Get the Help You Need

We planted corn this weekend. My job was to furrow the rows while my husband tilled and my children planted. Part way down one of the rows, the furrow fell of its handle. I didn't know how to fix it, so I decided to till while my husband fixed the furrow. I've been gardening all my life and I had tilling experience (3 feet of garden a few weeks ago while my brother got a drink), so I figured I could till. (Tilling has never been my job). I did great until I got to the end of the row. I've watched the guys turn the tiller around easily at the end of the row, but when I tried, it barely turned and the tiller and I kept heading off towards a wood pile. I yelled, I tugged, I yelled, I tugged and missed the woodpile, but I was still tilling up grass. I yelled. I could see my husband and daughter yelling at me to do something, but I didn't know what. Finally, I understood. Let go of the handle. I let go and the tiller stopped. The lesson? Sometimes you just need someone who knows more or has done something a little bit more than you around. I've been gardening forever, so I thought I could do it, but I still needed some training. So do your kids. Maybe so do you. Maybe so does your husband.

When it comes to organizing, that means organize with your children. Let them see how you do it. Give them opportunities to help. Help them see how to do it.

When you are tackling something new, try it. Do everything that you can do and then get help. I'm in the middle of planning an event that is 10 or more times bigger than anything I've ever done before. It's so big, I almost don't know how to do it. But there is someone on the planning committee who has done it, knows how to do it, and can do it. I'm learning how to think big. It's kind of exciting. I've also had help learning how to raise chickens, learning to write HTML, and learning how to put phone numbers in my phone. Sometimes you just need help.

(I have pictures coming, but they're in an email and I can't figure out how to get them to my blog. My email/picture mentor will be helping me with this soon).

Be Ready and Do It When the Time Is Right

It's been raining all week at our house. The ground is sopping wet and saturated. But today it stopped raining, so I went outside and weeded. There were plenty of other things I could do today, but the time was right, so I went. The weeds came out easily and in no time and I had lots of piles of weeds all over my yard (but no longer growing in the ground).
There are lots of things that are easier to do if you do them when the time is right. Here's a few things I try to do that are much easier if I wait and prepare for the right time.

* Weeding.

*Copying. If I know I have copying coming up (anytime), I try to get it ready. Then if I don't need it immediately, I just leave it around my house. Almost inevitably, someone will need to copy something before I need my copying done and I can send it with them. It combines 2 copy trips into one and eliminates something from my "to do" list.

* Projects. I happen to have lots of projects going on at my house all the time. I like to have an idea of the things that are coming up in my head. That way, whenever I am shopping, I can be looking for the things I need for those projects. They may be months away, but if I get the things I need when I'm already shopping, I can usually save money on them, and be done without an extra shopping trip.

* Scheduled times in my life. (There is another post dedicated to this topic). I have scheduled times when I work on our finances, send big emails, and even write in my journal. Since I have a set time to do those things, I don't need to worry about them - or even think about them - at other times. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I have a time for those things - and when I do, I try not to spend any more time thinking about them.

What things work for you if you wait until the right time to do them?

Organizing My Blog

There is a never ending list of things that can be organized. My past month has been full of a 2,000 mile, 5 day family vacation; an (approximately) 2 week, 20 people family reunion at my house, and everything it takes to get ready for both of those. And the whole time, my blog has sat neglected.

I've thought about it a lot. I've had ideas for posts and even composed them in my mind. I've thought of things I want to change and update and improve. But I haven't done any of it yet. And that's ok. For the past month, it was more important - and I chose - to do other things with my time, effort and energy. And that's exactly what organization is about - choosing the things that are important to you and doing those things. I'm not ready to say my blog is clutter. But at different times of our lives, almost anything can become clutter. We need to clean it out and clear it out forever - or until it's important to us to make room for it again.

So I'm hoping I'm back. I'm going to work on improving my blog. I'm hoping to go back through and label my posts so it's easy to find posts of topics of interest. I'm hoping to post on a more regular basis. And I'm hoping to remember to take pictures! And I'll do it, as long as it's one of the important things in my life.

"Free"Cycle

I joined the group "Free"Cycle (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SaltLakefreecycle/) this week. FreeCycle is a way to recycle, but everything is free. You can offer things you want to give away and request things you would like to get. I had 11 rolls of film for my 35 mm camera that was getting older by the minute and not getting used. I offered them on FreeCycle. Within one day, I had 10 requests for my film. (I had already tried to sell it on KSL.com. I had one person interested, but she didn't want it when she found out how old it was.)

