Thursday, February 23, 2012

Other Things


 To understand these photos, you have to understand my oldest daughter. She is in acupuncture college, lives at home, and is organized. When I say organized I mean "ORGANIZED."
She likes things tidy, neat, and clean. Which is a good thing for me because she keeps the house running so I can paint. But it's also a bad thing. I think she inherited this from my mother, who used to spend a whole day just washing all of the plastic flowers we had in our house. Honestly, the overly-clean thing skipped a gene. Mine. I mean I like things clean and not to be cluttered, but I also like collections. I like antique shops, thrift stores, and finding treasures. It's also ironic that almost every cool treasure I bring home, my daughter loves and immediately whisks it away to her room, where it will live for a time until she reorganizes her room again, then it will come back to me.

Anyway, to get on with my story - we are thinking of remodeling our kitchen. We found some really good deals on Food Network cookware at Khol's and also on pretty stoneware dishes. So, my daughter says we don't have room to put the new stuff in until we get some old stuff OUT. And she wants to help me. Imagine. So yesterday, I'm getting ready to paint, and we decide we must do this cleaning thing - NOW. I get a chair, sit down in the kitchen and she starts going through each cabinet, one by one, asking me if we need this and we need that. She brings empty boxes in from the garage to put the stuff in and when I say, "Okay, that can go," she murmurs, "Thank God" under her breath. Anyway, to make a long story short, we have NINE boxes of kitchen stuff to go to the thrift store. Then she washed out every cabinet and organized the dishes and cookware. Yay. It's just amazing how much stuff I had accumulated after 35 years of marriage. Now I can cook. Bummer.


 These are my pots and pans. Bean pot, fudge pot, crockpot, and new cookware.


 Oh my goodness, this is so neat! These are my new dishes.They are not white, kind of creamy and they have a Tuscany feel. I ate lunch on one for lunch yesterday, but felt like I was at some swanky place eating gourmet food. I didn't want to get it dirty.


Oh, I forgot to mention, my husband said I needed to start getting the tax stuff ready. This is probably my least favorite thing to do in the whole world. See that plastic bag? That's my record-keeping system. Wow, to see it in a photo really drives home the fact that I need to get my paperwork organized. Maybe I should let me oldest daughter have a go at my studio? 
Oh, Hell no. Sometimes a woman just has to have her mess, you know.
I get it done, it just takes longer. 
You should see my mailing list boxes.  One time a collector of mine came to one of my shows and said she would actually come over to my house and help me address postcards because she felt sorry for me because I hand write all of them instead of using a computer label system. How sad. Well, there is some good news - my youngest daughter has offered to come over and organize my mailing list. For $7 an hour. Smart girl.


I found these cool bags at Michael's last night. I've bought several things over the last couple of years to try to organize my plein air materials for painting out on location. The problem I've found is that everything has a lid and buckles that I have to open up to get to my painting supplies. And most of the things are so big and bulky that I end up never wanting to use them again. I found these cool bags for $5 each and they have a big open area in the middle and side pockets big enough to hold large tubes of paint.I will have one for my tissues, wipees, gloves, etc., another for paints, mineral spirits, and the like, and one to tuck small panels into for easy grabbing. The last one, hmmm, probably snacks.

7 comments:

  1. I love MY way of thinking and organizing....and although I adore help...I still want my stuff the way I want it...I do love the idea of matching plates and cups and silverware and want stuff up on my walls...but hate to dust and clean....I would rather have live plants but they get dusty also...How to have the stuff I love and not have dust is too hard to figure out so I think I'll take a nap...and dream the cleaning fairy will come and clean it up for me. Absolutely love your painting bags...especially the last one...you know...for snacks!!!

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  2. I love MY way of thinking and organizing....and although I adore help...I still want my stuff the way I want it...I do love the idea of matching plates and cups and silverware and want stuff up on my walls...but hate to dust and clean....I would rather have live plants but they get dusty also...How to have the stuff I love and not have dust is too hard to figure out so I think I'll take a nap...and dream the cleaning fairy will come and clean it up for me. Absolutely love your painting bags...especially the last one...you know...for snacks!!!

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  3. I know exactly what you mean. I want collections too. I want indoor plants but then I forget to take care of them. We'll see what goes in my "snack" bag tomorrow. And who wants to clean all the time anyway? I heard a great quote today, "too blessed to be stressed."

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  4. Dee - we are kindred spirits indeed - there are housekeeping tasks that I'm ashamed to say I couldn't care less about. Every once in a while I get the bug to straighten it all out ...but not very often!

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  5. What?!! You're getting rid of that colander and the salad spinner?!! What will you do when you have spaghetti and salad?

    Just kidding. It does help every now and then to just pull everything out and really think about whether you really need it or if it just landed there and there it has sat for how long----- all unused and lonely!

    Reminds me of a time when I found a partly finished cross stitch project stuck into a big bowl that was pushed to the back of a lower kitchen cupboard.

    Who put it there ? and why there? and on what sort of occasion?

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  6. I have way too many colanders and the salad spinner had a crack down the side - it was funny, my husband says we need less clutter, but he came in and said "You're giving ALL this stuff away, what if we need this someday?" He went through and found some glass that HE bought and kept those!
    Go figure. It's nice to have clean cabinets and drawers.

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  7. The stuff we save. One good thing - a favorite knife had fallen down he back of the drawer and we found it when we were cleaning. Yay!

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