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| | | From: Greensleeves (Original Message) | Sent: 2/28/2008 3:18 PM |
Yesm I thunk that title would get your attention LOL Clutter can be dreadfully overwhelming at times. You dunno where to start & it seems like an insurmountable task that's gonna take forever. So let's try a little daily challenge here & see what we can do with it! FIVE MINUTES....spend 5 min decluttering something....anything....it doesn't matter what. Most peeps have microwaves nowadays & they mostly have timers, so you can even set it to make sure when your 5 min are up. Then if you really wanna stop what you're doing, STOP. You've put in your 5 min. If you want to keep going, keep setting that timer in 5 min increments. Every time it goes off, make a choice as to whether you want to continue or not. Then take another 5 min to come by this thread & tell us how long you decluttered something, what progress you made on it, & how you feel about it!  |
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I set the kitchen timer for 5 minutes. And cleaned the INSIDE of my microwave! I took a tip from "How Clean Is Your House" on BBC and put a glass measuring cup with about 1/2 cup water with about 2 tbsp of lemon juice in the microwave on high for about 5 minutes. It really did loosen up the grime that has accumulated in there! So I now have a sparkling clean microwave interior! Now I need to clean the exterior. But it has crockpots, stewpots etc on the top of it that I will have to move to be able to slide the microwave around to reach the sides and back. I have a nice big kitchen, but not a lot of cabinets big enough for stuff like that. I keep saying that if we ever get caught up financially I want to put in more storage space and countertop. My entire north wall has not one single thing on it. I moved the fridge onto that side of the kitchen, along with the microwave cart, then put a builtin dishwasher, more countertop and one cabinet with a drawer. That helped, but as I love to cook I have aquired a significant amount of kitchen gadgets and cookwares. |
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Oops, edit that last post to say that I put the dishwasher and etc in the space that the fridge formerly occupied on the south wall............................ |
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i went thru a brown bag of papers i needed to sort and put into folders. while i was doing this i found something that could save me lots of time, money and explainations! WOOOHOOO! Tess - i got a rack just for pots and pans that hangs from the ceiling last year bout this time. this may work for u also. check out Pier 1. thats where i got mine. if money is 2 tight then try a Freecycle group in ur area. |
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Oh Mrs Dee, I would LOVE to have the hanging pot and pan holder. In fact we have a log cabin that is FAR neater than my home. All the pots and pans have a place there. It is easy, cause the only items that go there are what we NEED and USE. I have to adopt that concept for our actual living quarters. We have a Living Quarters Horse Trailer/camper. We go camping for a couple weeks at a time. Again, a place for everything and everything in its place. The only time it gets really messy is when daughter decides to come camp with us and brings her misc. that I don't have a specific spot for. Even when we take the grandson (two year old) with us I have a cabnet for his stuff. WHY can't I do this with MY HOUSE!!!????? |
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My kitchen is the size of a postage stamp LOL Half the ceiling is taken up by this godawful ugly flourescent light box. When you turn this thing on it's like Chevy Chase turning on his Xmas lights in Xmas vacation ROFL OK I did a 5 min thingy on Saturday since it was my idea after all.....I cleaned out the fridge. Not scrubbed clean but OMG that's disgusting sorta cleaned. I did not know chocolate pudding could turn green  I hate my fridge. It is a fridge for midgets (no offense to any little people lurking LOL). I am TALLER than my fridge FFS & I am just 5'5". And it has stoopid wire shelves instead of glass (my old fridge had the nice glass ones plus an extra baloney drawer ROFL where you could corral small things). You cannot put much weight on wire shelves or they fall right off. Now I drink my caffeine cold acuz I make lousy coffee LOL & I cannot put a 6-pack of soda pop on the wire shelves without causing an avalanche, so I had to hike the middle one up high enough to fit the pop on the hard plastic bottom. But then there was only one slot left for the top shelf. So the middle shelf is fairly useless as tis about as high as a loaf of bread maybe  But acuz the fridge is too short, I can't really SEE what's on the top shelf without bending & you know Greeny gots the old & brokens going on with an evil spine So most of the stuff that had gone bad was either there or on the bottom shelf in the door (too low to reach sans spine movement as well). Bright Idea:  I use the crispers to hold bottled water now & corrall the produce on the bottom shelf where I an actually SEE it. If I forget I got water in there, no biggie. If I forget I got cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, red cabbage, broccoli (which turns an interseting shade of blue when rotten BTW LOL).....I got a mushy disgusting mess in there. I would rather have the mess confined to one piece of plastic than go thru the hassle of cleaning an entire drawer. I got these spiffy domed thingys from Tupperware for tomatoes that hang from the shelf so you can see it & remember it's there. I have a domed thingy for lettuce as well but it sorta sucks acuz it's not quite big enough unless it's a very small head of such. I used to have a splendid Tupperware bowl with lil spikes on the bottom to hold the lettuce up some & a domed lid.....but the Good Son likes to bake & when he was just starting out enjoying such one day he decided to try a recipe that called for melted chocolate & he hurled it in the bowl & stuck it in the microwave for way too long & the chocky boiled ROFL BUT it also boiled a hole thru my lettuce keeper  like I said, the new one ain't as nice as that was. |
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It only took 5 min to ackshuly put away a basket of laundry .....why o why do I resist that so? |
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| | | From: Brenda | Sent: 3/21/2008 5:08 AM |
I know what you mean about doing something you've been putting off, only to find it takes a few minutes and you wonder why the heck you didn't just do it in the first place -- I don't know about you, but when I put something off, it tends to make me tense, so maybe I've been tense about something for a week and then find out it only takes a few minutes and I could kick myself... Dishes are like that for me, sometimes. I have a small sink, so it fills up quickly -- a pot, three bowls, three plates, two glasses and it's full. When I take everything out of the sink and pile it on the counter, and then start washing -- plates first, then bowls, then glasses, then pot, then silverware... I don't think it's ever taken me more than 15 minutes. Yet, I will walk by the sink again and again and avoid doing the dishes -- However, I do find that when I am really resisting doing the dishes (it's like a stubborn child inside me that doesn't want to take a nap) I can sometimes talk myself into doing just a couple -- then I come back later and do a couple more -- and later just finish them. I also find that I am more likely to do the dishes if the dish drainer is full. If I have to put away clean dishes first, when I am at my procrastinating worst, I am less likely to wash the dirty dishes. Again, though, sometimes I "trick" myself, saying, 'well, I'll just put the silverware away" and then, "Well, while I'm at it, I'll just put the pots and pans away" -- and usually I end up emptying the whole thing. Then later, I will do the "maybe I will just do a couple of dishes" thing... Isn't it weird to be "at war" with yourself? I wonder why this happens? -- Brenda |
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Maybe because there are so many much more interesting things we could be doing instead of housework? I know I am less likely to do anything when I am settle into reading, writing, or online, I can always talk myself into "one more chapter" etc. Housework is boring, monotonous, & holds no interest for me LOL Much rather do something else. |
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I have also discovered you can swish your toilet bowl sparkling clean in LESS than 5 minutes |
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I meant to try that microwave thingy & see if it worked, but I forgot about it till just now |
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AHA! I FINALLY remembered Tess's microwave tip when overhauling the kitchen this wk, so I tried it & my that works like gangbusters! It really DO loosen up crud! I was so impressed with it that I went & got one of those microwave splatter shields to keep it prettyfied  TYVM for the tip, Tess!  |
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Perhaps later todaY....after PT, picking up scrips, grocery shopping, dealing with Auntie.....if I was stilL working I dunno where I would fit it IN! 
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