Here’s the window into our room at Disney World last week.
The blinds are closed.
My blinds are almost always closed. I like it when they’re open, but I rarely remember to open them.
I do remember to close them . . . when it gets dark outside and I start to worry that the neighbors can see our still-to-be-cleared kitchen table.
Walking by other rooms identical to ours several times a day last week, I couldn’t help but notice that other people did open their blinds. And while I did my best to not stop and stare inside, I was able to manage a few sideways glances.
I can say with confidence that their flat surfaces . . . did not look like our flat surfaces.
I saw cleared tables with straightened cups all in one little corner.
It was a reminder that this slob-stuff is just what happens.
Automatically.
Every time I don’t consciously do otherwise.
But . . . I have improved and even my hotel-room-living is better now than it was pre-blog. I was rather proud of this:
It’s a laundry pile. As in, we had a specific place to put dirty laundry . . . and we put it there. We didn’t just fling it all over the room.
Like we sometimes do.
And while I’m bragging about my not-nearly-as-bad-as-it-could-be room, I must show this:
Yep. That’s right. We hung up our bathing suits. I showed my kids that cutesy little shelf and they did a fantastic job of hanging up their suits every day after swimming. I’m thinking I need to get something like that at home.
Because randomly-strewn dirty clothes is one thing. Randomly-strewn-with-a-wet-bathing-suit-in-the-mix dirty clothes is a whole ‘nuther thing.
Very funny- I never open my blinds in hotel rooms because I always feel like I’m being spied on, but I can’t stand for the room to be dark either! I just can’t make up my mind, open or close, open or close. 🙁
Hope you had a great time! I’m kind of anal when it comes to staying in a hotel room. We’ve spent hundreds of nights in a hotel since we’ve traveled with my husband’s job and I’m one of those anal people that packs their own cleaners and actually “cleans” the room before the housekeeper comes in just so they don’t realize how dirty we actually are. lol I’ve even managed to fool the housekeepers into thinking that they’ve cleaned our room because I’m so good at making the hotel beds. Yep. I just had to brag. 🙂
Now if only I could follow through like that at home….:(
It’s way late reply, but one thing to try, if it’s possible with those blinds, is to turn the blinds so that the inside edge of each slim horizontal part is upwards and the outside edge is below. Then if you open the blind a bit it will reflect some light to the ceiling and the room, but it won’t show the floors to people walking by. I’m not sure whether my explanation is clear or usable there, but that’s what I occasionally do. Not only to hide from other’s views but also if I don’t want sun to heat everything on my table or other surfaces on hot sunny days yet want daylight in.
One of those nifty spring up hampers is great for travel! It stores flat in a suitcase. I love mine!
After 12+ years of tent camping, I’ve finally figured it out. I found a collapsible mesh laundry bag that holds all of our laundry (a family of 5) and everyone puts dry/dirty clothing in there. If it’s wet, it hangs on the line until it’s dry then goes in the bag. As for keeping the blinds open…. I didn’t like to put the windows down in our tent unless our cots/sleeping bags were made. I didn’t want others to see how trashed our tent could be…. I’ve found over the years that I can keep our camp much cleaner (I KNOW!!! It’s dirt & sticks & leaves!!!) than I can our house. The only thing I can attribute it to is that there is much LESS stuff at camp & it’s easier to clean up…. Someday I’ll have less stuff at home too. You’re not alone!
oooh living in duckville, i can so relate,,…in a cottage we rent…(cottage sounds way nicer than it is…this place is outhouse, more like a hunting camp? but we LOVE IT)…i keep that place SPOTLESS>..
it’s the minimalism….i so wish i could ditch everything here and make do like we do there…..i actually ENJOY tidying up at night there and during the day…it’s also much smaller…i think here i feel like i never make any headway…living room clean, kitchen, but kitchen trashed..main floor done, bedrooms trashed…bedrooms done, main floor trashed..sigh…the cottage is so much smaller…the kids spend most of the time OUTSIDE (like we did as kids…)
can’t wait to see your disney pics..i kept our hotel room so spotless..we stayed off property and had a washer dryer combo in the room, so at night, EVERYTHING went into it. ran it on cold…we could have just packed one outfit and would have been ok..lol….
I like to hang suction cup hooks in the shower for wet suits and towels at home and away from home. OK, I would like to use them away from home, but have never remembered to pack them. I think it’s a good idea, though.
Oh my word, that’s a fabulous idea!
When we go to a hotel we always use a pillowcase from home for our laundry basket. This works well for us since I have to have a special pillow so I take mine anyway and I just throw a clean pillowcase or two in my suitcase and use the dirty one on my pillow for our dirty clothes.
Last year, we rented a beach house. After a week, we had A LOT of dirty/wet/sand-filled laundry. (We bring our bedclothes, pillows and towels/washclothes.) Our last day my mom and I got up early, bagged up our dirty laundry and headed to the laundromat. We spent a little, but with so many machines, it didn’t take long. Plus we didn’t have a ton of wet laundry to tote back home.
It’s funny about the blinds thing. It wasn’t a conscious part of my de-slob journey, because I don’t have a point where I said, “enough is enough” I have 500 points where I did and nothing changed for more than a day or two, but in retrospect opening my blinds every morning was like starting to make the bed. It was something that I normally didn’t do because it seemed like too much work. Then I got tired of living in the gloom (my house gets very little light downstairs) and so slowly I built up the habit BECAUSE I FELT BETTER WHEN I DID.
I think thats the key to me to every behavior that I want to adopt, every step away from slobdom. The only thing that works on that voice that says it’s not important/i’m no good at it/it’ll never get better, is to say “I’ll feel better if I just do it”
I feel you! My kids rival rock stars in their ability to trash a hotel room. We’re always in such a rush on our Disneyland trips that I tip the maids heavily for wading through our stuff to make the beds and wipe down the sink.
Haha, it is like reading my own thoughts. I like having the blinds open, but I don’t like that anyone looking in can see right into the kitchen (which, seeing as we eat almost every meal at home) is often a wee, tiny bit messy. Then we go on walks and see all these other people’s identical houses that look like something out of a magazine.
Okay, so I finally had the realization that I should designate a place to put bulky seasonal items that we want out so they’re handy but not all over the place and in the way. We now have a little space where we put the swim bag (full of towels, swimming suits, sunblock, toys, etc.) in the summer and the snow boots in the winter. (And a place designated in a storage closet for them to go when not in season.)
But why have I never thought to create a place to hang the damp swim stuff?? I do make sure the kids all hang their suits up some place to dry, but we don’t really have anywhere convenient so stuff ends up getting draped all over the dining room table and chairs or just wherever, so then we have to collect everything and return it to the swim stuff spot, and in the meantime people lose track of where they laid their stuff. But this weekend I am going to hang some hooks on the wall above the swim stuff spot! A perfect solution, and never crossed my mind until I saw the photo above where you have all the swim stuff hanging up to dry. THANKS!! 🙂
Ever since I can remember, we have always flipped our wet swim suits over the shower door/curtain rod or the edge of the tub to dry. It never occurred to me that there could be anywhere else to put them. Good training from my mom, I guess. LOL! Now that I have three kids of my own, whenever anyone takes off a swim suit, it immediately gets draped over the side of the tub to dry (since they are too short to flip it over the shower curtain rod).