There has to be a better way

How do you store your reusable grocery bags? I can't believe that this is the best way to do it but for the life of me I can't figure out where or how to store them efficiently in our tiny kitchen.

How/where do you store reusable grocery bags?

This post brought to you by Insignificant Things That Seem Important When You're Very Pregnant. 

We're not hoarders, I swear

Today is the first day of my parental leave. My plan is to spend the next three weeks making our house look less like a hoarder's cave and more like a house where a baby might live. Or hell, a place where human adults might live. I'm trying to do as much as I possibly can while I have a little mobility and a little energy (I had a solid 3 hours of "I CAN DO IT" energy today!), resting my giant, swollen feet in between bouts of productivity.

Currently, we're in "it has to get worse before it gets better" mode, digging through piles of stuff, both old (hello, papers from high school and college!) and new (hello, baby stuff!), and used (hello, hand me downs from everyone we know!). But slowly and surely, we're making dents. Remember what it looked like about a month ago? We were on the road to a clean house! Well, we had a 2nd baby shower. And then I had a work retreat. And then we went on an awesome camping trip. And then I went to BlogHer. And now I'm home and we're done traveling and it looks like this:

Fisheye-style panorama of the living/dining room.

Oh, didn't get a good view of what's on the other side of that pile on the left? Want to see what's on and in front of the couch that you can't even see in the picture because it's so buried in stuff?

It's a bunch of baby stuff! Whee!

Not pictured: the TV room, which is a staging ground for the things we pull off the dining room table to sort. One piece at a time, this will all get taken care of. But now, it's a little wacky around here. And hey, protip: don't look at the photos people link in their #37weekspregnant twitter hashtag. It will only make you feel badly about your lack of Instagram-perfect house and nursery. Where are all the people posting pictures of their not-ready houses, eh?

If you are pregnant and so not ready for your baby to arrive, please do me a solid and leave a comment. Or if you were once pregnant, and weren't quite ready, but things turned out ok anyway, please do me a solid and leave a comment.  

Keeping it Real

Look, friends. This is not a place for posturing. This is not a place where I pretend to Have It All Together.

So, in case you are also feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Stuff in your life, I'd like to share one single picture that demonstrates the current state of our living room.

This is the result of several weeks of traveling on the weekends. Of a summer that has so far been well-lived, full of fun and activity and travel. And also of the exhaustion that comes with a growing belly and traveling and working full time. It's been busy, and it's been fun, and this weekend is the first in a long time that we're actually home to work on what I've dubbed Mission: Reclaim The House.

This is just the entry/living room. The dining room, den, and nursery-to-be look quite the same. There's much work to do. And there are only so many weekends in which to do it. But right now, at the time of this writing, at this particular moment, I'm feeling hopeful and full of the possibility that we will Accomplish Great Housekeeping Things this weekend.

I'll update on Sunday night - hopefully the promise of a new blog post will keep me motivated. If I know I'm hoping to show off a job well done, maybe I'll find some energy reserves to do the job! 

Wish us luck.

Living Room Makeover

This past fall, I did a little redecorating. I always seem to get a little bit homebody-ish when the weather cools down, even though the "doesn't really count as cold" 70-degree October we had wasn't exactly cozy nesting weather.

Ahem. The towering stack of board games in the corner of our living room was stressing me out.

Left photo: towering stack of games. 

Kind of impossible to get one without knocking them all down.

Right photo: much better.

Now I feel like I need something to fill that space, like a 3rd picture or something.

Once I'd moved everything out of the corner, though, it needed a place to live. I purchased two of my favorite IKEA storage shelves, and loaded them up in the corner, perpendicular to each other. The little brown wooden table sits in the corner space between them, holding our wooden Settlers of Catan board and puzzle mat (we are very cool), and probably a fair amount of dust as well. One of these days, I may find a lamp that fits nicely in that corner, but alas, not yet. 

Left photo: before, with rocking chair kind of blocking the whole

corner, and video game controllers  

Right photo: games are neatly organized by type, and a basket

(also from IKEA) corrals the controllers. Swapping our two chairs

also meant more room in the corner.

