I am organized: Entryway

Repurposing is my favorite "green" habit. Old, broken items can become something new and totally awesome--who wouldn't love that?

I am addicted.

There is a category of item that I could shop all day for. I drool over catalogs, I stalk sales, I happily wander stores imagining owning--

Not shoes.

Not clothes.

Not purses.

No, I, my friends, am addicted to organization supplies.

When storage bins go on sale in January, I am happy. When school supplies go on sale in August, I am in heaven. Show me a cute box, a bag with a myriad of carefully designed pockets, a desk organizer with a nifty feature and I. Am. So. There.

There are two problems with this addiction. The first is the same problem I face with food and shoes and clothes and purses: money, of course, that bugbear of dreamy housewives everywhere.

The second is the weird old house I live in, where everything from the doors to the drawers to the closets comes in non-standard shapes and sizes. Nifty little drawer organizers? Do not fit. Cool and practical over-the-door storage units? Do not fit. Anything ever in the history of the universe designed to bring the glory of Order to a chaotic closet?

Does.

Not.

Fit.

Between the two, I have gotten rather creative (I hope) with making up and making do, that I might worship Order without going into hock or getting a degree in carpentry.

Let's take a look at one of my little projects.

Flip through any Pottery Barn catalog, and you will discover the Idealized World of the Entryway. These people who live in catalogs always have spacious mudroom-entryway places, filled with specially designed Entryway Organizers of Awesomeness that contain exactly the right number of perfectly sized nooks and crannies in which to store everything from your galoshes to your school books to your umbrellas to your keys to your mail to your everything you could possibly want to store conveniently close to the door. People who live in catalogs, they have these glorious rooms.

Do you know what I have, guys? I have a tiny stretch of wood floor with half a wall and a miniscule hall closet. (Our garage a. has an addition built above it and thus cannot fit a standard (!) automatic garage door and b. opens onto the stairs to said addition and then directly to the kitchen. So the front door is It).



Exhibit A.

Yet, given a budget of half a wall and zero dollars, and with the help of a handy husband, I managed to come up with this nifty mail and key organizer that does at least something to assuage my longing for an Entryway Organizer of Awesomeness:

Exhibit B.

Look at this handy thing! It hangs on the wall right by the door, it has hooks for keys and a decorative Freiburg shopping bag, pockets for mail for the DDH and me and for coupons, and generally is awesome. Best of all, it cost me precisely zero dollars.

How did this come to be, you ask? Well, friend, I will tell you.

The frame with hooks used to hold a mirror and hung above the couch in one of the DDH's bachelor apartments. The mirror fell victim to an Unfortunate Shoe Kicking Incident, but packrat me could never bear to get rid of such an intrinsically useful bit of wall hanging. It has followed us around for seven years now.

Then, the DDH and I discovered that the mirror bit could be removed, leaving the frame intact. We chopped apart a bulletin board (the frame had broken, but thinking, oh, corkboard is so useful! I had packratted it away, again for several years) and inserted it into the space left by the mirror.

For several months, that is how it hung in our entryway: useful hooks, coupons messily pinned to blank, boring corkboard.

Then I had to shred a bunch of old notes at work. The handy plastic pocket-covers of the notebooks just screamed, I can be used for something! as I was shredding their guts. I took pity on the critters and squirreled them away home.

I added a strip of black electric tape so stuff wouldn't fall out, since the pocket didn't go all the way across. I drew some nifty labels on scraps of scrapbook paper (actually, the boring white paper that you get for free with scrapbook inserts), stuck them in the business card viewer pocket, and voila! organizational pockets.

Please note that the labels are yellow on one side, blue on the other, and green in the middle, as if the blue and yellow bled into each other on the coupon pockets. IT'S SO CLEVER.

When I come home on lunch or at the end of the day, I take care of my mail right away, so my pocket is usually empty (I stuck the envelope in so my pocket didn't look lonely). The DDH is happy to let his mail sit for days weeks months, so it is usually full (supposedly everything in it is organized and this is just where he wants to file it. Why he feels the need to file his junk mail instead of throwing it away, you will have to ask him). When I get coupons in the mail each week, I toss the expired ones and add the new ones to the middle pocket.

You will notice that my keys are the only ones on the hook. Obviously one of us is more into this whole organizational thing than the other. I never tell him "I told you so" when he can't find his car keys, though.

A Thing of Beauty

Linked up with Your Green Resource on SortaCrunchy.

I am sore.

Two years ago, I lost thirty pounds over the course of about three months. (Nannying for two very active little boys will do that to you, once you stop eating a Sam's Club-sized bag of M&M's every week.)

