dirty laundry

In my pre-Broderick life, I read so many great things about the benefits of cloth diapers. They were cheaper, better for the environment, and had benefits for baby, as well. Even better, I had a friend who gave me her cloth diapers to use with Broderick, meaning that we didn’t have to make the initial investment right away.

I forgot one very important thing when it came to cloth diapers–that I DESPISE laundry. Like seriously. It is the worst. So, cloth diapers were not for me. Lesson learned.

I recognize that laundry isn’t that hard of a chore, and it’s a necessary one, as eventually you run out of clothes to wear. But the way I was doing it just wasn’t helping me get this particular chore down. Here’s how it normally goes down:

1. OH, the pair of pants/shirt/cardigan I want to wear is dirty (i.e. has baby snot on it. Cute that Broderick knows that he needs to wipe his nose. Not cute that he does it on my shirt. And one time my mouth. EW. #overshare)
2. Wash and dry/line dry laundry promptly.
3. Let it sit in the basket in the laundry room for several days while I go back and forth from the basement to get what I want to wear.
4. Have Nathan ask me why I don’t just bring up the basket.
5. Bring up basket.
6. Clothes sit in basket in bedroom for several days.
7. Realize that I need the basket to put my dirty clothes in.
8. Put clothes away.
9. Put dirty clothes in basket and start laundry.
10. Repeat. (and multiply times about 8 between Broderick’s clothes and all of the household laundry.)

As part of my attempt to create a cleaning schedule (more on that later), I’ve tried to take the advice of blog posts I’ve read that suggest to do one load of laundry COMPLETELY (wash, dry, fold, put away) each day rather than do tons of it all at once. And I think that is something that can work for me. Here’s how I broke it out:

Mondays: Bedding
Tuesdays: Whitney
Wednesdays: Bathroom towels and rugs
Thursdays: Broderick
Fridays: Kitchen and cleaning rags

Only time will tell whether this will work, but I am optimistic. I’m willing to try anything that makes laundry better.

Now, if only someone (cough, Whitney) would take care of this laundry room…no wonder I don’t want to spend any time in there. And you can’t even see the half-destroyed wall behind the washer and dryer. #keepingitreal

six months down: where we stand

We moved into our new house a little more than six months ago, and I feel like we’ve made a ton of progress (which obviously helps with my DIY goal.) I feel like all of my posts for the blog could be and probably are the same, but that’s because I’m really focused on getting the house somewhat right before I am able to focus on other things (also known as EVERY OTHER THING.)

So far, I’ve completed the following projects:

• Remove wallpaper and paint the basement (which let me unpack some of our books, the ultimate goal in my life.)
• Paint living room and half of hallway. (This took kind of a while because of the furniture moving required and also the navy blue paint…)

• Paint dining room. Lesson here is to consider the amount of paint you’ll need for a room or you’ll end up having to get more with hardly any wall left to go.

• Remove wallpaper from the entry and most of the kitchen.
  • Here’s a new DIY tip I learned on this project: Sometimes when your steam cleaner breaks and you have no idea how you’re going to take down the wallpaper otherwise, just pull it and it comes off in sheets in about five minutes. But then you have a gluey mess left behind. So you have to spray it constantly with water and dawn dish soap and scrape it off by hand with a putty knife. See below: left side is no paste and right is still gross.

• My office wallpaper is gone.
• Broderick’s room has wallpaper down, paint and just needs new curtains and art.
• My closet is now a glorious place that keeps my clothes organized and is pink and pretty.

We’ve also had the following problems come up:

• Replace French doors that didn’t close with sliding glass doors that really aren’t that clean, yet somehow birds still fly into them.

• Replace oven.
• Fix leaky window well: this is on our list for Memorial Day weekend
• Fix leaky bathroom: also a surprise that our bathroom fixtures are leaking down into the storage room. The only benefit of the leaky window well was that we discovered this because we were checking on the other leak.
• LIGHTBULBS. Good grief, we have lightbulbs burning out all of the time.
• Electrical panel and other misc. electrical things: Lesson here: get a home warranty plan.
• The backyard, which desperately needed grass seed.

When I was typing up this list, it didn’t seem like a lot but it’s been a lot of work and all things that make a huge difference for us. It will hopefully eventually get to the point where we can stop for a while, which means you might get to read posts about something other than DIY from me…

meal planning made…easier?