This new layout also meant that there was finally a spot for the "bubble hockey" game to live, and now we also store the Fisher Price hockey game (this one) on top of that. Both childhood hockey games in one place, where they're easy to take down and use, but otherwise out of the way. 

These photos were taken in October, and things have changed up a bit since then. The stack of games next to the plant is gone, replaced by a hammered "gold" bowl (Nate Berkus, Target) and a small wooden elephant (souvenir from our trip to Thailand - did I mention we went to Thailand?), which makes the space look purposeful and planned. And we have a rug. A RUG!

I'll have to do a Part 2 of this post to showcase the elephant and the rug. They're that awesome.

I'm feeling sort of inspired to purge and organize lately...it feels like springtime in the Bay Area, and that makes me want to Spring Clean All The Things. Last night I bagged up an entire grocery bag full of shoes that I never wear. Some I've held onto for sentimental reasons, and some I just don't know why I even have, but it felt good. I foresee a great many more posts of this nature in the next few months...

YoCP > YoTP

Well, friends the YoCP is over (well, technically it was over when Jolie ended it early mid-way through the year, but I had kept going on it...mostly). Looking back over the year, I'm impressed with how many things I got done.

There was the shoe purge, and the wrapping paper impressiveness, and of course, the big closet. My car was cleaned (and ahem, could probably use a touch up) and the BBQ was scoured. I even threw in a bonus porch project just for kicks.

But I didn't finish everything. There are still two cards left unturned, plus a few of those silly celebration cards. I mean, yes, I had a drink and admired my work in December, but there's something that doesn't quite feel right about turning over those last few "you did it" cards until I've actually done it, ya know?

I've started assessing and paring down the kitchen and dining things (erm, last week, when I also purged the pantry). We did some of the guest room boxes. But there's still work to do. And thus, I begin thinking about what this year will hold, homemaker-wise.

There's no YoCP: Redux happening, but I still like the idea of putting my projects up on the board. It really helped me to visualize all the things I want to do and only worry about them when it was the assigned time. I like structure, and I like schedules. It's my blessing/curse.


I've been feeling overwhelmed lately - something that tends to happen towards the end of the year, with the holidays and wrapping up the year at work, somehow there never seems to be enough time. This is normal, I know. But I'm also prone to overcommitment and a need to fill every moment...and we just have a lot of stuff. No more. Time for change, New Year!

2015 is the Year of The Purge. It's time to make more room in my life. Less stuff, less commitments, less crazy. More space, more time, more sane.

I'll be making a fresh board for the year, perhaps even this weekend, but all of my projects are going to focus on getting rid of things, making more space. Not to fill with new things, but just to breathe a little easier, to see clearer. To practice letting things go. The practice of letting go of physical objects will (hopefully) seep into my psyche, making it easier to say no to plans in favor of a quiet night at home, or to feel less guilty saying no to pet projects. A girl can hope.

Did you tackle any big projects last year? What's on your list for this year? Have any resolutions/goals/intentions/plans?

Front of House

Although it wasn't on my YoCP list, I've been meaning to tackle the front porch for a while. Over the last few years, it had gathered dust, grime, and assorted detritus, and with festive gourd season upon us, I figured now was as good a time as any to clean. Holiday decorating is one of my favorite for cleaning, after all. I meant to post this before Halloween, so just travel back in time with me a bit, when porches needed to be cleaned off to support jack-o-lanterns and ghosts.

 You see, the railing of our porch was once white. It was relatively white when we moved in three years ago. But the grime had gotten a little out of control.

I'm a bit embarrassed to share this picture, but I think it's important to share just how bad it was. Not only so you can see the progress (I promise, it gets better!), but hopefully to ease any shame you have at the state of your front porches.

It's ok.

We are none of us perfect.

We clean.

We move on.

It may be worth noting that the splotchiness is a result of several lanterns that usually reside on this railing - the grime gathered under them a bit, but mostly around them. Not sure about the clean white patch in the middle. It's a mystery.