Fifty-six ounces. That's 3.5 pounds of goodness, my friends.

I've managed to maintain most of that, but over the last month I've noticed the scale tiptoeing its way back up. This was caused by three things, I think: ice cream season, cold beer season, and waaaaaay too much eating out.

I'm working on the last one and going back to cooking more, which should help both the scale and the budget.

But. To address the first two: Giving up ice cream and beer entirely are Not Viable Options. Cutting back I guess could be more reasonable, but not as much fun as stepping up my workout routine!

Yes, I have decided that in the battle of the scale, I much prefer to work out harder than to give up tasty foodz.

I work out at least three times a week at a Curves gym near my house. It's great because the workout mixes strength training and cardio in a time period to which I know I can commit, but turns out it's also great because it's totally Girl Chat Time, too. There are several women who also work out most weekdays in that after-work 4:30 to 7 pm time range, and we have good conversation. Also, I love the employee who works evenings, and we have gotten to be fairly good friends (by an introvert's definition, which is pretty much, people who will voluntarily talk to you about something other than the task at hand). She even has lent me some books, which is a sure sign of trust.

Exercise? No thanks, Mom.

A few months ago, the club started offering a "Curves with Zumba" class, which combines the circuit machines with Zumba moves. It. is. a. BLAST. And a good workout. And a good opportunity for fellowship with other new Zumba devotees. We are very good laughing at how ridiculous we look, and lamenting the fact that our hips just don't seem to operate the same way the instructor's do. It's been just the change-up I needed for my workout routine.

Now I am trying to draw the DDH into some of the social-workout goodness. Obviously he can't come to Curves, but our church offers a fitness ministry on Wednesday evenings, where they do a half-hour Bible study/nutrition class and an hour workout. It started up for the year yesterday, and I convinced the DDH to come with me.

Oh man, was it intense. Apparently, the instructor varies the sorts of exercises we do week to week, and this was a P90X-themed workout. Holy cow. Muscles I didn't know I had are sore. My triceps are rebelling. My abs hurt so much that it seems a side bonus of this workout will be not eating as much because my stomach hurts.

It's awesome.

I am Paul.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. --Romans 7:15

Freiburg, Germany

Megan says we are vessels of grace.

It's a beautiful thought. I want to say, easy to say for someone living my dream, bouncing through life with her beautiful girls, managing her household with love and ease and, yes, grace.

I am not anonymous enough here to complain about work. Let us say that--it's not where I want to be.

I think it is easier to do good to those who hate you than to do good to those who irritate the hell out of you.

But. Just because it is not where I want me to be does not mean it is not where God wants me to be. For this season, for this time, for some purpose I can't yet fathom.

Certainly lots of people have it far worse than I do. This is not particularly bad, just irritating. And I am letting myself be impatient for a future that won't be quite as rosy when it gets here as I make it out to be, anyway. Really, nothing is wrong here that isn't made wrong by my sinful, judgmental nature that insists on casting everything in the worst possible light.

But the devil knows just where to get me, you know?

I need Grace to be grace. Luckily, I've got Grace in abundance. More than I deserve.

Linked up with Heather of The Extraordinary Ordinary's "Just Write" challenge.

I am loving this open-window weather.

We spent all last week with the windows open. I spent most of the weekend on the back porch. Warm sunshine, cool breezes, perfect temperatures...ah, fall is the BEST, guys!

Today we were back in the upper nineties, and do you want to know a secret? As much as I enjoyed that lovely taste of fall...

...I'm glad to be back to summer.

I know, I know. Fall, wie gesagt, is the best. But technically, it's not fall yet. And, see, the problem with fall is that it's followed by winter. And winter is the worst.

This early coolness had me worried that we were in for a long, cold winter. Maybe we are. But not quite yet.

Ten years later, I am still speechless.

As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days. --Nehemiah 1:4



Abide with me; fast falls the eventide.
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day.
Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away.
Change and decay in all around I see.
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee.
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

I am overjoyed!

He passed! He passed! Thank God Almighty, he passed!

So yay! The DDH gets admitted to the Oklahoma bar on September 22, starts as an assistant district attorney October 1, and gets to continue clerking/training at the DA's office in the meantime.

We won't have to sell his car, the house, the dogs, our souls, and live destitute for the rest of our lives.

Yayayayayayayayayyayayayayayayyayayyayayayaayayayayayayayay.

Time to hit McNellie's for a celebratory drink or three. ^_^

I am the nervousest I've ever been.

We find out the bar exam results today. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.