Oh, pinterest…where have you been all my life? As you remember, I made it a goal to unplug, and even before I made that goal, I had taken steps to try and be on my phone less. One strategy was to delete certain apps off of my phone (cough, facebook and pinterest.) It was easy to be off pinterest for a while, maybe because I didn’t know my password. But after I updated my phone, the pinterest app reinstalled itself, so I just had to figure out my password…and then I fell down the rabbit hole. Boo.

But there have been some benefits to being back on pinterest. For starters, I’ve been able to find lots of ideas for our house, which is really coming together. And I’ve found a lot of cool things for Broderick’s gallery wall. And most importantly, I found a cool site that helps me meal plan better.

I’m on week two of using gathered table to do my meal planning and grocery list and so far I really like it. It sends you a weekly menu, which you can just take as-is or edit, and then you can also print a grocery list, which it creates for you, as well. There are different dietary preferences, too, so pretty much anyone could use it. I highly recommend it for people who are like me and are lazy and hate cooking.

whitney’s first quarter in review

It’s progress report time! As Laura mentioned in her last post, we are approaching the end of the first of six quarters in our quest for self-improvement before we turn the big 3-0. Here’s how I am doing so far.

My List
Finish my book. While I haven’t actually written anything, I have been exploring some different plot points that will drastically change my story and I think get me back on the right track to re-start and finish my book.
Focus on my professional life. Here’s a hint. Don’t tempt fate by pretending you have everything figured out. After my post a couple of weeks ago about how I had everything finally calmed down, we went back to chaos. At least I still have wine and diet coke to get me through the craziness.
Do more DIY…myself. This is probably the area I have been most successful in. In addition to wallpaper removal and closet building, I’ve been able to get several rooms in our house mostly started. (Notice I didn’t say mostly done.) There have been lots of opportunities to learn some DIY skills as I try to tackle the cosmetic upgrades our house desperately needs.
Take a vacation. Not sure I count my trip to Denver as a vacation, if only because it’s somewhere I’ve been before, but it was nice to get out and spend time with my family.
Get out more. I feel I am doing OK with this one. Now that winter is over, I have been trying to get out and do things, including seeing movies and spending time with friends. I still think I could improve on this one, so it will definitely be a focus for me.
Unplug. Lately I have been watching less TV (win) but I have been on my phone more. So, that’s something I can work on.
Deal with sentimental clutter. Not doing great on this one, but I have been decluttering the large amounts of stuff we still have everywhere. I get attached to things crazy easily, so even just getting rid of old T-shirts from college was emotionally taxing, so I guess I can count it as sentimental, right?
See 5 movies in the theater. I have seen three movies in the theater, all I recommend: The Theory of Everything, The Age of Adaline, and Woman in Gold.
Spend more time outside. Yes, thanks to Broderick’s obsession with outside, I have been doing this.
Have a date night out once a month. So far, we haven’t missed a month.

Our List
Visit Mansfield, Missouri, and the related Laura Ingalls Wilder sites. Plans are in the works.
Create and stick to a cleaning schedule. Working on it.
Visit Burr Oak, Iowa, and the related Laura Ingalls Wilder sites. Not yet.
Visit Independence, Kansas. Not yet.
Refinish piece of furniture. Not yet.
Make meal plans. I have been making meal plans each week but still haven’t done my epic 8-week plan yet.
Book swap-trade once a quarter (six total books). Next week.
Re-read the Little house series. Not yet, but I did reread another childhood favorite, The Sky Is Falling.
Write a personal letter or note to someone once a month. Does it count if they are written but never sent?
Have a writing retreat weekend. Not yet.

our new normal

In the past, I was never the kind of person who did well with change. It’s chaotic, which went against my crazy type-A personality. Now, change still feels chaotic, but I’m more used to it, because it happens more frequently.

Obviously, one of my biggest changes over the past few years has been Broderick, and obviously (at least to everyone else) this snowballed many other changes, including a move, a job change, and three daycare changes, among others. When I set my goal to figure out my life, I did that during a time that was most chaotic for us. On top of the move, I had just transitioned out of a job I loved into a job that I knew I would still love with the same organization but with fewer hours than before. I needed to figure out what I wanted our day to day life to look like.

