power Reading

Posted on January 19, 2019 by admin

I’m in a book list committee within my school district. We choose 20 books (geared to grades 3-5) each year and send the list to the elementary schools. From there, most librarians encourage their kids to read these books. It’s like the Bluebonnet list or any other book suggestion list, but at a smaller scale.

With that being said, our date to vote on books is quickly approaching and I am (secretly) the book bottleneck. Whoops!

I mean, like, I have 8 books sitting on my table- staring at me…judging me… mocking me. (Actually these books are rather polite, so they abstain from the mocking) So I’ve been PLOWING through these books, so I can send them on to other committee members.

So this weekend, I plan to read the 9 books that I need to and send them on to everyone else. Thankfully, as a parent, I feel a lot better about reading a book in front of the boys rather than a variety of other past times.

Prior to becoming a librarian, I didn’t realize that some of my professional stress would be based on my TBR list.

But there we are. It is what it is.

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Fracking LEGOs

Posted on January 18, 2019 by admin

Somehow we ended up with A LOT of LEGOS.

Like A LOT.

A LOT.

They used to live in and around the LEGO table that was in our living room. But I’ve been trying to push reroute our children and their junk to the playroom and their bedroom. They’re older now and I really don’t love the look that Playschool had vomited all over my home. So to the back rooms they go.

However our LEGO collection is an issue. Chaos became enamored with LEGOs early on..like he probably should have been eating them, but rather he was building. And good gravy was he insane about them. Then The Hubs with his dormant love of these plastic bricks jumps in the mix and suddenly we have a bajillion and eight.

So they’ve moved to the spare room (which will soon become the nursery), but soon will need to leave. But they can’t go back to the living room as Baby Sprocket will be taking up residency in there more often than not.

This goes back to my journey of getting rid of what we don’t need- calling it whatever you like- decluttering, minimalism, KonMari, whatever. I’ve read them all. I’ve enjoyed them all. I sure do like less stuff.

I’ve gotten rid of a lot of stuff. Now we have to figure out how to best modify our house so that everyone gets a cut (and keeps my newest baby from choking to death on a LEGO brick. This fear is pretty high on my list of fears as it feels like it could very much happen.)

So I’m going to pony up and dig down more into my craft room. I have an entire room dedicated to a hobby that I enjoy, but don’t often dive into. I’ve gone through and gotten rid of a lot. But now, I need to make way for my boy and his 120-jillion plastic bricks. I’m also going to have to wear shoes in there from now on.

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Minecrafting and crafting and crafting

Posted on January 17, 2019 by admin

I just spent the last two days in a workshop for Minecraft Education. While I hate being away from the library, I was interested to see if Minecraft was something that I could bring to our school.

Um. I’ve never played Minecraft before this. In fact, all I knew was that it was a building world and it had blocks.

What they didn’t tell me is that it has:

CHICKENS!!!

I even learned a code that would make 100 chickens fall from the sky. Um, it was magical.

Then they started following me around and staring at me, but even that stayed magical.

Basically, what I’m saying is Minecraft has chickens and therefore I’ll be back. CHICKENS!!!

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Warby Parker

Posted on January 16, 2019 by admin
  1. I REALLY like saying the name. Like- a whole lot. You know how if a woman has a dress with pockets and you say “I like your dress”- she’ll undoubtedly respond with, “Thanks! It has pockets!” Okay- so if you say anything about my glasses, I’m going to tell you they’re from Warby Parker. Isn’t it fun to say? Try it- Warby Parker. Waaarrrbbbyyyyy Paaarrrrkkkeerrrr.
  2. They were $95. Like legit $95. I didn’t buy new frames two years ago because mine were still good, and I didn’t want to spend hundreds of bucks for unneeded frames. Now those frames are a little chipped and worn. It was time. But I still didn’t want to spend hundreds. I was doubtful that they would end up being $95 like they advertised, but that’s exactly what I paid. They do have options that you can pay for, but there weren’t any hidden markups.
  3. They donate a pair of glasses to someone in need. I sure do like that.

Now, don’t get me wrong- I do love supporting the little guy. I don’t want optometrists to go under because of this. For me- I just don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars (in which my vision insurances covers the mint on the receptionist’s desk and basically nothing else) on glasses.

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Gift Cards

Posted on January 15, 2019 by admin

If you haven’t heard, Gymboree is closing 900 of their stores. Read it here 

Ordinarily it wouldn’t really matter to me. 95% of the boys’ clothes come from garage sales. However, The Hubs and I have really been focusing on going through all of our stuff and reducing what we don’t need. It also means we are organizing all our crap. It also means we’ve found gift cards! Yippee!!

Amongst the gift cards, there was a Gymboree one.

Let me preface this by saying that I have Toys R Us gift cards that were unusable once they filed for bankruptcy. Allow me to introduce my angry face.

So not this time pal. Not this time. While this wasn’t exactly within my No Buy January Challenge, I used up that gift card while I still could. I bought sizes bigger than what Chaos is in right now, as he has a pretty good amount of his size in his closet now, but we don’t have hardly anything in his next size up.

What was interesting is that I didn’t get a rush from buying the clothes. It was just a thing. And I’m pretty excited about it.

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Box of Cords

Posted on January 13, 2019 by admin

Have you seen that post going around the Internet recently?

This one. Thank you Lori G. You are ever so correct.

Yeah, that one. Well, The Hubs and I managed to accumulate a box of cords. Like a banker’s box overflowing with cords. We’re proud to be directly in line with our mid-30s goals.

Cords? Check.

But today. Today, my friends, The Hubs went through the box. I wish I had photos, but I didn’t want to startle him and lose the progress he made. I considered what I learned about animals when we were on our S. African safari. Same tactics applied here. When I spotted him, I walked slowly and quietly to a place I could observe. I made small movements so that I didn’t distract or startle. I waited.

And it happened! Cords were removed. Some were pondered. There were a lot of shrugs. He found 7 old cell phones. SEVEN. (Don’t worry, we are finding a place to recycle those.)

While we still have a box of cords…we have less. And I think he might return to continue further one day.

I’m scheduling a parade for tomorrow. Break out the banners and flag twirlers.

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What is This Nature Thing?

Posted on January 12, 2019 by admin

Okay, I’ll admit it- we don’t get outside as much as we would want. The Hubs and I find that by the time we get home, get dinner cooking, eat, and then clean up- we’re basically out of time with the boys. Add to that- Chaos came home with a PK Homework Folder last week. Like what the what? Each day he has a task to do and then he turns it in on Fridays. While none of it is hard, we have to add in a few extra minutes so we can super exuberantly work with him on his homework (Because I am not going to make this drudgery. Not yet. We have plenty of time to torture him over homework in the years to come).

What it all means is that we don’t get outside very often during the week. And the weekends…well, the weekends are for catching up on every fracking thing we couldn’t squeeze in during the week. Basically weekends are exhausting too.

Admittedly we have a ways to go to figure out how to balance it all out. What makes it worse is the boys want to eat dinner every night.  Every night. It’s just not right.

But today we took a nature walk. And it was glorious.

Free range chickens children.

Trees, dirt, bugs, long sleeves. It was everything I could have hoped for.

And what we discovered is that the boys came home happier (with pockets filled with “gems”…rocks… and seeds) and it set the tone for a really enjoyable day.

Nature. Who knew?

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