A Slob Comes Clean — Reality-Based Cleaning and Organizing

Get Towels off the Floor – Cheap {Organizing} Tricks

January 27, 2012 By Nony 4 Comments

I’ve been thinking about starting a new series this year called:

Cheap {Organizing} Tricks

So here goes. This first one isn’t so much a trick, as a duh.

My definition of “duh” is: Something that is so quick or easy that it makes me wonder why I didn’t do it sooner.

Yes. I was in Junior High in the 80s. Why do you ask?

I will attribute this idea to Normal Friend. She claims that she gets the majority of her organizing stuff at the Dollar Tree. When she saw that I “might” have Towel Placement Issues, she said that I could get Towel Hanging Doo-lollies there.

Honestly, I was only half listening because the other half of me was thinking of excuses for why whatever she was talking about wouldn’t work.

Here’s the thing. I used to love to shop for organizing stuff. Partly because I just loved stuff. Mostly, though, because I thought/hoped that I would someday find the perfect thing that would solve all my slob problems. Because this delusion only caused me to end up with more stuff that I couldn’t keep organized, I’ve kind of swung my pendulum to the other extreme.

Like, I assume that NO organizing stuff will ever work for me. So why buy anything?

Even at Dollar Tree.

But, when I was in Dollar Tree letting my daughter buy a soon-t0-be-legless-not-a-Barbie, I saw what Normal Friend was talking about. And I decided to waste two dollars.

Really, I assumed they would break. As a chronic over-loader, I’ve never had much luck with hooks and such.

But . . . I was wrong. I’m admitting it here for the entire world to read. These things work. They attach tightly to the top of the door (no hardware needed) and are plenty strong for one towel. And they’re a dollar each.

Duh.

Filed Under: Cheap {Organizing} Tricks, organization | 4 Comments

A LOT of Reading Material in One Small Space

January 26, 2012 By Nony 2 Comments

Thank you to who?Comics for sponsoring this post and encouraging my child to read biographies in comic book form! Please click here to learn more about the app. And follow who? Comics on Twitter for updates!

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As a former teacher, I love the feel of a book.

As a recovering slob, I’ve learned to accept that maybe it’s not a good thing to own more books than will fit on my shelves.

Maybe.

When it comes to my kids . . . I have a VERY hard time not over-doing it with books. They love to read, and I love that they love to read.

I don’t know that I’ll ever stop loving the feel of paper pages, but when given the opportunity to review who?Comics for the iPad, I thought I should give the lots-of-reading-material-in-one-small-device thing a shot.

Besides, my ten year old especially LOVES biographies.

We chose to download the Bill Gates biography (which was free), the Martin Luther King, Jr. biography and the Walt Disney biography. (MLK and Disney were 4.99 each.)

I read each comic first because I got a little paranoid when I saw the warning at the beginning that said some of the comics may have material that’s inappropriate for children. It explained that the comics portray difficult things the people went through, sometimes including child abuse, violence, etc.

Not having any idea what someone else’s interpretation of what is or isn’t appropriate for my children is . . . I told my excited ten-year-old to hold on just a minute while I read the one about Bill Gates.

Which was when I realized that these are (a lot) longer than I expected. I’ve never read a “graphic novel” but I would think they might be categorized more that way. In my mind, a comic book takes 30 minutes or less to read, but the ones we read were over 130 pages each.

Not that I’ve read a comic book since those long days spent in my Grandma’s basement reading my dad’s old comics from the 50s.

Not that I had any concept of time when I was reading those . . .

But still, I wasn’t expecting these to be so long. BUT, once I read them and passed them on to my boys, I was glad they were long. They were very thorough and the boys really did enjoy them.

They do have what I understand is Asian-style animation where the characters’ faces get extremely grotesque and distorted when they are angry. This happened a lot in the Bill Gates book (as he was evidently a rather energetic and curious little boy who drove some adults crazy). I didn’t care for this, and was curious to see what my boys thought. They did NOT like it. It’s a little disconcerting to see the grandmother’s face suddenly look like a monster’s face.

But . . . once we got used to that, we really did like the books. They were well done, easy and fun to read on the iPad, and truly fascinating.

The boys unanimously voted that we had to purchase the one about Martin Luther King, Jr. That one didn’t have as many of the contorted faces, and did a good job of telling stories from his life that helped the boys visualize the things they had learned in school. As far as appropriateness, a child being attacked by dogs is horrible to see, even in a drawn picture. But it was a horrible thing that really happened. My boys are old enough to understand.

Overall, we really liked the ones we read, though having to read the entire 130+ page book before handing it over to the boys might make me hesitate to get the entire series.

I do love that they can read these in the car when it’s dark.

And that they don’t get lost.

Their overall opinion? Very cool. Loved the books.

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Thank you again to who? Comics for sponsoring my post. Please click here to learn more about the app. Visit who? Comics for updates. I was selected for this opportunity by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own. #CleverWhoComics #spon

Filed Under: reviews | 2 Comments

Hubby Has Issues Too

January 25, 2012 By Nony 22 Comments

I knew we had too many mugs.

I knew most of them came into our home through Hubby.

Some were gifts from work. Some were from his (many) bachelor years.

I’ve always known that I have issues.

But I don’t think I realized Hubby has them too . . . until about a month ago.

At a Christmas party gag gift exchange, he chose this gift.

Not as a wrapped, who-knows-what-it-is-let’s-get-crazy-and-take-a-chance choice.

He stole it. Like . . . someone else opened it and he saw it and he wanted it. Enough to steal it.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. That is a cow. A cow inside a mug.

No, you’re not un-cool and out of the loop. Cows inside mugs isn’t a new trend.

Yes, you’re right. It’s a totally stupid mug.

Perfect for a GAG GIFT!!!!

This morning, when hubby drank out of it, he decided that (even though he had tried to deny it before) coffee in a Stupid Cow Mug has a “whang” to it.

Evidently, it’s difficult to properly seal a ceramic cow that’s sitting inside of a mug.

Who knew?

Gleefully, I threw it in the trash.

Note: I love hubby and can totally accept his Mug Issues since he kindly accepts my Many Assorted Issues. He knows I wrote this and doesn’t mind because he loves when he is the subject of my posts.