I started this cleaning project with one goal: get rid of that black grime so that it looks pretty. I figured I'd tackle it with a little Dr. Bronner's and water, and all would be well. NOT SO, MY FRIENDS. NOT SO.

I scrubbed with Dr. Bronner's and a scrub brush, and a sponge, and all my (limited) upper body strength, to no avail. I busted out the 409. And the Comet. I scrubbed and I rinsed for about two hours.

Still, I was left with something that looked like this. Not a huge improvement - irritating, even, given the amount of time and effort I'd put into this should've-been-easy project.

And then I bought some Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. The heavy-duty kind, made for outdoor furniture.



They were not as strong as the advertisements made them out to be, or maybe my grime was just that bad. I worked my way through about seven erasers, which split and tore and turned irreversibly black as I convinced myself that this. would. work. Because it had to. I'd sunk too much time into this already, and dammit, I wanted to decorate for Halloween!

However, after about an hour of scrubbing and cursing, I was left with something that almost resembled cleanliness. It's more gray than white, really, and there are slivers of black grime that I just couldn't get out, embedded into the grooves of the wood. But overall, it's progress. And it was enough to make me consider the project a success.

I mean, look at those before-and-afters, eh? I later learned (upon bleaching a spot where a potentially-rabid-maybe squirrel had destroyed one of our pumpkins) that (oh yeah, duh) bleach is a *really* easy way to whiten things. Probably could've saved a lot of time by starting with bleach. Ah well.

I felt good enough to put the lanterns back out, and add some gourds (and a flying ghost) to the mix.

I later removed those hanging lanterns (which have been so destroyed by wind and rain that they were just a ragged mess), replacing them with a small metal hanging lantern (thanks, IKEA). I took the extra metal table and moved it to the yard, next to the BBQ, for extra "counter" space.

It's still a little dirty out there - it could use a good scrub, and would probably benefit from regular sweeping, but at the end of the day, it's a porch. A porch on a house we rent.

We do our best to keep it in good shape, but it will never be magazine-perfect, because we do not live in a magazine.

It's ok. We are none of us perfect.
We clean. We move on.

YoCP April: bathroom and BBQ

It's the end of May, so what better time to write my April #YoCP post? I don't have any photos, so this will be a quickie.

April was "bathroom and BBQ" month - technically, it was "Create Your Dream Bathroom" month, but I knew we'd have to get the BBQ ready for summer so I threw it in the mix as well. So what was on the agenda to create my dream bathroom?

• fix loose tiles on the bathroom floor (a task I'd set out to do nearly two years ago)
• clean/purge the linen closet (time for that annual "what's expired? how many of these towels do we really need?" cleaning and re-organizing)

I fixed those loose tiles - turns out it's way easy! All it took was a little 2-in-1 grout/adhesive, and about 48 hours (about 10 minutes of hands-on) and the loose tiles that have been bugging me for years were fixed. The color's a little off in that section of the floor, since it's brand new, but after just a few weeks it's dirtying up to match the rest of the floor nicely :)  And sure, I could scrub and bleach the rest of the floor, but honestly the tile in the bathroom is so old I don't think I would make a dent on the 50+ year old grout, and well, we don't own it. So. Eh.

I haven't done the linen closet yet, but my mom's coming to visit in a few weeks, and she was bummed to have missed the big closet (where do you think I get my organization obsession?) so we'll knock that one out when she's here. And now of course I've noticed that the grout in the shower could use a good scrubbing, so that's gotta get done too, despite not being on the original list (oh god, no! self-imposed restrictions!). My dream bathroom certainly doesn't come with moldy grout.

The BBQ ended up taking several hours to clean - the morning of my birthday, we opened it up for the first time since last summer, and it was...well...a bit moldy. We took the whole thing apart and washed all the pieces, which was a much more involved process than I'd anticipated. This year, I think we'll be better about cleaning as we go. Somehow, we damaged the ignition button (it still lights with a match), but we grilled up a storm for my birthday.

So. That was April. Onward to May! Ahem.

