Hey guys, I don't know where to keep all my thoughts about recent activites but here, so I'ma go head and give it a whirl...
This weekend has been great, organization-wise. Yesterday morning, drinking my coffee, I sudddenly proclaimed: "I need to clean something." So I cleaned out all my old clothes, ones that are too small, too big, holey, stained etc. It was a great feeling, getting rid of 3 1/2 bags of unnecessary crap. It kind of felt like going through a thrift shop, trying on everything to see how it fit, if I liked the style still, and what have you. About half a bag went into the trash, the really horrible I wouldn't give this to my worst enemies sort of stuff. Because I live in a weird communist "village," I just went ahead and dumped the other 3 bags into our free pile. (but i just know that the stuff I tossed will make it into the free pile too. it's gross.)
After that was cleaning, sorting, hanging, folding...finding a better way to store my clothes, so each week when I do laundry they're easier to put away. I'll be honest, for a few months I've been living out of my laundry basket and a pile of clothes stacked on a chair. Usually when I use my dresser, I "fold" things and stuff them in the drawers without much of a system beyond: top drawer=socks and under things, middle=tees, bottom=pants and anything else I want to forget about. And the closet? You don't want to know.
Now, my dresses, skirts and button up tees hang in the closet, along with a few sweaters (oh, I have
this neat closet hanger organizer, seriously awesome). I found that the hangers you get bras on make AWESOME skirt hangers, too. My dresser system is still kind of the same, only I've made 3 piles known as work, tanks, and weekend clothes, rolling up the tanks to fit better(folding the others for better access). I have more bras than usual (yay!) and more pants so I drug a cool plastic organizer into the bedroom for those items, and my "under the bed" tote (that doesn't fit under my bed) is behind that against the wall full of clothes I'm saving for craft projects. Oh, and the bottom drawer of the dresser is still holding a few things that I can't bring myself to get rid of, but that I've promised myself to do something with within the next 2 months (either reconstuct/craft, give to special friends/family, or donate).
I've done things like this on a smaller scale, and even tried to sort the clothes, but never really gave much thought to an actual system like this one. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm super stoked about this.
That was most of yesterday and about another hour or so today. Because the sun was out for the most part, around 1:30-2pm, we decided to begin our search for a new coffee table. The old one was a thrift shop score, less than $10 from Value Village about 6 1/2 years ago, a chipped bean shaped thing with WHEELS ON. Seriously. so cool. Until one leg kept falling off. and then a wheel on the other side kept falling out. You know, because it's on wheels that I use multiple times a day. It's where I keep my laptop, so I'd just wheel it around where ever I needed it. Hence, ruining it.
Moving onto the find of the year...We don't live much past Division, so after a lunch of
Little Big Burgers (best of the city), we walked a couple blocks to
Village Merchants. They recently moved to the other side of 39th into what used to be a neat hardware store, to anyone who's familiar with the place, and a bit closer to Trade Up music.
Score! a new table-sans wheels, for $16 from the upstairs area. There were quite a few more tables within our budget (under $70 or so) but this was sturdy, about the same size as the last, and light enough for us to carry home. Plus, you know, under $20. It's been painted over black, and yeah, the paint's chipping a bit, but the legs aren't about to pop out, so awsome. Introducing a new piece of furniture into our place takes a bit of "neatening up" so that's nice too.
On the way back we passed the grocery store so Tony waited with the table while I grabbed a few things I can't usually find at our closer store, and after things got settled I made 6 breakfast burritos with eggs and chorizo sausage and tossed them into the freezer (inspired by
this, which I discovered through Pinterest). I'm not a morning person and for most of my life I get my coffee and breakfast from cafes or where ever, as long as it doesn't involve me cooking at 5 am. Generally this costs roughly $5-10 a day, depending on where I go or what I order. For a while now I've attempted to bring coffee or granola bars with me, but damn I love breakfast burritos. So for under $10 I've made enough food-6 burritos-for a couple weeks. There are also 4 more tortillas and plenty of cheese left. (Quesidilla snacks!) If I had thought it through more clearly, I'm sure there would have been 10 burritos, but I was intoxicated by the essence of chorizo and eggs. I also want to try them with hashbrowns like the recipe calls for.
Also, I bought oatmeal for one of my favorite baking projects (also pinterest inspired), oatmeal bars with cranberries, chocolate chips and almonds. That way I'm not eating the same thing everyday. And I got some andouille sausage to cook up and add to a corn and black bean salad I wanna make for lunches this week.
Oh, and pinterest. I'm pretty sure when I haven't been cleaning or shopping, I've been pinning. But today, seeing what it has inspired, I'm pretty impressed with what it has done for my life.
Holy crap, I've been writing this for almost an hour! And I've got a kitchen full of dirty dishes.
What about you, are there ways you like to prepare for the week? Or times when you know it's time for a change in the way you do things?
