“How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House’s Dirty Little Secrets”

I didn’t choose a theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge.  I signed up on March 31^st, so there wasn’t much time to choose a theme.  I’ve been trying to loosely plan out my posts, though.  Experience has taught me that it’s frustrating to “waste” a post on an easier letter when I could have finagled that post to work for a more difficult letter.  I still don’t have an official theme, but the closest thing to a theme emerging seems to be “things I meant to write a blog post about a while ago.”  I seem to write a lot of catch-up blog posts, so I guess it makes sense to have a month devoted almost entirely to catching up. 

I think the first time I mentioned writing a post about decluttering was back in April of 2019, shortly after we started trying to organize and declutter in earnest.  So, three years later, I’m finally writing one.  We’ve made a lot of progress.  It’s still not perfect, but it’s a lot better. 

I’ve tried and abandoned a lot of decluttering and cleaning methods.  I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no perfect system, at least not for me.  I have, however, found three that I like bits and pieces of and have combined into one sort of system/method that seems to work for me.  Even though this is the one I’m sharing first, it’s the one I found last and probably use the least from.  Just to be honest, I’ve only skimmed the book and read a few chapters.   But I still think it’s worth sharing.

“How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind:  Dealing with Your House’s Dirty LittleSecrets” is a book by Dana K. White.  She also has a blog; A Slob Comes Clean, and a podcast. 

I’d rather end on a positive note (remember I said I only used bits and pieces from each system), so I’ll start with what I don’t like. 

The parts I don’t like are that the tone can seem a little bit goofy, and there seems to be a degree of “oh, look how cute and funny it is that I can’t get my act together.  Isn’t it hilarious that I’m a grown woman who’s embarrassed to let anyone in her house?!?”  I realize this is 100% my issue, but I HATE everything about being disorganized.  It stresses me out when things aren’t put away, we can’t find what we need when we need it, or if I feel like things are too messy to have people over to the house.  It’s humiliating and makes me feel like the person who never gets anything right.  I see zero humor in it.  That’s me and my issues, though.  I’m sure for plenty of people, the humor works.  The other thing I’m not crazy about is the podcast.  I’ve listened to two episodes, and they both seemed very rambling and disorganized to me.  Again, for some people, the less formal approach may be more appealing. 

Now that the negatives are out of the way, here are the things I love about it. 

She focuses a lot on letting go of the fantasy and embracing reality or not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.  This is something I’ve struggled with.  For example, for years, our spice cabinet was an absolute disaster.  Finding spices was an exercise in frustration because everything was just crammed in there, and jars and pouches would come tumbling out more often than not when you opened the door. 

I put off organizing the spice cabinet because I thought it would be just perfect to buy identical jars with cute little labels and put all of the spices in those and then organize them alphabetically.  It was part of my perfect kitchen fantasy.  I did have enough sense to know that it was going to be a very time-consuming project, so I kept putting it off.  Life kept happening.  I kept not buying the jars, not implementing my “perfect” spice cabinet system, and getting frustrated every time I cooked or baked and it was an ordeal to find what I wanted. 

I wasn't able to find a picture of what it looked like before.  Believe me when I say it was very, very bad. 

Finally, I got fed up and decided that good enough might work.  I combined all of the spices that I had duplicates or even triplicates of because I bought more when I couldn’t find them and grouped them mostly by cuisine in baskets, with the most commonly used ones being on the counter in a spinning spice rack. 

My system is this:

The ones I use daily or almost daily are in the spinning spice rack.  The baskets have spices usually used together; for example, spices used in baking are in a basket, spices used in Indian-style food are in a basket, etc. 

Is it perfect?   Nope.  It’s definitely not a Pinterest-worthy “look how beautifully arranged my spices are” setup.  Is it better than it was before?  About a million times better!  I can find what I need when I need it.  Bottles and jars aren’t falling out of the cabinet, and I don’t feel like a disorganized failure every time I need a spice.

The other thing I really like about this system is decluttering without making a bigger mess.  It seems like projects always take longer than I think they’re going to.  I don’t know how many times I’ve started a massive decluttering project on a Saturday morning, being perfectly willing to spend the whole morning and even part of the afternoon on it.  I drag everything out, make an absolute mess, get in way over my head, and that becomes the entire weekend.  This means I’m not about to try to declutter anything for the next few weekends because I don’t want to give up an entire weekend again. 

So I finally decided to try doing the really obvious parts of a decluttering project first.  Our shed was the perfect place to implement this.  Normally, I would have hauled everything out, had it all over the carport and the driveway, and we would have been stuck dealing with it all weekend.  

