Project 22: The Frog

Are you familiar with the concept of Eating the Frog?

Brian Tracy borrowed the phrase to humourously encourage us to do the most unpleasant thing in our day, first. Everything after that, you see, would be a piece of cake. (So to speak.)

Here's a short video I found on you tube which explains it: http://youtu.be/0W7GB5Fh2XM

This project was my frog.

This dresser which we call the "white dresser" (and I do suspect he's related to the white rabbit as it is always getting away from me....) sits in a very busy spot.

The top of it is a clutter magnet. The top drawer is worse. It was the drop spot for everything I didn't know what to do with. What is this bit? Don't know, put it in the top drawer of the white dresser. Looking for something? Look in the top drawer of the white dresser. That works--to a point. But then it gets to where the drawer is so full, you can't find anything in there. It took us about two and a half years to get to this point. (I know, because I did a scrapbook page about clearing it out in 2010.)

The date on this picture is April 28th.

Tackling it was one of the reasons I started this project. (Why I have to start 30 in order to finish one, only my therapist knows--if I had a therapist--which I don't. But s/he'd know. I hope.)

I piled everything on top of the dresser, in hope that that would motivate me to tackle it.

Nope.

The next picture was taken May 1st, after 15 minutes of sorting into "stay" and "go."

I have no clue what happened after that. I know I bought organizers at one point.

I know I thought about what we needed in it. One new thing was stuff for doing hair. This is right outside the bathroom and doing one's hair here instead of in the bathroom means folks can get in (and out) more quickly. (It is our only bathroom with a shower/tub.)

At some point, I put everything I wanted to keep into the organizers. And just like that, I was out of room.

Then, I stalled on dealing with the stuff in the baskets I no longer wanted to keep here and, frankly, did not know what to do with. I still haven't dealt with all that stuff. It is the last 10% of the project that I always seem to have trouble finishing.

But the drawer is technically done. As is the top.

 

I will tackle the leftover bits and bobs, eventually.

It's all in the basement. You now, the place where things go to die.

Project 21: Hang the Paper Cutter.

This was supposed to be another embarrassingly easy one.

When I first got the idea of hanging my paper cutter, back in February while taking the creative space workshop,  I had no idea how I was going to do it.

When I re-wrote my project list for the anti-procrastination project, I allotted it two hours. Most of that was for researching how to hang it.

I sat down with the computer and typed in some search terms, like "hang paper cutter" and got all sorts of unrelated and irrelevant articles. The same thing happened on Pinterest. It was a good thing that rabbit hole wasn't too deep.

So, I decided to take a look at the paper cutter itself and see what it suggested to me.

It suggested a narrow block of wood for the lip to rest upon.

I went down to my husband's newly built shelves and organized wood pile and found what I needed immediately.

I decided to paint it the same colour as the wall. I found the paint (and the brushes!) easily because of our newly re-organized basement.

I did have to go out and purchase more command adhesive in order to put it on the wall. The plan was to fasten one of the command velcro strips to the wood and the other to the wall.

It was going to be so easy-- and I was happy thinking I did not have to continue to make Swiss cheese out of my walls.

And that should have been that.

Except the Velcro on the command strip gave way.

Twice.

So, in the end, and because I was determined to have a post for today, I didn't say rude things and walk away (well, half that statement is true). No, I used the drill, wall anchors, screws and a level and fastened a block of wood to the wall.

My five minute project took about a half hour.

Here is where I kept the paper cutter. On the floor between the end of my desk and the wall.

sorry you had to see that.

This is where I am keeping it now.

Much, much better.

Project 20: Create Home in Pantry for Extra Bathroom Items

I'm almost embarrassed to post this. It was too easy.

I have two bathrooms and no drawers in either of them. The only storage available is the medicine cabinets. There are closets, though, fitted with shelves, outside each bathroom.

If you wanted an extra tube of toothpaste you could look in the medicine cabinet, or in the closets. I never knew where to find it or even whether we had any. It was ridiculous. When I created my Household Goods Inventory Checklist, I realised, again, that I needed to create just one place to look.

