Works for me Wednesday: Papers

I am not a very organized person in general. When it comes to papers, as both a teacher and a homemaker, I suck. They would get everywhere and completely overwhelm me if I didn't have a system.

My years in a classroom actually taught me (through trial by fire) the necessity of two things when it came to papers: having a place for everything and handling every piece of paper only once.

So at home for all my papers, I have a three shelf tray (actually this one from Ikea). I place it on top of my filing cabinet and next to my shredder and recycle bin.

Every day, when the mail comes, or really any time papers come into the house, I open them immediately. I recycle or shred everything I don't need to keep, and everything else goes in one of my three trays. The top is for things I need to be able to see and grab immediately: checks that need to be deposited, reminder cards for upcoming appointments. The second tray is for "action items": bills that need to be paid, rebates that need to be filled out. The bottom drawer is for things that need to be filed.

Then, every few days or at least once a week, I go through my trays in order. Anything that needs my immediate attention gets dealt with first (appointments getting added to calendars, RSVPs), then if I still have time I pay whatever bills I have, then if I still have time I do my filing. In all honesty, I haven't filed very many times since I had the baby, but at least I know that everything that needs to be filed is in one safe place, and even if I don't get to my filing all my bills get paid on time.

(I also keep my stamps, checkbook, and address stickers right in the tray where I keep my bills. That way I always know where everything is and can get through the task faster).

It isn't a perfect system, but it works for me.

To do lists and other nonsense

I’ve never been much of a list maker. My husband (who very much is) always tells me to add things to my list when I think of them. I’ve always told him I’m more likely to lose the list than to forget to do it.

These days that doesn’t seem to be the case. Since I had the baby (and really a few months before), I have been operating in a sort of fog and constantly forget what it is that I need to do. I have decided to resort to the lists as a necessity. The daily chores get done and the weekly chores usually get done, but all the picky things like making appointments and writing thank you cards were falling through the cracks.

The problem is, to do lists still make me cranky. I forget to write things on them, then I forget to look at them, then when I do look at them I only see things I can’t do at that particular moment, and by the end of the day I just look back at the list and see a bunch of things that I still haven’t done and feel defeated.
So I think the solution (and this makes me even crazier) is to maintain two separate lists: a master to do list, and a basic daily plan. The purpose of the master list is to “catch” all the stuff that’s floating in my head, so that I don’t think later “what was it I said I needed to do?” The purpose of the daily plan is to actually have a reasonable and actionable set of things to do.
So, here’s how my strategy looks these days – this is a work in progress:

• I keep a master list on a pretty notepad of all the things I need to do. As soon as I think about it, I get my rear end to the notepad and write it down. My notepad is on my refrigerator so I don’t lose it, but I should probably put it on my nightstand when I go to bed and in my purse when I go out because things are still getting away from me.
  
  
• I take 5 minutes at night before I go to bed (but after the baby goes to bed) to read my list and choose a few things from it that I really need or want to get done the next day. If I choose too many, I won’t get through them or I’ll be overwhelmed and not do any. I also try to cluster tasks – I pay bills in a block a few times a month, I do errands once or twice a week when things are near each other – but not schedule huge things like “file 3 months worth of papers,” a task which would stay on the master list forever.
  
• I take 5 minutes in the morning to think about how those tasks will fit into my day. Are they desk tasks that I can do while holding the baby? Are they errands I should schedule around naptime?
  
• I cross things off the master list as they get done, and I throw away my daily schedule every day, whether I got to everything on it or not.

It’s not a perfect system, and I can’t believe that I actually gave in to using lists. Right now, it works for me, but I’m very open to suggestions. As you can see, I’m orgazationally challenged!

Keeping the house clean in 2011: On the baby's schedule

So, I said earlier that it was one of my resolutions this year to keep my house cleaner. If you’ve been a reader for a little while, you know that this is an area I have struggled with for a while. You also know that I have a 4 month old at home.
In the past month or so, my precious angel has decided that she doesn’t need naps that are longer than 30 minutes, and sometimes that she doesn’t need to nap at all. Needless to say I disagree. I Unfortunately, trying to get her back on track and rested means that I’m spending more time sitting in her room trying to get her to go to and stay asleep, giving me even less than 30 minutes at a shot to get my household work done. This has made it a bit challenging to try to keep up with the cleaning. So I’ve come up with this threefold plan, and hopefully it will work for me.

• I do everything I can with the baby. For example, I clip my coupons and pay my bills sitting on the floor while she has tummy time, and I made a game out of folding my laundry. I bundle her up to go outside and get the mail, and I try to carry her around as I do light decluttering. This makes these tasks take a little longer, but it’s fun for her and it means I can spend those few nap minutes on things I can only do when she’s sleeping.
  
• I do as much as I can in the evening when my husband is home to play with the baby. I do all the dishes, some housework, make lunch for my husband and sometimes for myself for the next day, and defrost something for the next day’s dinner.
  
• I need to prioritize the work in the household and accept that not everything will get done all the time, but that some things must get done and I must do them first.
  

So, when I do have a few minutes, like at the beginning of a nap, or when the baby is entertaining herself on her play gym (and ignoring me), I choose a quick 5 minute task to do. I do them in the order listed below. This way I know that the things that must be done are getting done, and when possible I also do what should be done. Since the length of a nap is never guaranteed, breaking things up into 5 minute chunks means I never have a job half finished when I have to run and get the baby. First, I do my daily chores:

1. I make my bed.
   
2. I start a load of laundry, or switch it to the next position.
   
3. I put away any dishes on my draining rack, empty my dishwasher, and reload it. (Or any one or two of these tasks, if I get interrupted.)
   
4. I grab the bags out of any full trashcans, and gather up all my rinsed recyclables to take out to the bins.
   
5. I do a quick throw-away/put-away drill in my living room and kitchen.
   
6. I do any make-ahead meal prep that I can do for dinner (i.e., chopping onions, washing vegetables).
   

Then, once all my daily household chores are done, I pick a weekly chore from the list below. At one point, I had chores assigned to specific days of the week, but then if I had a bad day two Mondays in a row, my floors didn’t get washed for three weeks. Now I just do the chores in order. If I get to two in a day, I get ahead, if I don’t get to any, it’s okay.

1. I sweep and damp mop all my hard floors. (Or just sweep, or just mop)
   
2. I vacuum my carpets. (Usually I divide this, upstairs and downstairs)
   
3. I dust with a damp rag or microfiber cloth.
   
4. I clean my mirrors and sinks, toilets, and shower (Again, or I break this up if need be)
   
5. I clean any old food out of my refrigerator.
   
6. I change my sheets and towels (Okay, this one I still do on the same day every week)
   

And if I get through all that I’m done. Actually, if I get through a little of that, I’m usually done. If I get through one or two weekly housekeeping chores, I give myself some downtime for the rest of the day. The thing is, knowing exactly what to do and getting to it right away actually means that I have more time to rest or to sit and watch the baby sleep. So far at least, it works for me.

Patience and compassion (and a little less whining)

I've been working with kids, in some capacity, for close to ten years now. Even before that, I tutored and taught my friends and classmates for as long as I can remember. I've always considered my strength as a teacher to be my ability to see each student as an individual, to give people what they need and not necessarily what the curriculum says they should get. Being fair means considering each circumstance and doing what is appropriate, not expecting people to do things they are not capable of.

So why can't I see it when it's me?

I'm not Martha Stewart, nor am I Crystal or Meredith, as much as I admire and respect them both. I can't get my grocery budget down to $50 a month for two of us. My apartment doesn't look like it came out of a magazine. I don't know how to sew an apron, nor could I probably concentrate long enough to finish one even if I had instructions.

And you know what? That's okay. My laundry is done. I have dinner on the table every night. My apartment looks presentable enough that I don't mind having company. I work a few hours a week, enough that I feel good about it. There's money in my savings account, and that number is growing every month. If I'm more tired than I used to be, I should rest and sleep more. If I want to work on a quilt or knit a blanket, I have time; if it takes me 2 years to finish something, that's okay too. If my best friend on the other side of the planet needs to talk to me at 6AM, the housework will wait.

Instead of setting unrealistic expectations and ultimatums for myself, I need to treat myself with the same patience and compassion I would treat one of my students. Instead of setting hard and fast goals and then feeling let down, I need to see what each day brings and do the best I can. The goal is progress, not perfection, something I'd be proud to hear one of my kids realize.

Frugal Friday: Carpet cleaning

I have a giant dirt stain in the living carpet of my apartment from a plant I overwatered about a year ago (oops). I tried to clean it with carpet cleaner at the time, but it seemed a futile pursuit, so I just repositioned my furniture to cover it. Foolish, I know, and shortsighted because now as moving day fast approaches I am realizing that a stain in my carpet may prevent me from getting my security deposit back (not very frugal). I considered renting a steam cleaner (still not so frugal), but decided first that I'd give it one more shot on my own.

First, I attacked it with carpet cleaner, following the directions on the bottle. I sprayed, I waited, I blotted. Dirt was clearly coming out of my carpet, but it wasn't making much of a difference.

Then, I realized that I could spray plain water on my carpet and achieve nearly the same results. Again, I sprayed, I blotted. I used rags, old towels, paper towels. I tried stepping on the cloths to get more dirt out. Dirt continued to come out of my carpet. Clearly this was working, but it seemed like it would be a nearly endless process.

Finally I had a breakthrough. I sprayed the carpet with water until it was really wet, then I sprinkled baking soda over the entire area. The baking soda quickly became brown as it soaked up the dirt and water. I waited a few hours until the baking soda had completely dried then picked it up with my vacuum. Wow! For the first time I could actually see a noticeable difference in the stain. It's not completely gone, so I'm repeating the process, but it's a heck of a lot easier and more frugal than anything else I had thought of!

For more frugal ideas, check out Frugal Fridays at Life as Mom.

Me, us, the house, the money

Since this whole stay at home wife (maybe SAHM someday, but not yet, hold your horses people) is new to me, I've been fumbling a little as to what to do. Okay, so I'm not really a stay at home anything since I do work part time, but after working close to 55 hours a week at school, my current 7 hour a week schedule seems like a vacation.

And there's the rub. I can't get my mind around whether this home thing is a vacation or a career. Should I be working or playing? How much of my time is free time?

My house isn't a disaster anymore. Regardless of what you may have read in the Feminine Mystique, housework doesn't always expand to fill the available time. So that means I have time. Not however limitless time.

And so, despite the fact that it feels like I have all the time in the world, I find that I need to make choices. And I don't always make the right choices. I'm so used to trying to be "productive," which has so often meant money, that I found myself wasting all my time looking for something productive to do. That sounds silly, but it's where I am.

I don't want it to sound like I'm bound by any 1950's ideal of what a housewife should be. But in our current division of labor, my husband works full time. I work part time, enough to help pay the bills and have a little money left for savings and debt repayment, and the rest of the time I'm home. The equity of this situation does bear with it certain expectations. So when my husband comes home to find me on the couch with my computer, cranky and un-put-together, dishes in the sink, and dinner not made, something has gone awry.

So my new set of priorities is this: Me then us then the house then money. If there's something I need to do to be a healthy, happy, positive human being, then I have to do it. That might mean exercising, writing, cooking myself a real lunch, or just scheduling in some quiet time. Then, I need to make sure I do anything for us, anything necessary to charge our relationship. So, meeting my husband for lunch once in a while trumps scrubbing floors. The next priority is to take care of the house. Generally 10 minutes a day is enough for cleaning, plus a little time to keep up with my laundry. The money comes last. While I'd like to make extra money, everything else has to be done first. If I'm not taking care of myself, my marriage, and my house, then the extra money isn't worth it.

Errand day and other things I blow out of proportion

The thing I dread more than anything is running errands. I'm not sure why exactly. It's some combination of the driving, the waiting, the being away from home. It fills me with an overwhelming sense of anxiety. Since I hate it so much, I tend to procrastinate my errands until I have a big old pile of them which fills me with even more anxiety.

The worst thing about the whole scenario is that I have ABSOLUTELY no sense of how long anything will have to take. A simple trip to the post office or the bank, and I feel like I need to block out half a day. The grocery store, I have convinced myself, cannot be navigated in less than an hour. I map out complex routes to increase my efficiency, I wait until I have a long, uninterrupted block of time, and then I dive in.

And it's never as bad as I expected it to be.

Don't get me wrong: I still can't stand waiting in line at the post office. I have yet to find a time to go to the bank which is not incredibly unpleasant. But when I finish my errands, I always have - along with a sense of relief and accomplishment - a little voice in my head that says "Oh. That was it?"

I dont' know why I build these things up in my head to be so overwhelming and all-encompassing. I know that I am making myself crazy. And yet, I continue to do it.


So, what's the solution? Do you have any tasks in your life that you blow out of proportion and avoid?

