Organization 101

For some time now, I've had a dry erase board on the wall of our office. It is conveniently located to the right of where I sit to surf the net. When I first put it up, I tried to be good and jot down reminder notes, but more often than not, I didn't.

So beginning this year I decided to tighten up and write myself reminder notes on the board. Now, every day when I get on the computer, I take a look at my reminders and check them off as I go along. I have to admit it has done wonders with keeping up with my "to do" list. I'm even writing things down for the rest of the fam.

Although it has always been in my nature to want to be organized, I have miserably failed over the years. It took moving into this house and designating a space for a home office that has made me want to be better organized. It is just so nice to go to look for something and find it without tearing up the place "trying to find it".

There is, after all beauty in organization. Yesterday, I decided to file our taxes. I pulled out our tax folder and away I went! Done! Then I did Trev's taxes and filed his FAFSA. Done!

Ohhh what a feeling! You know what I mean?

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A little known fact....

I'm not sure why I thought of this, at this very moment, on this particular Sunday in January, but I did. I used to have a clothesline. Yes, a real one, made from metal poles from which two lines were strung. I hung my clothes out to dry for 22 yrs. Then we moved into the new house. I figured it was time to move into the 20th century, so I bought a dryer. You would have thought I would have sprung much earlier in our marriage, when the kids were young and dirty laundry plentiful. I held firm through those years, washing every Saturday. I would start in the morning, dilligently hanging each washed load on the line. Sometimes if I was lucky, and it was a hot day, when the last load was hung, I could take the 1st load off. The only bad thing in summer was the humidity. If it was really humid, the clothes sometimes soured and I would have to wash them over again. That was a pain for sure. When winter came, I just hung them up in our little mud room. Winter was different, as I would have to start on Friday so they could dry overnight. Now, that was a pain too. Clothes hanging up for 3 days tends to make you somewhat ill. Especially if you had to push them aside to get out the back door.

I don't think my kids knew about "soft towels" until they had the good fortune of showering over at a friends house. That's when they would ask why ours were so rough. HeHe. And the jeans, on cold days, they practically stood up by themselves. So, in my way of thinking it was actually a good thing we never had a dryer. Those rough feeling clothes and towels were actually natural exfoliants. Plus, we never had to worry about shrinking anything and our clothes lasted forever!

So, my point here is the dryer has not really made my life any easier. I do know my electric bill is higher. Sunshine is free. The DH once had a guy ask him, "How do you dry your clothes when you don't have a dryer"? (Duh). He said, "We hang them on the line". The guy was amazed. I do plan to start hanging my clothes back out when we finish the porch so once again, I'll be able to see clean clothes fluttering in the wind. And, if I'm lucky between now and then, I can score me a couple of old clothesline poles.

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The Boys at work.....

Roof rafters almost done

Monty putting the first piece of plywood on the roof

Hammering down plywood

Trev at dusk...he looks like a warrior with spear on his back...was really a 2x4 leaning between the rafters. I just love how this picture turned out, his silhouette against the cloudy sky at dusk. If you click on the pic, the enlarged picture even shows his eyelashes!

Our new screened-in porch and den are coming right along. The boys worked late into the evening to start putting plywood up on the roof. It looks big when you stand to the side and look down through the space. And I guess it is, since the dimensions are 12x40 ft, with each room being 12x20. I'm going to love walking out the back door into a covered space!!

Now, I've been thinking on how to arrange the windows and how to purpose each room. I want to add storage to the den area and have tentatively been thinking of a wall cabinet system that would maybe have an desk area(for laptop use) between to pantry style cabinets that would function as a closet/storage area. Can you envision it? We are also going to put a door from the den to the porch area.

So, exciting!! Stay tuned for more pics and progress as they finish the roof!

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Trees no more!

Today is big!! The trees in the back yard are cut down, clearing the way for the raised beds to be moved. Also allowing us to take stock and visualize how the terraced deck will come off the back of the house.

I am sooo excited. I cannot wait until we have a deck. We will be able to spend more time out back and I can start to plan how we will eventually landscape back there. I can already see, many more trees will have to come out. I am going to start marking the ones we want to save. Monty will have to do a little at a time, but progress has been made today.

Yea!!!!!!!!!!

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