If You Give a Moose a Muffin

I think I'd get along really well with author Laura Numeroff because it's as if she knows me and is writing her books about my pick-up and organizational forays around our house. 

Just as If You Give a Moose a Muffin is the sequel to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Numeroff, over the weekend I felt like I was living the sequel to my "Mouse" day.  Luckily I didn't feel as big as a moose, but the day sort of progressed a bit like Mooses' If You Give a Moose a Muffin book.


It began pretty tamely...by swishing and swiping 2 of the toilets without chemicals, but with a little leftover liquid soap (I call it swishing and swiping in honor of Flylady of Flylady.net who recommends to swish and swipe daily).  Bathroom number 2 got the bonus round because I also swished and swiped the sink, faucets, and counters.  Now I wish I could brag that I swish and swipe daily, but even every few days makes a huge difference.  Flylady has also made me a believer of  "soap is soap", so why use cleaning chemicals daily when you don't need to?  Using leftover soap is a great way to reduce harsh chemical use, and also use up leftover soap you don't like or use up the end of the bottle...you know the one that no one wants to bother with?  Just add some water to get it all out and use it up.

After the swish and swipe, I ended up in the laundry room with the hand towels from the bathroom (you can never switch those out enough), and while I was in the laundry room, I spied some laundry to go up to Rhody's room.  Which I delivered, and decided to put away since the last batch was on his desk.  While I was putting away the clothes I noticed 3 pictures that needed hanging, soooo that lead me back to the laundry room to fetch a hammer and some hooks.  Back to the bedroom, tap tap tap, 3 pictures up and off the desk and table.  I surveyed my work and decided they looked nice.  Back to the laundry room to put away the hammer and hooks, and drop off the bag of dirty laundry from Rhody's room.  Moved laundry from washer to dryer, and put in the new load of dirty boy clothes.

While I was in the laundry room I spied my sewing machine, which reminded me that I needed to sew on some Boy Scout patches, mend a blanket, try to take in some pants, and fix a book cover.  I relocated the machine, the thread and the items to work on to the dining room table so that I could spread out.  I have NO idea how I distracted myself from the sewing, but I think I made a conscious decision to sew in the evening when it's cooler because the blanket to repair was unappealing in the heat.  At any rate, somehow, some way I ended up watching a few interesting minutes of TV with Rhody who had on the Science/Discovery channel about how things are made.  And while I was watching TV I noticed one of the kid's laptops was not put away neatly.  So I investigated why that might be and discovered that there wasn't really room where the laptop was supposed to be.  Soooo, I took a moment to survey the TV cabinet, and decided that the barely accessible, rarely used CDs (everyone has moved to digital music) could be moved to the newly cleaned out bookcase where they'd be much more visible and possibly more used (remember the episode of  If You Give a Mouse a Cookie the other day?) http://alacartegreen.blogspot.com/2012/08/if-you-give-mouse-cookie.html.  With the relocation of the CDs completed, there was plenty of room for the laptop where it was supposed to be.  I digressed a bit more and labeled the power supplies, and attached velcro devices to the cords to keep them wrapped neatly instead of the wild tangle of cords that seems to develop when I'm not looking.  http://alacartegreen.blogspot.com/2011/02/eat-your-greens-with-modern-twist.html Special bonus:  with things nice and neat in the TV cabinet, some photo albums fit in just beautifully!

While arranging the photo albums I discovered 2 more books that were in need of a new home...which of course lead me to my computer, and then to Swap.com.  If you haven't checked it out yet, I highly recommend it! http://market.swap.com/  It's a great way to get rid of what you want, and get something you do need or want in return...and the best part is that each party keeps something unused, unwanted, and unloved out of the landfill.

A previous episode of me reorganizing and deleting resulted in a large pile of 2 blankets, comforters, and a quilt.  Somehow I managed to make it to the playroom today, and bagged those up for a friend who will get them to her church, thereby helping me to de-clutter, and get the items to some folks in need.  The blanket de-cluttering was long overdue since the armoire they'd been housed in was SO jammed packed with sheets, pillows, and blankets for sleepovers that after a night of snacks, giggling, and sleep-not, the tired crew never seemed to be able to put things away neatly the following morning.  Now there is no excuse for sleepheads ;)

Is anyone hungry for a muffin?  Maybe I should head to the kitchen and see if we have something muffin-ish to eat...but wait, what was I supposed to be doing next?  I think hubby is beginning to think that I suffer from cleaning ADD, which is entirely possible, but as long as I'm productively decluttering, donating, and cleaning as I go does it really matter?  Stay tuned...I'm sure there will be a sequel to my If You Give a Moose a Muffin episode of green decluttering. 

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Have you ever read the book  If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff?  It's one of my favorite kid books because I can relate to it so much! Read on to see why...

Following a recent teenage get together at our house, I was putting away some serving trays and bowls in the dining room buffet, but the drawers were cramped.  Soooo, I took the opportunity to clean out the drawer to make things fit neatly; the things that we rarely use, or never use, went into a donation box, which of course is much greener than the dumpster.  I repeated the process for the remainder of the drawers....which meant recycling some mostly spent birthday and scented candles into firestarters.  Which lead me to the laundry room to my lint collection basket, and recycled cardboard egg cartons, which I stopped to fill with the lint and candle pieces.  Wah-la, firestarters!