Frugal Principles: Make do

It's Frugal Friday again over at Biblical Womanhood. This is the next installment in my extremely sporadic series on the frugal axiom "Use it up, Use less, Make do, or Do Without.

Today I'm going to talk about making do, and how this frugal principle applies to my everyday life. To me, making do is the heart of creative frugality: it's finding a way to make what you have or what you can afford work in place of what you don't have or can't afford. You might use this tip to avoid buying an expensive tool (an electric sander? I can make do with this sand paper), a high end brand of coffee (make do with the store brand), or simply to avoid an extra trip to the store (make do with blueberries when you intended to make a peach cobbler). This is a step towards frugality that can seem difficult and tedious - having to forego all the "luxuries" - unless you find a way to use your creativity to make it into a game.

I'm not the most creative person in the world, so this is one I still struggle with, but here are some things I've come up with:

• Instead of buying a new dress for the wedding you have to go to this summer, make do with one you bought last summer buy adding a snazzy accessory, cute cardigan, or even by adding some stitching or changing the hem length. Hey, if there's different people at this wedding, you don't need to change anything at all! :)
  
  
• Instead of running to the store to buy buttermilk to make a certain recipe make do with the following substition: add 1 teaspoon lemon juice or vinegar to your cup of milk and wait a second for it to start to bubble. There's a great list of Cooking Substitutions on Tawra's website, Living on a Dime.
  
  
• Instead of buying trash bags, make do with the plastic bags from the grocery store.

And since I'm fresh out of creativity right now, here's a creative frugality challenge for you:

I have a stack of newspapers, a cardboard box, and a ton of plastic grocery bags, plus assorted household odds and ends (some leftover ribbon, yarn, twine, plenty of tape...). How many different making do substitutions can you come up with?

Cleaning out my apartment: donating

The three bags of health and beauty items above went to my local food bank yesterday. The bags mostly consist of shampoos and toothpastes, but there is also some lotion and some packs of feminine products in there too. Most of this is stuff I purchased for free with grocery coupons, and which has been languishing under the sink in my guest bathroom for months. I feel lighter for it being gone, and I have all that extra storage space back, but mostly I feel good because it's going to go to good use.

If you donate goods to a food bank, soup kitchen, or shelter, you can deduct the full value (i.e., not what you paid with coupons and rebates, but what someone else would have to pay) from your taxes. Since we don't itemize deductions, I don't worry about this, but if you do make sure to get a receipt.

This is my first bit of progress on my goals for summer. Try to keep me honest at making steady progress!

More uses for vinegar and baking soda

While vinegar and baking soda can come in handy when you want to clean your kitchen, they certainly have plenty of other uses as well. Here's to the whole house virtues of these very frugal supplies. I'd buy them in bulk if I were you.

Clean your oven

I've already written about how to clean your oven with a tray of vinegar, but it's even easier to maintain it with baking soda. Whenever something drips onto the floor of your oven, sprinkle baking soda on it right away, and when it cools it will be easy to wipe up.

Make baths more bubbly

A bit of baking soda added to a bubble bath will sooth your skin and make your bubbles bubble up some more.

Boost your laundry

A cup of vinegar added to the rinse cycle of your laundry will soften clothes, brighten colors, and make your detergent more effective.

Shine windows

Vinegar water is a handy nontoxic solution to cleaning any glass. If your glass is a bit streaky, it's because of the products you've used before. Add a drop of dish soap to the vinegar mixture the first time; you shouldn't need to again.

Whiten your teeth

A bit of baking soda with water on a toothbrush makes a very effective whitening paste. I don't do this every day, but once in a while I find it packs a mean punch.

Brighten your hair

Rinsing your hair with diluted vinegar will help to remove any residue from the shampoos and styling products you usually use, giving your hair more body and shine.

Reclaim your time with a written cleaning plan

This is my first entry to Works for me Wednesday.

I got this idea from a single mom who was a year ahead of me in teaching college. She said that the only way she ever managed to get her grading and planning done on top of everything else was to reclaim small bits of time throughout her day. Instead of waiting until she had a free hour, she would find five minutes while waiting outside her daughter’s school and pull a 5 minute task out of her work bag to accomplish.

I try to use this tactic with my grading, but I’ve definitely found it to work with my cleaning. I save lots of time cleaning by figuring out how long things will take and getting them done whenever I have a moment.

