New York Renovator

We have SO MUCH clutter. Ugh!!! Keys, papers, pens, doodads, doohickeys, thingamabobs… my new kitchen is starting to look like a tornado hit it! We’re still in the process of taking things out of storage and boxes, and finding places for everything. Today we went on a wild goose chase for the turkey roasting pan. It was buried in boxes, under the garage. My daughter had to go diving for it, behind the freezer amongst the books and boxes and styrofoam. :S

So anyway. Clutter. I still don’t have my little phone and Internet station yet. All these small projects take a lot of time! You wouldn’t think so, but today I got the following little projects done:

Scraped the old caulk and re-caulked the floor where it meets the tub (to prevent leaks through the floor from overly exuberant bathers)
Drilled a coat hook in place
PICKED UP THE HOUSE for the 100th time
Cleaned Livvy’s food area (she’s such a slob)
Searched for my turkey roasting pan
Cooked dinner
Wrote articles and tweets
Deposited money in my account (best thing I did all day)
Went shopping for coffee creamer, bananas, etc
Went to home improvement store to get shelf materials
Made goals for kids’ school week
Folded laundry
Made phone calls
Scored kids’ schoolwork

And that’s the stuff I can remember!

Anyway, because I am so busy all the time, doing a million different jobs, it is imperative that I be organized. If things start to become unraveled, my projects become unraveled. And right now, the kitchen organization area is a disaster. Hats, gloves, keys mail, pens… UGH! I have been mulling over a solution, and I think I finally found it.

An organizer. These things are neat! I spotted a nice one at the department store today, but my eyes popped out at the price. $50! Holy cow! That’s extortion for a cardboard wall-mounted organizer! I went home and promptly searched for a sale at Buy.com. This is a very nice one. It’s a Gadget Smarts Faux Leather Personal Charging Stand. My husband is always forgetting to charge his phone. I had a place for him to charge it, but we moved it because we have to fit the heater in that area. I must make sure his work gear (pen, ID badge, keys, phone, baseball hat) are all perfectly organized, or he just throws his stuff on the kitchen counter. And I hate things on the kitchen counter! So I think this organizer will do very nicely. Kudos once again to Buy.com!!!

I wish I had seen this site when my kids were small! (I wish we had the Internet when my kids were small, lol). Here’s a terrific crayon holder I saw at The Best of DIY.

What a terrific invention! I always hated those flimsy cardboard boxes that held crayons. They never lasted long, and crayons spilled out so easily. I used to keep my crayons in small shoe boxes (well, I still do!) but that’s messy. I just love this idea. The tutorial for crafting this crayon holder is at Skip To My Lou, another great site for ideas.

The Best of DIY is rapidly becoming one of my favorite blogs to peruse. I just love handy little stuff featured there, and it’s all homemade stuff, using old materials you already have around the house. Now if I can only think of a way to recycle all those ostrich feathers and FunFoam bits…

Photo from SkipToMyLou.

I have noticed that a lot of moms have laptops. I visit blogs, and invariably the blogger describes her latest experience (usually a repair) with her laptop. I was blessed with my first laptop four years ago. Wow, was it great! It was perfect for when my back went out (herniated disk) and I was bedridden for a few weeks. I could still stay in touch. I even Instant Messaged my kids, downstairs, when I needed them. It is a little HP laptop, and the biggest problem I had with the machine is that it got so hot. Sometimes it would overheat so badly that the laptop would “freeze” (funny, huh?) or crash.

A few years ago, someone invented these little laptop stands that elevated the laptop. It allowed for the freer movement of air, thus enabling the laptop fans to circulate more efficiently, and keep the inner temperatures cooler. However, when I saw the latest prices (and they have come down), they were “on sale” for $25. $25 is a LOT of money! Especially when you have all these other little accessories to get for the laptop as well.

Well, I was browsing the housewares section at my local department store, and discovered a kitchen sink grid. It’s plastic. I’m not quite sure what it’s used for in the kitchen; perhaps as a liner for the bottom of the sink?

Anyway, it is the same size as my HP laptop. It looked perfect. I bought it ($2) and it works perfectly as a little stand for the laptop!

Moreover, they also make fancy stands with cooling fans built in them. But why pay $40 to $50 for one of these? Just buy a small portable fan (for $5 to $10), and have it blow quietly at the intake area of your laptop! It works!