Housewife Weekend

If you've been following along, I'm participating in Jolie Kerr's Year of the Clean Person (more on that here). I've been keeping up with my projects, but lately, I've been so busy that I haven't had time (or more accurately, the desire) to sit down and blog about them. Or anything else for that matter.

But no matter.

I had set this past weekend aside for The Big Closet, a project I was really looking forward to accomplishing. We have this giant (no really, it's about 42 sq feet) closet that's mostly used for the storage of gear and winter coats. Over time, it becomes disorganized and cluttered, and as a coworker recently pointed out, "it has a lot of potential." While it has not yet reached its full potential, this weekend's work was a great start.I made room for no plans if they did not contribute to Mission: Big Closet, and it was honestly so lovely that I don't know why I don't do this more often. (oh right: because I am also a social person and desire the company of humans) I wondered what my life would be like if I didn't work; if my only job was to take care of our home and myself and my family.

Putting my feet up on a mid-closet break

I sometimes struggle to balance the desire to be a Strong Professional Woman with my love of homemaking...can I be both housewife and breadwinner (I mean, I wrote about this 5 years ago, so this is nothing new)? I don't know that it's possible within the laws of physics, but I certainly try. I want to stay home all day and keep house, bake bread, do laundry at my leisure. I want to take midday walks down to the butcher and read a good book in the sun. I want to take that 10am weekday "ABC: Abs, Back, Core" workout class. I want to drop my kids off at school and be home in the afternoons when they're done so I can take them to their various lessons or help them with their homework. But I also want to develop my career, have difficult and engaging conversations with other adults, and do my part to make my company and the industry a better place. I want my hypothetical kids to see that their mom is a strong, driven career woman and know that they can aspire to be anything. I want my world to be more than my home.

It's hard to do it all. And because most of the time, my balance skews in favor of work, sometimes it's nice to reject the laptop and focus on the nesting, however forced it may feel at first.

This weekend (in no particular order) I:

• did three loads of laundry
• repurposed miscellaneous leftovers into a whole new (delicious!) meal
• made banana peanut butter chocolate chip "ice cream"
• organized the camping gear
• overhauled the hockey gear storage
• found new storage for our outdoor toys (jai alai, frisbees, wiffle ball, etc)
• moved the gift storage out of the bedroom (after several months)
• collected a big black trash bag full of clothes to give away
• watched Bye Bye Birdie and Gidget (I have a soft spot for adorable mid-century movies)
• organized the hardware cabinet
• reworked the sprinklers in the vegetable garden
• moved my childhood dollhouse into the Big Closet (it's in a big box that had been moving around the house because of lack of room in the closet)
• put away a bunch of dishes
• prepped a pillow for testing (review coming soon on the blog)
• took a trip to IKEA for supplies and ogling the IKEA things

And that doesn't even take into account the magazine-sorting, table-clearing, trash-taking-out, and dishwashing that Will contributed to the weekend. The house is looking so much better, and I'm feeling a greater peace of mind. I think I might just do it again this weekend.

Separate post on the YoCP stuff to come (because, hello, I owe y'all a post about April still and I took a LOT of pictures of the closet this weekend). 

Spring Cleaning: Pantry Party

The pantry, before and after. Detail shots below.

The pantry has been bothering me for quite a while.

For months, it's fluctuated between "messy but I can deal with it" and "I can't find anything and I'm afraid to reach into the back, both because I don't know what I'll find and because something might fall on me".

But last night, we had a few friends over, one of whom really wanted to help me with the pantry. Honestly, one of the reasons it's taken me so long to do it is that I promised I'd wait for her (reason, excuse, whatever).

Can't disappoint a friend.

Anyway, after some Chinese takeout, we set to work. We took everything (and I mean eve.ry.thing) out, I wiped down the shelves, and we set to organizing. The biggest changes were the additions of the lazy susans and plastic bins, and the reorganization of the risers -- both things that helped immensely.

I'll explain via these detail shots :)

Top two shelves before and after.
Soup and oils/vinegars got the lazy susan treatment, with
the exception of the giant canola oil and the PAM.
Tea is coralled in two plastic baskets on top of a riser
(hot cocoa is below), honey is right nearby, and little-used
crackers are in the back. Canned tomatoes, beans, olives,
pasta sauce jars, and chicken stock are on the shelf with
the oils for easy use -- I think I'll get another riser for that
shelf to make can-stacking easier.