Over the past year, I have noted how long various household chores take, both of my active time and of passive machine time. For example – Sweeping kitchen floor (5 minutes) vs. Run Dishwasher (5 minutes active, 45 minutes passive). Some of these are in my head, but some tasks that I do less often I still write down in a notebook which I keep in the kitchen. If I’m microwaving something for two minutes, I grab a two minute task from my notebook (shine my sink), and it’s amazing how much I get done.

If I have a whole hour, I will devise a more complicated plan of attack. For example:

Switch clothes to dryer (1 minute active, 50 minutes passive)
Start dishwasher (5 minutes active, 45 minutes passive)
Sweep floor (5 minutes)
Swiffer/damp rag mop floor (5 minutes)
Update blog (10 minutes – see how I snuck that in there?)
Wipe down counters (2 minutes)
Shine sink (2 minute)
Dust (10 minutes)
Vacuum living room and hallway (10 minutes)
Fold clothes (because of course, they’re done now) (5 minutes)
Empty dishwasher (5 minutes)

It looks like a lot, but I can get all this done in an hour specifically because I made the plan. If I didn’t have a plan, I would waste a lot of time, dawdling, procrastinating, and trying to figure out what to do next. Things always seem to me like they will take longer than they do, so actually timing myself and putting it in writing keeps me honest about how much I can accomplish. It’s funny how once I’ve written down that I can do something, I really can.

Well, anyway, it works for me.

Clean your whole kitchen with baking soda and vinegar

One way to save money and help the environment is to use less toxic alternatives for cleaning. I find the best cleaners to be baking soda and vinegar, which can do an amazing number of different cleaning tasks around the house. To help you discover their true power, I drafted this how to plan for cleaning your entire kitchen using only baking soda and vinegar. This is a pretty intense kitchen cleaning, and not everyone will need every step every night. Order is somewhat important here, so read the whole thing before you start so you know what steps to skip.

Before you start, make yourself a spray bottle with a mix of vinegar and water. Proportions are not exact: my rule is a little vinegar to a lot of water. :) Keep this handy.

After dinner:
1. Put a pan of vinegar in the oven and turn it on to 200 degrees fahreneheit.

2. If you have any very dirty pots and pans, particularly any with crusts on them or food stuck to them, put a little baking soda in the bottom and cover with water. Put the pots back on the stove and turn on your burners to bring the water to a boil.

3. While the water is boiling, wash the rest of your dishes. I confess that I use a dishwasher for my tableware even though I know it's a hot water hog (you could, by the way run this with baking soda for detergent and vinegar for rinse aid - but I don't). The dishwasher saves my sanity. Anything that isn't going in the dishwasher, wash in the sink. . . Again you could use baking soda for this - but I don't.

4. When the water in your pot is boiling (probably halfway through your dish washing), turn it off and let it cool. Scrape the bottom a bit with a plastic spatula to make sure the crustiness came off. Once it's cool, wash the pot in the sink with a sponge or rag, it should be very easy.

5. Put a bowl of vinegar and water in the microwave and heat it for 90 seconds.

6. While the vinegar is heating, sprinkle osme baking soda in your sink and scrub it a bit with a sponge or rag. Don't rinse it down the drain yet.

7. With your spray bottle, quickly wipe down the counter with a rag or towel. I use yesterday's dish towel and take out a clean one for the dishes every day.

8. The vinegar should be heated. Remove it from the microwave (if you are congested or have a headache, give the hot vinegar a sniff. Woo!). There should be vinegar and water droplets on the walls of your microwave. Use your towel to wipe it down.

9. Pour the vinegar into the sink, using it to wash the baking soda down the drain. It may foam up in your sink, which will help clean, and the baking soda and hot vinegar will keep your drain clear. Rinse the sink with hot water and dry it with your towel.

10. Drop the (increasingly dirty) towel on the floor. Spritz the floor with your vinegar solution and move the towel around with your foot to polish the floor. Give any incredibly dirty spots and extra spritz and come back to them. Now put the towel in the wash because it's probably pretty gross. I find that if I do this quick clean a few days a week, I very rarely need to do a serious mop, which I consider a serious pain (and for which, by the way, I do use vinegar).

11. Turn off your oven. Leave the vinegar tray in there; it will continue to evaporate. In a few hours when the oven has cooled, wipe down the vinegar droplets as you did your microwave.


Voila! A clean and healthy kitchen.

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