Well, here we are a few months later, and while I’m not saying nothing will change ever again, we have settled into a weekly routine-ish. And it feels a little less chaotic. Broderick goes to daycare three days a week in the morning, and then he is home with me Mondays and Fridays and afternoons. This gives me time to work on the house (YOU’RE GOING DOWN WALLPAPER), write my book (eventually) and work on my projects for my day job, as well as any other new opportunities that come up.

So, for the time being, I’m going to cross Goal No. 1 off the list and say that life is (somewhat) figured out. And I finally picked a paint color. It’s called “Predictable.” Not kidding.

closet? you’ll love it!

Our new master bedroom has two closets, one in the bedroom and one in the attached bathroom. Both are probably three times bigger than the closet we were sharing before, so it felt like such luxury. However, neither really functioned super well, thanks to a lack of built-ins or strange built-ins that didn’t really work. So despite all of the room, there was constant chaos. (Though I have come to learn that with a small child, there is always constant chaos.)

It seemed like a stupid project to start working on just based solely on all of the other projects that needed to be done (cough, yard and garage), but it is one of those projects that needed to be done so that other things could happen, like unpacking more boxes and the organizing of all the other closets.

We started with the closet in the bathroom because the one in our room will be much more complicated (it involves a built-in cabinet with a bookshelf door in the middle plus storage. It’s hard to explain but will be really cool). That closet will be mine, so I thought about how I wanted everything to be (after consulting pinterest obviously) and drew out the following:

We went to Home Depot and bought all some of our materials and had everything cut there so it could (more) easily fit in the car. After taking the current built-ins and shelves out and doing our measurements, we installed the divider. Then I rearranged everything. Even though I liked my original plan I realized it would involve opening both closet doors every day and, well, I’m lazy. So we took everything out, adjusted our measurements, and put everything back together.

Some DIY skills I learned this project:

• Measure twice, cut once: While good construction advice, also good advice for planning projects. This closet could have been much easier and less time-consuming if I wouldn’t have changed my mind in the middle.
• How to change a drill bit.
• How to use materials you already have differently vs. buying new materials.
• Finishing details really make all the difference. I didn’t want to paint the closet because, as you saw above, I’m lazy, but Nathan encouraged me to and I’m glad I did. It made everything look a lot more finished.
• It always takes more time than you think. I thought it would be a quick day project but it ended up being a whole weekend-plus.

But, the finished project is worth it, I think. Plenty of room for my clothes plus the few things that were in the closet to begin with, like towels, sheets, and other stuff that doesn’t fit in our vanity.

get out of town

Broderick and I just flew back from Colorado, and boy are our arms tired. (I don’t know why. I just couldn’t resist this joke.)

When I set my goal to get out more, I didn’t necessarily mean leave the state. But something about winter and not being able to go anywhere and just being home all the time really made me crave a change of scenery. So because I can do my job from anywhere and Broderick is still free to fly (and, as you saw, Garth was going to be there), we took a little vacay to Colorado to spend some time with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Stephanie, and all our friends.

It was truly a breath of fresh air. I think one of the hidden secrets of vacation is that after you have all that fun, you are so refreshed when you come back–or maybe that’s just me. I feel like I have more focus, motivation, and drive when my brain has had a chance to relax a little and let go. That also could be that my angel of a mother let me catch up on a years’ worth of sleep and got up with my small child at the crack of dawn.

Some trip highlights:

Driving up to my grandpa’s to see him and showing Broderick the baby cows. Even the drive wasn’t too bad. Broderick was pretty good.

Ikea. Both times. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a car.
Garth Brooks, as you saw.
Dinner and Drinks with my besties.
Spending time with family and family friends.
Going to the Littleton Historical Museum, my favorite place.

So, despite the ginormous amount of stuff babies and Whitneys require and the whole airport/flying with a baby thing, getting out of town was worth the effort. I highly recommend it.

wallpaper out.

When I set my goal to learn more DIY skills, I knew that my very first project would be to learn to take down wallpaper. When we looked at our house, we knew there would be a ton of wallpaper to take down, but I flippantly said, “It’s just wallpaper.” There’s no such thing as just wallpaper, as it turns out. Here is a summary for you; please sing it to the tune from the “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” theme song:

Now, this is the story all about how
My basement wallpaper all got taken down.
And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there,
I’ll tell you how it all happened with many a tear.

A few months ago, in September one-four,
we looked at all the walls and said, man what a chore.
Bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen and hall,
Even the basement was covered wall to wall.