Middle two shelves, before and after.
This was just a mess. Now it's not a mess, thanks to a lazy
susan (for sprinkles and sweet spices like cinnamon and
nutmeg) and some plastic bins and repurposed risers.
Baking supplies have enough room to be stored,
grabbed when needed, and easily put back.
Little-used spices are in a little basket, and the smaller,
loose items are corralled in bins for easy access.
That's what she said.

Bottom shelf, before and after.
This shelf is for the things I use least, like boxed bread
mixes, assorted jams, oatmeal, jello pudding mix, etc.
Also: the big pot that's not nonstick,
and an empty plastic bin.

I'm already loving my new setup -- it was so easy (and dare I say fun?) to spin the lazy susan around tonight when I needed some balsamic, and being able to see everything is definitely helpful. We threw out a good amount of expired stuff too (though honestly not as much as I anticipated), which is always good. Hopefully, having everything at our fingertips will mean less stuff will go bad from now on!

And with the Spring Equinox tomorrow (officially), I feel like I've gotten a little bit of a head start on this whole Spring Cleaning thing. Perhaps I'll make it a real thing this year, since I've been feeling a bit restless as far as cleaning and organizing the house goes...I'll do my best to photograph befores and afters and blog about it. Because nothing says interesting blogging like home organization!

Are you getting in the spirit? Do you find yourself overcome with the urge to organize? Tell me I'm not alone!

Weekend Warrior: TCB

This was a weekend full of productivity. I don't have pictures of each completed item because some of them didn't warrant pictures I am a bad blogger I kept forgetting to take them. And now it's nighttime, and the lighting isn't good enough for good pictures, so you'll have to settle for photos of my to-do list.

Circa Saturday morning.
Looks like a lot, but I was feeling confident! 

Circa Saturday afternoon, before I left the
house to cross off "library", "bookstore" and
"massage".
Not bad for one day, eh? 

Circa Sunday night.
Only 5 things not done. Plus, I added one
(get rings polished). Plus, we took out the
garbage. And I tended to the garden. And I
organized the abyss that is our dining room
closet. Hell yeah.

The things I didn't get to: clean/organize the pantry (though I did take some "before" pictures), bake something with pumpkin, buy groceries take disposable cameras from our wedding to Walgreens, and blog. Ok, I'm blogging now. But I have about eleventy billion posts in various forms of draft, and they need to get written.

Considering the length of the list vs. the length of the weekend, I'm very pleased with the progress. Sure, there are always more dishes and there is always more laundry, but that's par for the course. Sure, there are a couple of new piles in the living room, but they're nowhere near as disorganized as they were before, and they are in a very "ready to get taken care of" position. We finally have some things hung up on our walls, and the family room is starting to come together nicely (photos at some point when I have better light). The dining room corners, formerly holding large piles of "stuff to be dealt with later" are empty. Giveaway items are sorted and ready for Goodwill (PS, want a TiVo or an XBox?), and the 2,000 piece puzzle we started in July is almost finished! Bonus: we got nearly 10 hours of sleep a night. Both nights.

We also attended this event, where we ended up not just eating delicious food inspired by the beautiful cookbook and meeting the author/photographer, but making new friends as well. If you've found my blog, hi there, Laura and JD! :) We ended up sharing a bottle of wine and getting to know each other, reveling in the awesome that is the bay area and kindred spirits. I love our neighborhood.

My family is coming into town next weekend, and the house is almost to a place where I feel proud and ready to show it off. We've only lived here for a year, so it's about time, right? 

Did you accomplish any big tasks this weekend? Any little tasks? Did you just get a bunch of sleep? Let me know in the comments, and link to your blog post if you wrote about it! I'd love to read about what you've been up to!

