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!

Hey, no judgement

I just spent an hour rearranging my bookshelves into the following categories: food, music, sports, science, disadvantaged children, humor, "classics," murder and war, fantasy and young adult fiction, travel, and things by the same author. I have two six-foot-tall bookshelves in my apartment, and I ended up with only one shelf of books that could not fit into one of these categories.

I also found eight books to donate/lend, so I think this project fits under the "drawer a day" umbrella.

But I do feel a little silly for spending so much time organizing something that didn't really need to be organized. I pulled the eight books to give away off the shelf FIRST...I could have donated them and been done with it. No one will ever notice that my murder and war shelf is right above my fantasy and young adult fiction shelf. They might just think that I am really weird for having such shelves in the first place. (But, I mean, I really think everyone should read In Cold Blood AND The Chronicles of Narnia, so whatever.)

I texted my best friend from college that I think there might be something wrong with me because this is how I'm apparently spending my Saturday afternoon, and this was her reply:

"I just organized all of my parents' DVDs by genre and then alphabetically within each genre. You'll get no judgement from me."

Garage Majal

Handsome Husband (HH, for short) purchased a new oriental rug last week.  It is a handsome specimen, 10' x 12', in rich colors of tan, burgundy, brown and black.  It doesn't go with any of my furniture, but that's okay - it's for the garage.

It is football season, after all, and everyone knows that a man cave needs an oriental rug.  And the best television in the household.  And some "wine furniture."

HH says that the TV helps to keep the garage clean.  When it's not football season, he likes to loop Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, The Godfather, and Deliverance DVDs.

But like The Shadow,  I know what evil lurks in the drawers of the man cave.

Some drawers are not mine to clean.   So if you are looking for a tool in my house, ask me.  I keep a tool kit under my bed.

But I have tackled some of the cabinets.  Heaven knows that important items, like Mardi Gras beads and  holiday lights in colors suitable for Ravens or Packers football games, are stored here.  

Before

After

Like all of us, I have a few hard choices to make, deciding whether to keep things for grandchildren who have yet to exist

But it's all under wraps.  Don't be surprised if you come to my house and we offer you a drink in the garage.   Unlike Prince Harry in Vegas, you can feel comfortable accepting.  

Follow the Money

--> I loaded up my little car with all the financial relics of my life from 1974 to 1999 and drove the crumbling boxes over to the parking lot at Catonsville UMC on Saturday and dumped a mountain of paper into a large trash bin that would be poured into a truck where I presume they had the shredder.

Gone are pay stubs, receipts, insurance reports, bank statements, cancelled checks, and stacks of financial forms. Gone too is the proof that, during the 70's and into the 80's, I lived on less than Mother Teresa, bought my first house for $13,000, (it was a handyman's special – too bad we weren't handy,) was an early adopter of both the TI 86 and Commodore 64 computers, purchased every He-Man action figure and Castle Grayskull, bought wrapping paper for every PTA Fundraiser between 1987 and 1999, and paid out tons of tuition to music teachers, gymnastics instructors, driving schools, and tutors for any subject that ended in "ology." Of course, no one has ever asked me to prove any of those things, particularly in the last 12 years.

Happily, I have gained a large hole on a shelf in my attic. I'm hoping to enlarge that hole by daring to rid myself of documents from this century. There will be another shredding event at Green Valley Marketplace, 7280 Montgomery Road in Elkridge on Oct. 27 from 1-4 p.m. If you missed the one on Saturday, this is another chance to get rid of those pesky old boxes.

True Confessions of a Basket-aholic

Yes, it it true. I did not believe it at first but I suffer from a rather unusual affliction. I love those cute little multi- colored, many sized organizing baskets.  I am particularly drawn to those on the smaller end of the scale in florescent colors, most often used in drawers/ sometimes linen closets. No matter what the collection of useless, broken, obsolete items packed into a drawer, it all looks so much better if corralled into an adorable fuchsia basket. Says me.

The discovery was made when I happened by the Target Dollar Bin section and purchased three new collections. Having replaced baskets in Kitchen Junk Drawers #1 and #2, started upstairs to tackle the linen closets.  Truth be known, the baskets that were already there were in fine shape, a result of last year's DaD replacement program.

More distressing, the stack of yet unused baskets found on the top shelf of BOTH linen closets.

No more baskets for me.I vow not to buy another until I downsize to Charlestown.
Or perhaps next year. whichever comes first.
After all, they are soo damn cute!