While I was in the laundry room, I spied a bunch of cook books that I had placed on top of the dryer...I had moved these cookbooks from cabinet above the microwave because there were too many crammed into the hard to reach cabinet.  The kids could never fit the cookbooks back in the cabinet because they can't reach, and because there were too.  Soo, to resolve that problem, I culled through the cookbooks so they'd fit neatly in the cabinet, and added a few to the growing donation pile.  I was wracking my brain to figure out a new location for some of hubby's specialty cookbooks.

As I was trying to figure out a good home for the overflow cookbooks, it dawned on me that there were a few of hubby's cookbooks on another nearby bookshelf.  So, in typical If You Give a Mouse a Cookie fashion, I went to the bookcase to see if the overflow cook books would fit.  Well, you may have guessed that this lead me to sort through the dusty, kid's books that have been taking up space on the bookshelf (my kids have outgrown the books).  Many of the kid books are books I cherish and want to keep for future grandchildren.  So, during the course of the day I went through the books with each of the kids to see if there were any they also considered keepers.  This process resulted in 3 piles of books: books to share with our cousins; the keepers that needed to be moved to a new location; and a pile of books to swap.  If you haven't heard of swap.com, you should check it out.  It's a site to swap books, housewares, and much more with others who want to keep things out of the landfill, but receive something useful in return.

So the kids' books were cleared out, and the overflow cookbooks now filled that space...but you guessed it...this little Mouse now had to find a home for the kid's books that we wanted to keep, which lead me upstairs to a bookshelf with a collection of kid books, including the Little House on the Prairie series, a bunch of picture books, and classics.  Sooo, to fit this batch of keepers, I had to delete an equal amount of books that were already shelved there.  Which lead me to add to the 2 remaining piles;  books for cousins, and swap.com books. 

Since the downstairs bookshelves were being reorganized, I figured we should continue with the second bookshelf....so we cleaned out the collection of movies, deleted some, and vacuumed the shelves.  Some of the movies went to the donate pile, some of the movies went to the swap.com pile, and the rest were neatly replaced in the shelves. 

But wait, there’s more!  My Mouse experience wasn't over just yet.  I headed back to the laundry room.  There were still some bowls and things to fit back into the laundry room pantry…which was a mess.  I stood staring at it for a minute, and a light bulb went off that I might be able to consolidate all baking pans, pie plates, cake pans, specialty shape cake pans, etc. under one of the large cabinets in the laundry room.  It took me awhile to figure out what to keep, and how to best organize the odd shaped pans such as bundt pan, snowflake and heart shaped pans, special muffin tins, etc.  As I took items from the pantry, and stacked them neatly in the cabinet, I realized that there was still another weird shaped pan...and then I found another half sheet cake pan.  I culled a bunch of cookie cutters that we no longer use and added them to the pile for our cousins, creating space for the pans.  Removing the baking pans from the pantry created space for the food processor, potato slicer, the Pampered Chef mandolin slicer, crock pot, large bowls, etc all on one shelf in the pantry.  Eventually I turned my attention to the very top shelf of the pantry, and as I reorganized it, I kept thinking that I needed to make things easily accessible because since the top shelf is tough to reach, and I didn't want things falling down on us.  Sooo, I took the opportunity to toss some more things into the donate pile. 

Cleaning out the pantry lead me to my computer to email my Mom with a few questions about a few of the items I was removing from the pantry.  Did she want them?  If not, they could be swap items, or donate items.  The day continued in this fashion, but in the end I felt like I accomplished a lot by decluttering several cabinets and drawers, removing and donating boxes and bags full of items we don't need and/or use while simultaneously keeping all those useful things out of the landfill. 


So in the event that you have one of those clean-out days that doesn't turn out the way you planned, and it evolves into a If You Give a Mouse a Cookie kinda day, do your best to keep it green!

Closet Philanthropist

I just LOVE this slogan from Planet Aid!!!!!

"Spring Cleaning can make anyone a “Closet Philanthropist”"

Planet Aid is, "Dedicated to protecting the environment and creating sustainable development", and you can do 2 good things at once by decluttering unused items, and helping someone else in need.  http://www.planetaid.org/ 


So what are  you waiting for?     To locate a donation bin near you, go to their link http://www.planetaid.org/index.php?p=2_16_Find-a-Bin-Near-You

 

recycle reuse reshare with Big Bro Big Sis

I did some more cleaning out, and called up Big Brother Big Sister to come pick up the boxes of usable clothes, toys, and household items.  It feels good to donate, and I know that we are keeping useful things out of the landfills! It's green to donate :)  To get in touch with them check out their website: http://www.bbbs.org/site/c.diJKKYPLJvH/b.1539751/k.BDB6/Home.htm

Books - Day 6

I'm catching a bit of spring fever, and as a result things are getting cleaned out!  We've purged some books and movies, and instead of throwing them away, we donated them to our local library for reuse and re-enjoyment :)  Please don't ever throw out books or media, someone will happily reuse them whether it is the library, local doctor or dentist's office, or school.  Some libraries and schools do book swaps or book sales with donated books and media.  It feels good to give to others, and it feels good to declutter, it's a WIN-WIN!  Happy donating!