The Fog of War (Guest Post by Lyz Lenz)

While I'm out of town for a few days gettin' hitched, I've lined up some blog posts from some truly lovely bloggers and friends of mine.  The theme: love, marriage, relationships...or whatever they feel like writing about.  I hope you enjoy, and check out their blogs as well, because they're all awesome.  I'll be back next week as a married lady!


Today's super special guest post comes from Lyz, one of the most hilarious women I know.  She makes me laugh on a regular basis, and I'm proud that we went from internet-stalky-how-did-we-even-find-each-other friends to pen pals to Real Life Friends (this past year at BlogHer).  If you haven't already, please do go check out her blog at www.lyzlenz.com.


The Fog of War

It didn't take Dave and I long to find our dream home. Built in 1925, the house had newly refinished oak crown molding and floors, an antique crystal chandelier original to the house and it was tucked snugly away in a picturesque neighborhood. We both loved the same things about the house. "Oh, the stairs!" we both cried in our young-couple in love unison, holding hands and staring gooey-eyed at one another. The only things that needed fixing were the pastel rainbow painted over the front door and one of the bathrooms. It would be easy, we rationalized.

The Lenz home in the fall.
Ed note: I hate them.
Also see: jealousy.

On move-in day, Dave placed his hands on the dining room walls and declared them to be “crooked.” Dave is an engineer and “crooked” is probably the lowest insult and engineer can bequeath, well that and “illogical.” “Is that hard to fix?” I asked. “No, I’ll just do some replastering. Should be easy.” Four weeks later, Dave was still slapping plaster on the wall, letting it dry, sanding and then declaring the walls “still crooked.” Plaster dust is a fine material and has a way of making itself omnipresent. Despite sealing off the room, for four weeks, I’d been coughing plaster dust, spitting plaster dust, tasting plaster dust. I was finished.

“You have two more days,” I threatened. And on midnight of the second day, while Dave was still sanding, I ripped down the plastic barrier, picked up the tools and hauled in the shop-vac. This project was over. “You are just going to have to get used to the fact that nothing is going to be perfect,” I yelled and then flicked on the shop-vac. Whoosh! A huge cloud of plaster dust exploded throughout the house. Later investigation would show that I had the shop-vac set on “blow” instead of “suck” and boy, did it blow.

Coughing, I slapped blindly in the dust, trying to shut the vacuum off. When I finally hit the switch, it was too late, the billowing cloud of mess was disseminating through our house. I sat down on the floor and began to sob. “It’s everywhere! On our furniture. Our new couch. You did this!” “I just wanted our house to look nice,” he said. I sobbed harder. “It doesn’t! It’s worse!”

Through the haze, I saw Dave turn to me and smile through his plaster mask. "Do you know what this is?” He asked waving his hands in the air. “This is the fog of war!” He laughed, doubling over and grasping his sides. It was midnight, we’d been working since 6am and we were going crazy. I started laughing too. My eyes stung with dust, my throat hurt from breathing, but we couldn’t stop laughing.

Cleaning the house took months. And if we’re being honest it, actually, took five years, because the plaster dust wasn’t totally out of the cracks in the dining room floor until this fall, when Dave refinished them.

And when I walk through the dining room, I still think about those crooked walls and part of me wants to punch Dave and part of me wants to kiss him. But that is the daily story of our marriage, some days I wonder how I got into this mess and other days I can’t imagine anything else. But it’s always those moments of eye-burning frustration, when we find the redemption that we need.

In the end, our dining room still has crooked walls, but now, instead of fixing them, we just hang pictures over the dents and tell everyone about that time we tried to make everything perfect.

Cleaning Update

I came home tonight to a clean house. The bathroom (grout included) is clean. The floors are clean. The kitchen is clean. They even washed the dishes that were in the sink! And put them away! They change the sheets on our bed, and I no longer have those guilty "oh crap, it's been a while since we changed the sheets" feelings.

And it's not just clean, but tidy, too! They straighten the piles and fluff the couch cushions and fold the blankets and the place just looks a little less disheveled. Sure, it's partly because we spent a few minutes tidying up last night (gotta straighten up before the cleaners come, of course), but they just kind of polish the place up.