So, I did. First, though, I had to put this pile back on the basement shelves.

Then, I could find my little plastic "shoeboxes" hidden at the back. I ran around the house gathering up all the extra toothbrushes, floss, and toothpaste. Then, I labelled it and placed it on a shelf in the pantry.

Now I need to organize the pantry! (Again.)

Project 19: Organize the Black Book

After: Good enough.

The "Little Black Book" in case you aren't familiar with the reference is the place where gentlemen kept the phone numbers of ladies they pursued, back in the day.

So, when I was trying to come up for a name for this binder full of essential reference papers-- which, incidently, is not black-- I thought of the "Little Black Book." (Just to clarify, this is not a household management binder. Those are different and I don't have one.)

I set it up the first time I took the Paper Clutter class at Simplify 101. (And no, they don't pay me to mention them!)

I've been meaning to re-organize it since the Paperwork Challenge back in February. Like most of the projects I've procrastinated, this one took less than 15 minutes from the turn of the first page to labelling the spine. (OK, so, no, the labelling took longer than organizing it!)

Before: The motley collection of binders I keep handy to the desk.

Paper is personal. So what we keep in here is useful for our family-- I doubt it would be for anyone else. But the the sort of thing that goes into a "black book" are those things which you want to get your hands on quickly when you need them--and wouldn't have a home, otherwise. Some might be on the side of the fridge, some on a bulletin board, some in a folder, somewhere. This binder is a useful beast.

So, for us, that's library cards. My husband and I take turns going to the library so we need a central location for them.

Other things:

• Information on how to contact the schools the kids' attend and how to access the site where the school posts their homework.
• Bus schedules.
• Stuff relating to Scouts, Guides, and (now) their summer activities.
• Stuff relating to what goes out for garbage pick-up, the garbage pick up schedule.
• Take out menus.

You get the idea.

This year on one page calendar is from www.donnayoung.org. I use it to keep track of my husband's holidays.

The dividers are also pocket pages. I used my handy dandy labeller to identify the contents behind the tabs. Finally. Hopefully, now, things won't get mixed up. There's nothing worse than having to turn every single darn page to find the one you are looking for.

Since organizing all that took no time at all, I thought I'd make the binders on this shelf more attractive.

And that was it. Another project crossed off the Anti-Procrastination Project list. I cannot believe how many of these take so little time. They just needed a little intention.

Project 18: Jewellery Holder, Part Two

There are a gazillion "jewellery organizer" pins on Pinterest. Here's my board.

I took all my jewellery out of my lovely jewellery box sometime in January. That's when I decided I needed to sort it and figure out what I wanted to keep. (And why jewellery and not jewelry? 'Cause this is a Canadian blog, that's why.)

And then things stayed pulled out and jumbled like this for a long, long time.

One of the truly great things in Aby's Simplify 101 classes is that she emphasises doing a little bit whenever you can. In the Fundamentals class we called it "Embracing the Bite." That's how this happened.

No, I haven't painted. That's the difference between a sunny winter day and a cloudy spirng day. The trees outside the window block a fair bit of light when they are in leaf.

First, I got inspired by a vignette on a tray and learned you can put your toiletries in a drawer.

No, wait, first I emptied out a drawer and took the horse napkins and picture frames that were in it, put them together, and hung them up for my daughter.

Then I was able to have a fairly tidy dresser top. But I was really stumped with how to deal with my jewellery.

I looked at options that would let me organize and display my earrings and my necklaces, but it was tricky. I wanted to be able to access the backs of the earrings and that meant I had to put them through something. For the necklaces, I just needed something sturdy to hang them from.

It wasn't until it occurred to me that I needed to make two jewellery organizers that I solved my dilemma. After all, I put my earrings on in the bathroom when I put on my make up and the necklaces in my room when I get dressed. As soon as I realised that, it was easy. I made the earring holder in Part One. This, the necklace holder, is probably more complicated than it really needs to be.