I decided to give it to a lady who emailed that she understood the risk of using old film. She wanted it, but couldn't come get it when her husband said he didn't want her going to a strangers house. Then I offered it to a lady who has 3 kids going to 3 different camps this year and she wants them all to take a camera. She came within 12 hours of me choosing her and my film is gone!

It was a little bit of a hassle to give my film away, but I feel better about it than if I had thrown it out, and I also don't have it sitting around my house getting older.

I also tried to get something on FreeCycle. I wanted legos. I posted it, but no one has contacted me yet, so maybe it's harder to find stuff you want. I'll have to wait and see.

Organizing the Freezer

It's spring, and for me, that's the best time to organize the freezer. Our chest freezer is in the garage, so I like it to be cool (not hot, not freezing) when I go through the freezer. If it's too hot, all the food thaws before I finish. If it's too cold, my fingers freeze. I also like spring because (at least in theory), we've just eaten most of the food over the winter, so it's a little more empty.

We cleaned and organized both of our freezers today and here are some things I thought about:

* I decided to keep all open bags of vegetables in the freezer door. I'm hoping that will help us find them and then use them until they're gone and then open a new bag.

* The challenge of a freezer is its depth. Once something is down deep, it's hard to find it again. As much as I could a tried to stack deep. I have stacks of chicken and hamburger that go from the bottom of the freezer, all the way to the top.

* When you have 2 freezers, (a freezer with your refrigerator and a chest freezer), it's a good idea to keep the things you use most in the smaller refrigerator freezer. I pulled most of my frozen pumpkin from the refrigerator freezer and moved it to my chest freezer. It opened up so much room and now I won't have it falling out on me anymore. I kept the vegetables, meats, cheese, butter, and other freezer stuff we reach for frequently in the refrigerator freezer.

* Freezers need to be organized every once in a while. I try to keep on top of mine, but I still found things I never thought could be in my freezer. Freezers also usually need to be defrosted and for sure cleaned out. We found styrofoam cup pieces, kernels of corn, meat labels and even a stray pepperoni in ours!

Do Something that Will Make the Most Difference

Sometimes when my kids want to play computer in the middle of the day, or do something else I would prefer they not do, I ask them to first "clean up something that will make the most difference." That means that if there are blocks, legos, and little animals all over the family room, they can choose the one that will help the family room look the best. Sometimes it might just be putting away a blanket, or putting chairs around the table.

If you are just starting your organizing journey, choosing something that will make the most difference is exactly what you want to choose. Choose your biggest problem spot and go to! When you choose something big, it's easy to feel the difference and then keep going.

Kitchen Cups

We've been wanting individualized cups for a long time, but when the Easter Bunny brought them and people who happened to be at my house started talking about them, I decided they were worth a blog entry.

We are a big water family and have been working very hard to drink enough water. (The amount of water you should drink each day is your body weight, divided by 2, in ounces. For example, if you weighed 100 pounds, you should drink 50 ounces of water a day. This amount is at least. If you exercise, play outside on a nice day, are nursing, or any other number of things you need more).

We are working to drink water because it's healthy and it has been helping a lot with the asthma in our family. (If you're interested in this topic, this is a great book about it - "ABC of Asthma, Allergies and Lupus: Eradicate Asthma - Now!" by F. Batmanghelidj and also "You're Body's Many Cries for Water".)

The problem with all this water drinking is that we never know exactly which cup is ours, and we always get a new one. We don't have a dishwasher, so the cups add up fast and whoever is washing dishes notices.

The solution was to have an original cup for each person. We keep them on the counter all day and wash them at dinner time. It's worked great these past two weeks with some great side benefits - my two year old got an ABC cup and he likes to call it his ABCDEFG cup. My 11 year old is finally drinking most of the water he needs, and everyone is drinking more.

We had adopted this practice with our "excursion" water bottles a few years ago - and we've loved that too. It's always easy to tell who's water bottle is whose (they used to all match, but be different colors, but we've lost a few).

We've also done this with towels. Everyone has their own color so it's easy to know whose is whose. We can use them a few times this way without having to wash them everytime they get used.