I walked around the condo saying, "I love coming home to a clean house" and just smiling to myself, thinking about how happy it made me. It might have taken a couple of times to get into the groove, but I am very happy to pay the folks at Mop 'N Bucket Cleaners $60 every two weeks.

If you are the kind of person who stresses out about keeping up with cleaning house, and feels badly when you can't, and you have a little extra cash, I highly recommend paying someone to lighten the load. It has significantly changed the way I look at my abilities as a homemaker housewife apartmentgirlfriend woman whatever.

Thanks again to Tricia for lighting the fire under my butt.

Cleaning House

It's no secret that I am a bit of a nut when it comes to cleaning and organizing. I can be a little obsessive at times, it's true, worrying about the dust and the clutter, even when it's not actually so bad (according to 99% of the human population). I'm fully aware that my "eagle eye" when it comes to dust on shelves and mildewy grout is...uncommon. Sometimes I watch shows like Hoarders just to boost my ego a bit and remember that what may look totally unacceptable to me is actually pretty normal. Or at least not that bad.

Anyway, I have a tendency to keep a running log in my mind of all the housework left to be done. Whether I'm thinking about it or not, it's always there. For example, if we were out to lunch, and you asked me, "Hey Kim, what kind of clutter currently sits on your dining room table?" I'd be able to list each and every item, and mention that the kitchen counters need to be cleaned, and the bookshelves need to be dusted, and the blankets on the couch need to be folded and oh, my dresser is covered in things to be put away, etc. etc. etc. It's tiring, keeping this running log that I'm not even always aware of keeping. Anxiety is a tiring emotion; it takes up a lot of energy. Energy that should be used for other things, things that I actually enjoy (not that I don't enjoy cleaning, I do. But I don't enjoy thinking about cleaning, and usually I just don't have the time to do the kind of deep cleaning I'd do if I had the time, so I just think about what needs to be cleaned and then feel badly that it's not being done).

A wonderful friend of mine wrote here and here about hiring someone to clean her apartment. It was like she had listened to my soul and knew what I was struggling with. Seriously, read the first one if you want some insight into Kim's Crazy(butnotreallysocrazyafterall) Brain. Reading her words made me feel like it was all ok, like I wasn't some sort of failure as a woman if I couldn't keep my 840 sq ft apartment up to my standards of cleanliness. Writing it out makes me feel sort of crazy for feeling that way, but feelings are feelings and that's the way it goes sometimes. It's absolutely comforting to know that someone else has gone through exactly what you've gone through. And I want to be where she is now, one month into paying someone to clean her apartment. The end (of that part of the story).

Last week, after a full week of calling around for estimates, I hired my first cleaning crew. They came, they saw, they cleaned, but the visit was not without trouble. They arrived late (making me late for work), and they missed a few key things, but when I called the cleaning company, they promised a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee and said they would return over the weekend to fix the mistakes free of charge. This weekend, they arrived several hours early (throwing off our morning plans), left a bottle of cleaning solution behind, and still missed a spot (though they did end up re-grouting the tub for us) - with the re-grouting, and the early arrival (they offered to come back later, but that would greatly inconvenience them, so I caved), our schedule for the day got a bit out of whack.

When I called back, the company apologized and said it seems there is a problem with this specific cleaning crew, and that for my next service (scheduled for June 1), they would send a different crew. I am giving this company another chance, but as in baseball, three strikes and you're out. Yes? The only reason I'm giving them another chance at all is because I would really hate to start over looking for someone new, doing the whole first-time intro and all that. I'd much rather have this work out. If it doesn't, it doesn't, but I'm going to hope it was just a flukey thing with this one crew.

We'll see. This is supposed to cut back on the anxiety about keeping up house, so here's hoping. It was lovely returning home to a freshly-cleaned house, toaster oven free of crumbs, floors mopped, couch cushions fluffed, blankets folded, bed made. It would be lovely to return home to that twice a month (or more, if we could afford it), not having to worry about scrubbing grout and dusting shelves!

This is all part of a new thing I'm working on called self-care. Finding things I can do to give myself a little break, treat myself a little. More on this later...for now, a clean house!