Friday, August 10, 2007

Fun Friday

Produce co-op.

Swimming - we'd not gone at all this week. The children deserved a treat.

I busily printed photos of Stacia's first year...but didn't finish before I had to leave the house. Tonight was PWOC's Project night on base. I decided to keep working on transferring old photos to a new album. My friend, Debbie, was uninspired with her project and so she helped me take photos out of my magnetic albums. I got the second album transferred and all the pages are out of the 3rd album. I've arrived in Liberia, West Africa.

BTW - this is part of my Scrapbook Challenge thingy. I hope to be able to make more progress now that I have a whole album of photos removed from the magnetic album and ready to transfer. Sherri, another friend, attended tonight. She sells Creative Memory and was laughing at my old tape runners. I have BOXES of these....but using hers quickly helped me decide to pitch all of them and buy a new one. ::snort:: Wow - much quicker with a decent tape runner. Mine aren't THAT old - I sold from 2003 - 2005.

That's it for the day.
*Confessions of an Organized Homemaker* by Deniece Schofield

I received this book from Paperback Swap. I first thought, "Yeah, I'll skim this and put it back on PBS quickly." As I started reading I thought, "I'll keep this one, it will be good for a resource to hand out." As I finished the book I debated what to do - it IS a good book. I found that I was already doing 80% of what she mentions. I could keep it for step by step instructions as I implement some new organization in my kitchen...and it would be nice, I suppose to have to loan out.....but I have so many books kept for that reason - and I NEED TO CLEAR OUT THE BOOKS!!!! I put it back on PBS, where it was on someones wish list. LOL

I really enjoyed the easy style of writing in this book. Deniece shares many great tips. She has quite a bit on setting up a calendar type household notebook. I find that I already did this on my own but my notebook is not small enough to "carry with me". I'm still not convinced that I will go back and get a smaller one...I like that I can easily 3 hole punch most fliers, support group directories etc. and put them right in my notebook. When I set up my notebook I decided NOT to have daily planning sheets. She goes into detail as to WHY this is a good idea and suggests you only keep 2 months of daily sheets in your notebook at a time. That will stretch my already bulging notebook, but I may do this.

Other ideas that I may implement are: storing spices in a plastic bin that can be pulled off the shelf at one time, having a cleaning cart (not sure where to find one of these), plastic dish drainer for storing cleaning supplies in a cupboard.... She has a filing system that is vastly different than our. She says to have 12 folders by month - all bills from January are filed in that folder etc. She recommends this over a seperate folder for each bill....and then ::gasp:: I guess you throw the bills out at the end of the year? I'm not sure I'll implement that one but it does sound like much less paper.....Remember I recently took a whole BOX of files to the attic. ::snort::

She seems to REALLY like dishpans and kitty litter boxes - you'll have to read the book to discover why. ::snort:: The book was a bit dated....it WAS written 13 years ago....but the principles are timeless. You can visit her website for products and ideas.

I recommend this book.