This time, I started small.  There were lots of rusty old paint cans from before we even bought the house.  Those were easy.  We definitely weren’t keeping them, so I was able to get rid of them.  I didn’t have to find a place for them, and getting rid of them gave me a little more space to work.  

Next was getting rid of a few broken tools, then hanging the good tools up.  

It took some time, but I didn’t hate the process.  Now it looks like this.

Is it perfect?  No.  There's definitely still room for progress.  But it’s so much easier to find the yard tools we need when we need them, and it’s so much easier to put the lawnmower away, which, in a weird way, makes it a little easier to cut the grass. 

So those are the two systems/methods I found to be most useful from “How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind:  Dealing with Your House’s Dirty LittleSecrets.”

What about you?  Have you read the book?  Do you have a favorite organizational or cleaning method?  Is it a struggle for you to stay organized? 

Happy Places

The Lodge @ Table Rock

I think most of us have a place (or maybe more than one if we’re lucky) that just makes us happy. Maybe it’s a place that’s soothing or comforting, or a place where nothing but good things have happened, or maybe it’s a place that for some reason just speaks to our soul.

We need happy places. Everyone needs at least one place to go that will put a smile on their face, make them feel at peace, or just make them happy.

These are my happy places:


Folly Beach, SC

Table Rock State Park: I’ve always liked Table Rock, but it’s also where Nick and I got married, and that made me love it. It’s beautiful there, the lodge has a really neat history (built by the Civilian Conservation Corps), and I loved our wedding. I know it sounds a little cliche, but it really was a perfect day. We like to go back, around our anniversary if possible, and take the dogs hiking. I love that the place we got married is a place we can return to over and over again. 

 Folly Beach, South Carolina: This is possibly one of the most beautiful places on earth. Standing on the shore, it just feels like all is right with the world. It’s also just a short drive away from Charleston. I love the laid back atmosphere of Folly Beach and the fact that the beach isn’t crowded. And it’s dog friendly!

Meerkat @ Riverbanks

Riverbanks Zoo & Garden: My earliest memory of going to Riverbanks is when I was five years old. My grandparents lived in Columbia, so we went to the zoo sometimes when we went to see them. They loved being grandparents, so we were incredibly spoiled by them, and they just seemed to take it up a level at the zoo. It’s also where we went on the last visit we had with them before they died, and it was one of those days that you can look back on as being one of the perfect days in life. Now, going to the zoo is something that I get to share with Nick, and I still love it as much as I did when I was a little girl.

Garden @ Riverbanks


Our House: Our house isn’t big or fancy (if we have a style it’s probably best described as informal), but I love it. It’s where we’ve chosen to build our life together, focusing on the people, ideals, and things that matter to us. I’d like to think (hope) that our house is welcoming. Entertaining family and friends at home is something that’s really important to me, and I always want anyone we invite to be comfortable and happy. Our house is also very pet friendly, and we wouldn’t have it any other way since the fur kids are such an important part of our lives. Coming home just feels right and safe; it’s where I want to be at the end of a long day. 

So what about you? What are your happy places?



Husband

I talk a lot about my husband Nick in my blog, so I thought I’d take my H post as an opportunity to introduce the other half of Sweet Tea Reads (even if he was raised by Yankees and doesn’t love sweet tea).

Nick is a volunteer firefighter (which has some definite perks), and works in another branch of emergency services.  He’s left-handed, soft spoken, and can’t stand for his food to touch.  He reads almost exclusively non-fiction; the really brainy stuff like higher math theories and science. 

Nick and I met on E-Harmony, had a few very long phone conversations, then a first date that lasted about five hours, and were married a little over a year later.  He says he wanted to propose on our first date (his grandfather proposed to his grandmother on their first date), but didn’t because he thought it might scare me off.  I’m very glad he proposed, but very glad he waited a little longer.  We just celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary on September 28^th. 

Nick has a habit of getting distracted and losing track of time, so I actually thought he had left me on our first date.  No.  He just got into a long conversation with someone installing paper towel holders in the restroom and totally lost track of time.  I was getting ready to ask for the bill and leave when he finally came out.  That sums up a lot about our personalities; he’s much more personable and patient than I am.  He’s also a much friendlier person.  I tend to lose patience quickly and move on.

Somehow, though, we seem to be very well matched.  I suppose we bring a balance to each other.  He’s the voice of reason when I want to adopt every cat I find.  I keep us on enough of a schedule to fulfill our obligations.  We just work together.

So there you have my husband, Nick, the other half (another H!) of Sweet Tea Reads for a little glimpse of the man in the posts.