When I cleaned out the bsement, I found some cork tiles and an unused picture frame I'd been hanging onto for probably a decade.

I used the glass from the frame to "measure" the cork.

I cut the cork with an X-acto knife. Several scores and I was through it in no time.

I broke apart some straight pins with wire cutters in order to attach the two pieces of cork. (You can see the second piece of cork hanging off the edge of the dresser above.) It probably wasn't necessary.

The hardest part was spacing the thumbtacks evenly!

And so there we have it, another project crossed off May's Anti-Procrastination Project list.

Project 17: New Jewellery Holder (Part One)

The Story.

I was a difficult child.

Supplies: an old picture frame, sized appropriately to the size of your earring collection, a scrap of black plastic screening and a piece of cardstock in your choice of colour (not shown).

It was my mission in life to push every adult who tried to tell me what to do to their utmost limit. I reduced grown women to tears of frustration (much to my current shame). My mother stopped talking to me for three days straight once, she was so angry with me. (That, actually was the most effective punishment, ever. I was an only child of an extremely gregarious parent. The absolute silence was terrifying--and while it was happening, I'd no idea how long it'd last.)

My mother told me not to pierce my ears.

On a visit to my grandmother's I convinced her to let me get them done.

 Cut the cardstock to fit the picture frame opening at the back.

When I returned to my Mom's, I had nothing to treat them with, so we agreed I'd take out the bullets and let them close up.

Take the screening and fold it around the cardstock. You want the screening to wrap all the way around the cardstock. The fold should be at the "top" of the frame when you assemble it later. Use the cardstock as a template to trim the screening.

About a year later, I think it was the summer I was thirteen, I did the same thing again.

But this time, I was defiant and determined. I thought the bullets were ugly, so I put in a lovely pair of copper and turquoise studs. I still didn't have anything to treat them.

The back of the screen is under the cardstock. The fold is at the right edge of the cardstock. Trim the front of the screen to the size of the opening of the picture frame. Here, the sides are trimmed.

This time, my mother shrugged. There were other much larger battles we were fighting, so she let me have this one.

One day, just before I was about to leave for a babysitting job, I decided to change the earrings.

I couldn't find the backs.

To cut the bottom, measure the cardstock from top to bottom and subtract the measurement for the "lip" of the frame. Mark the spot with tape so you know where to cut.

Mom thought that maybe I hadn't put them in, so she started tugging on them from the front. When I yelped with pain, she stopped, and got out some ice cubes.

I was instructed to hold the ice cubes to my ear lobes while she got out the pliers and pulled.

Screening all trimmed out. The fold is at the bottom of the cardstock in this picture. I hope it all makes sense, now!

With blood running down my neck and the time for me to go to my babysitting job looming, Mom and I decided that she would go babysit for me and I would get in a cab and go to Emergency and see what was what.

So that's what we did.

As the doctor cut the front of the earring from the back and then gently removed the back from the skin that had grown around it, he admonished me quite severely never to pierce my ears again. I now had scar tissue in my ear lobes, he explained, it just wasn't a good idea.

I followed that doctor's advice for 35 years. Last summer, when my daughter turned thirteen, we went down to the mall and got our ears pierced together.

We got stuff to treat them.

The end.

Project 16: List Left-Overs for sale.

Unfortunately, when we built that last section of wall in the basement, we had to go out and buy a huge roll of vapour barrier and a full package of batt insulation to finish things off.

We tried to buy someone else's left over's first but we did not like what we found. I swear, the first batch we found was used. It looked as if someone had pulled the stuff right out of the wall. My husband said he thought he saw mouse droppings in it. The second batch, though not used, looked as though it had been left outside for the winter. In the interests of finishing the wall while my husband had the time off, we bought new.

We had 13 pieces left over from the package we bought.

We only used 12 feet off of this 59 foot roll!

Finally, I got them listed for sale! Let's hope they don't linger for long.