So despite all appearances we decided to move in,
And vowed to put all the wallpaper in the trash bin.
I started with one little wall and took it from there,
And despite my best efforts really got nowhere.

I tried fabric softener, vinegar, a scorer, and this gel,
it was—to be honest—basically hell.
Finally made some progress with a little bit of steam,
And after eight weeks the walls were pretty much clean.

Will all the wallpaper gone forever and ever,
the holes in the wall were still such a stressor.
Some patch, sanding and paint were needed,
Then NEVER AGAIN, we pleaded and pleaded.

As far as the actual DIY knowledge I’ve learned, here are some do’s and don’ts on wallpaper removal.

Do prime drywall before you put wallpaper up. This would have solved many of my problems. Do use a steamer. A wallpaper steamer would be ideal, but a shark steamer works in a pinch.

Do sit in a small chair that belongs to your child rather than the floor. Do drink wine and re-watch shows on Netflix. (I recommend Parenthood, 30 Rock, and Parks and Rec.) Don’t put up vinyl wallpaper with a ton of glue, only the very-easily strippable paper kind.

Do: wash the walls carefully before you sand, or even better before you spackle. Also, do wash the walls because the glue is gross. Also, do cover everything in the room before you sand. Or better yet, don’t use an electric sander and do use a wet sponge to sand instead.

Do prime the walls before you paint, to help cover up all the spots on the wall. Don’t use paint and primer for this step, though do use it to actually paint. It helps in this instance.

Do use an edger instead of a brush, but with not a ton of paint. At least two coats to make sure everything looks OK. Make sure you tape but that you take off the tape before it dries completely, or you will rip off the paint you just spent forever putting on the walls.

see ya later, winter

I hope I’m not jinxing us by making that my post title. (Though there is snow in the 10-day forecast on a day where the high is supposed to be 55…that will be interesting but still not winter-ish). Because I for one am super glad to bid the cold farewell for a while.

The change in season also helps support my goal of spending more time outside, and with the changing weather these past few days, we have definitely been taking advantage of the sunshine. The windows are open, letting fresh air into the house,  since we haven’t really been able to open the windows since we moved in. Fresh air can do wonders.

We are also talking some walks to explore the neighborhood–there are so many paths and so many possibilities, and Broderick has tons of playgrounds to explore. I found a free jogging stroller on the side of the road that just needs to be cleaned up, which will be great to use as the spring and summer go on. And of course, Shelby is loving being OUT, and everyone is loving her–she gets a comment from someone pretty much every time we go out, and today, a middle school-aged boy even said “nice dog” to her. That’s the best compliment of all.

We love playing in the backyard, too. These guys will be trouble very shortly, I’m pretty sure.

planners: a history

I have always been a crazy planner person. In college I had my days planned out by the minute, trying to balance classes and jobs and homework and sorority stuff and everything else. Sometimes, it’s crazy for me to look back at all I did and wonder when I slept at all. Back then, I was using this weekly planner and color coding everything I did. I would write “buy new planner” at the end of every year and look forward to the day I got to pick out my new friend for the year, even though I was impossible to please. Still am, for that matter.

Eventually, I had an 8-5 job and didn’t need to keep track of so much. I changed over to the Barnes and Noble literary planner, the laurel denise planner, and then eventually the ARC system, once I had more things to keep track of. This past year I even designed my own planner, though in the end it still wasn’t quite what I wanted.

How does this all fit into my goals? I have at one point gone away from planning out my day, which I think made me less productive. Even though I have both not as much and more to balance now, it seemed unnecessary to keep trying to micromanage my day. Or maybe I was just trying to be spontaneous. But I’ve noticed now that I have started writing down my tasks and timeframes I want to do them in, I have stepped away from the TV and phone (unplugged) and become a lot more productive. Even though I’m just writing down things I would be doing anyway, it helps a ton to be able to check them off. The planner I’m using this year is the simplified planner by Emily Ley, and I’m also excited to start using her printables. I really love it, and even leave weird inside jokes for myself to laugh at later.

What’s really helpful about this planner is it has places for me to write down what we are having for dinner. While eventually I hope to have a more permanent solution with predetermined grocery lists and something to hang up in the kitchen each week, this works for now to keep me on track and hopefully help me stop avoiding cooking each night.