Intervention

We all have our weaknesses.

She says she's cleaning a drawer a day, but I think my mom has been carefully--even strategically--avoiding one particular drawer. Drumroll, please...

The Tupperware drawer.

I was unassumingly emptying the dishwasher last week when I stumbled upon an entire sleeve of Chinese food containers.

My immediate reaction? "Oh my god, count those so we can put it on the blog."

The Vidmar household was hoarding not one, not 12, not 25, but THIRTY THREE hot-and-sour soup containers. (In their defense, every dish on the Chinese food menu comes in one of these containers, so you only have to order Chinese food a few times to start accumulating them. But still--you don't need to KEEP them ALL!) I encouraged my mom to get rid of them, and she became distressed.

"But, what will I do? Where will I put my stuff? I hate to think of them just being recycled!"

Okay, so you can keep three and we're giving the rest to your BFFs at Purple Heart.

This solution proved acceptable, since Purple Heart is scheduled to come to our house every Monday from now until the end of time. Don't worry, they still have two dozen other Tupperware containers of various sizes and shapes...plenty of places to "put their stuff." The Vidmars have now parted ways with 30 hot-and-sour soup containers...along with two large trash bags full of random stuff that was in my closet. Like I said, we all have our weaknesses. Sometimes you just have to stage an intervention.

My Nightmare

I have decided to tackle my nightmare.

Handsome Husband was a news reporter for one year after college.  He fancied himself a photographer as well.  He takes a lot of pictures.   If one picture of a child engaged in some worthy activity is good, then 50 taken that day will be better.  And in the days of film, he always ordered duplicates of the whole rolls.  Too much trouble to pick out the good pics and go back for duplicates to send out to friends and relatives.

This cabinet (it's very deep) contains only a few years worth of photos.  Perhaps you can tell that they are in no order.  Many times over the years, people have gone through them to look for something, pulled everything out of envelopes, and left big piles of unrelated photos swirling around in the cabinet.  I have made previous attempts to do something with this mess, but I have been hampered by

1.  HH's absolute refusal to allow any photo, no matter how bad, to be thrown away;
2.  My own inability to identify the subjects of many photos, thus, I can't really organize them and don't want them in a book;
3.  My own laziness;
4.   Every school project, funeral, etc., which requires going through the photos, leaves me with a big pile of unidentified pictures spanning an entire generation.
5.  No one else seems to care.
6.  The door of the cabinet will still close.

In previous attempts, I have labeled the envelopes with a year and some general description.  I have also labeled the boxes by year.  None of this helps.

I should mention that the friends and relatives, who were happy to receive pics over the years, have begun to clean up their own lives.  Some of these people have decided to send the pictures back to us rather than throw them away.  (!!??!!)  I know they mean well.  But do not allow this strategy to take hold in your family.

And what do you do with the negatives?

Before you decide that the age of digital photos is better, you should see my computer files.  Same problem.  And HH will not even allow the photos to be deleted from the SD cards after they are put on the computer.  So we have a collection of memory cards as well.

Now you see why I call it a nightmare.

A Lot of Catching Up to Do

Please comment on the following questions:  Are you keeping up with the drawer-a-day program?  How do you make up for skipped days, or don't you bother?  

I'm back!!

For the past week, I've been living out of a suitcase.  It's been all I could do to keep my clean clothes separated from my dirty clothes, and my biking clothes (sometimes smelly) separated from my other clothes.  We moved hotels 4 times, so I feel a bit like I've been doing a drawer a day - it's just been the same drawer, i.e. suitcase, every day.

I arrived home to find my house in good order (Thanks, girls!), so there are no immediate crises back home.  But you know how it is when you've been away for a time.  I have to adjust to this time zone and figure out where I left off in my projects.

I think my plan this week is to count some of my "back-from-trip catching up" as drawer catching up.  This illustrates, to those of you new to the Drawer a Day concept, that you define your own method of compliance.  So today, I define my "drawer" as my dining room table, full of mail from last week.   Maybe I'll even count emptying out my suitcase, which is full of flyers and mementos as well as clothes and shoes.

Important questions:  Should I do two things every day for ten days to make up for being away, or plan a big day to do ten extra things? Or should I just give myself a break and skip it?  

Looking forward to seeing everyone soon!