This Needs Help

Yeah. No bueno. This is my precarious set up for my shoes. LOL! Tinisha, my loctician, has challenged me to reduce my inventory to 50 shoes. I haven't started that transition yet. Right now, we're at about 72.

I was looking at this at the Container Store:

Two Three problems:
1. I'd need like 6 of those things. That's a lot of cash.
2. The reviews on this are pretty iffy.
3. I don't actually think my shoes would fit in these boxes...and I only wear a 7.5 (sometimes an 8 if I REALLY need the shoe in my life and there's no 7.5 available. What?).

I need suggestions. I'd really like something like the shoe organizer above. I need to find someone who's good with wood and they can just build me one from scratch. LOL!

The Things Folks Do For Love

I have a co-worker who is going natural. She said she was ready to cut her hair off, but she has to go to a wedding this weekend for a cousin on her father's side. So she's just going to get it blown out and flat ironed. I asked her why didn't she just cut it.

She said that her cousins/aunts on her dad's side of the family take after her grandfather in terms of features. Her words were, "they're all AKAs with long, straight hair." O_o So basically, if she showed up with her short natural, they would have a fit, ridicule her, etc. So she said she was going to just go ahead and straighten it out and just deal with it, and that she was doing it to keep the peace, for her dad's sake. This side of the family often berates her for her weight gain as well. She said when she was in college, skinny with long hair, everything was gravy.

Um...if my dad WAS alive, I just can't imagine him asking me to subject myself to this type of ridicule or behavior, or ask me to go through all kinds of changes to keep the peace with people who are CLEARLY too concerned about what's going on with everyone else's life. Thankfully neither side of my family is like this.

I told her that I can't fathom or envision putting myself into this type of situation purposely. I'm all about self preservation. Maybe I'm just selfish. I love my family to death, and I would hope that they would never subject me to anything like this. Nobody should be that concerned about what's going on with my follicles or weight gain except ME. And I would not be in attendance at that wedding.

Sigh.

Her story made me sad, yet grateful at the same time. I'm grateful I'm surrounded with the people I have in my life.

Taking Care of Home

I noticed, in my last few months in my apartment, that I just dreaded doing chores. My schedule of getting to bed early, getting up early and being gone all day left little time in the afternoon/early evening for me to address household chores. It's just me (well, Bogey is there too but she doesn't do much), but one person really can make a lot of clutter/mess! I found myself having to do everything on the weekend. I'd spend most of my Saturday and Sunday doing laundry, vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the bathrooms, etc.

I decided that when I moved into the rental house, I would make a much better effort to keep things in order. First and foremost, I am trying to make myself do laundry during the week. It's much easier to do 1 load per night than to have to do 4-5 on the weekends. But then I wondered, what else can I do?

Martha Stewart to the rescue. I'm not like a MS stan. I didn't/don't watch her show. I've never bought any books. But when I did my Google search on keeping home organized, I came across a checklist of hers...which led me several more checklists. I printed out 6, specifically:

--6 Things to Do Every Day
--Weekly Cleaning Checklist
--Monthly Cleaning Checklist
--Seasonal Cleaning Checklist
--Medical Supplies Checklist
--How to Keep the Refrigerator Clean

I don't know about that seasonal list...I just glanced at it, but I don't know if I'll be doing all that. I don't own the house I'm living in. LOL! However, I really found the list of 6 things to do every day to be very helpful (I did most of those things anyway), as well as the weekly cleaning list. I also need to have a better medical supplies box/first aid kit. So I plan to put those to use.

The 6 things you should do every day are:
Make the Bed
Manage Clutter (look around rooms for clutter and pick it up before you go to bed)
Sort the Mail (make bins for personal correspondence, bills, catalogs and filing)
Clean as You Cook
Wipe Up Spills While They're Fresh
Sweep the Kitchen Floor

You can find all of these at www.marthastewart.com/checklists

What do you do during the week to keep your home organized?

In The Spirit of Organization

Why stop with the shoes. Let's get the purses in order, too:


(Ignore the junk in the corner. We're still organizing! :lol:)

Set of two purse racks that can be hung over the door, or they can be mounted on the wall. I chose the door, because this is an apartment. If this was a house, I would have mounted on the closet wall.

The price? $9.99 at BedBathandBeyond. Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet.