Organizing Old Magazines

My magazine piles!

I'll admit it: I hoard things.  I like to collect and I feel bad throwing stuff out.  It feels like a waste.

One thing I've always kept are magazines, which was fine when I would just pick one up here or there (I had a Martha Stewart phase a few years ago.  It started as research applying for a job with the magazine, but ended up so much more!).  But, my mother got me a subscription to Real Simple (love it!) and for the past 3 years I've been getting them every month.

I love articles about cooking, organizing and saving money and there are so many great articles that I want to reread and things I want to try to help simplify and organize my life.  The problem is that I'm not in a place where I can utilize a lot of their information.  So, I've been saving them.

This irks my husband because this is the third apartment we've had, which means he's been lugging boxes of magazines around.  He's been telling me he's going to just throw them out, which he'd never do, but its something he likes to threaten occasionally.

I always planned on pulling out the articles I wanted to save, scanning them and tossing the rest.  Now, with the awesomeness that is Pinterest, I can just find them online and pin them all!

It took me about a day, but I sat down (between my other cleaning and general baby-chasing) and skimmed each issue page by page.  Each issue has already been read, so I did not let myself reread everything.  If it looked interesting then I pulled it out.

After I pulled out everything I wanted, I sat down at the computer and went to the various magazine websites.  I did a quick search for the article and pinned each one.  Easy peasy!

Mmm... apple juice...

So, I now have an extremely heavy box to lug out to the dumpster, clean space on my desk and more storage room!

Preparing for the school year.

There was court on Tuesday.  I went and saw Kitty's mom for the first time in awhile.  She still looks hallow-faced and sickly.  They ordered a full spectrum hair follicle drug test.  We're still waiting for the results.  The longer it takes, the better for us.

I don't really want to think on any of that.  If it comes back negative then we have nothing until she screws up again.  For her and her kids' sake, I hope she doesn't.  For our and Kitty's sake, I hope she does.

I've got my linens reorganized and pulled out a lot of stuff to donate, so I need to see what's next on the list.  We'll need to go through the kids clothes soon; apparently Kitty has nothing to wear!

We went to the renaissance faire last weekend and Kitty wanted to dress nice.  She we through almost everything she owns.  We made suggestions.  Nothing she wanted to wear fit.  She picked out a sheer ballet skirt over short shorts, which made her look like she was just wearing undies.  We told her no, and there was a TANTRUM.

We haven't had one of those in at least a year.

Murl told her to can it or they would stay home and she wore another skirt under her ballet skirt.  This all took over an hour.  I told Murl that we'd be picking out her school clothes the night before.

I realized, while preparing myself for the school year (in case she's with us) that all the elementary schools wear uniforms.  Thank goodness!  Its more money, but less hassle.  Plus, her mother would have to pay for half, so its not really an issue.

The schools down here also have supply lists that are twice as long.  Sigh.

Wolfie and I are making peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies.  Almost done, then to his nap!

Zone Defense 4: Clothes and Textiles

This week I'm getting back on the Zone Defense train!  Woo woo!

I'm going to attempt to simplify laundry and linens.  This should be pretty easy for me.  We don't have any laundry equipment here, so no laundry room!  I do two loads a week at my MIL's and that's that.

I plan on reorganizing the linens in my closets.  We have sheets we don't use for bed sizes we don't own anymore.  I'm going to keep a full set for the air mattress, but the rest I can donate.  And I've got probably 20 baby sized towels and 20 more receiving blankets, so I'll go through those as well.

I've been planning on making a quilt out of the receiving blankets.  I originally wanted to make this I love you(r DNA) quilt, but I've just noticed that its crib sized and I'd like to make a twin.  We've got some nice crib sized blankets already and I want this to be something he'll be able to use for a long time.

So those are my laundry plans.  I'll go through the kids clothes again in September to see what we need to buy them for winter and repackage the baby clothes for storing.  Its all in old diaper boxes, which are not good to store for a long time.

The grownup clothes are set for now, aside from going through Murl's socks to hunt for holes and see if he needs a new pack.

I think I can handle that this week!