Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Tips for Keeping a Clean House: The Laundry Monster

Laundry. *eye twitch*

It's pretty safe to say I HATE doing laundry. I mean.... I hate it. I hate laundry like I hate getting teeth pulled without Novocain. Like spinach in my teeth on picture day. I hate doing laundry like I hate running into my husband's ex-girlfriend and seeing that she looks way hotter than me.... ya know? I loathe doing laundry. I hate it. Did I mention I hate laundry? Yeah. I hate laundry.

But, it's a thing. It's a real deal, big girl, grown up, congrats-you've-got-your-own-life thing and there's no getting around it.

I don't have an Earth shattering, end all, be all set of "rules" to go by when it comes to doing laundry, only that it gets done regularly. I started doing my own laundry when I still lived at home with my parents, and it hasn't gotten easier over these past...... over these many years... let's not talk about how long it's been.

I have a little bit of a routine when it comes to doing my laundry, and so I thought I'd share it with you all today.

I love y'all. You know that? Right? The title of this blog is the "SIMPLE" life, not the "PERFECT" life. There is no such-a-thing in this world, so don't judge me on account of my super full closet, or my power cords hanging haphazardly underneath my shelf... I'm not perfect, and I certainly hope that you don't think I am trying to pretend I am.



With that being said, let's hop into it! (And you'll get a mini tour of my laundry room too!!)


Laundry for us starts in our closet. All of our dirty clothes get dumped here.
I keep our basket small, so that I don't overwhelm myself with clothes. When the basket (the one pictured was from Family Dollar about 4 years ago.) gets to this point (full) I know it's time to wash clothes. (When it's still filling up I like to wash my towels, rugs etc...) It fills up about every 3 days or so. This basket equals one "large" load of laundry, to me it's more like a medium though.


Here is our washer & dryer. It's a Kenmore Elite set that we bought in the fall of 2009 at Sears -right before we got married. They've held up so so well and I am super pleased with them.
I decided, when we started working on the house pre-wedding, that I wanted my utility room/laundry space painted a happy clean color, and so I chose this blue from Sherwin Williams - I'm sorry, I can't remember the name - because of how pretty the blue and white looked together, and it's the one room in the house that I haven't reconsidered the color on. We took this room from NASTY brown paneling to this and I love it. My ironing board cover is from Wal-Mart and I liked that it had the EXACT same color blue as the walls! ;) Again it's from Fall 2009, so I doubt that it's still available.


Organization is KEY and it's a huge part of keeping your laundry monster at bay. I have STRUGGLED SO HARD in this space with organization, and if you were to be standing in the room with me, you would know that on the opposite side of the room, it's all cray-cray. But the laundry side of this room has finally come around. I used these four white stacking bins (Dollar General circa 1997) to hold my stain removers (I don't need those a lot, so they go on top), lost socks, laundry bags (like for delicates) and then the top bin on the right holds extra mouse traps and D-Con packs.... old house, people. It maximizes all that vertical space we have in this room. The ceilings are easily 12ft tall in this room, as it used to be part of the carport, but it was closed in to make this room.
I LOVE this system, and I loved that thinking outside of the box helped me create this space using the bins that I already had. They had been in my Dad's workshop before he passed away, and when my Mom moved from that house, I laid claim to them.

Just because it's a laundry room does not mean that it can't be cute. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that this room is Pinterest Perfect (are those really peoples homes??? Like really really? Who lives that perfect?) But I wanted a little decoration in here so that I didn't go crazy.
This home has endless love and laundry.
So true. So so true.

I found this free printable on Pinterest and it's from a website called 247moms.com. I will link it for you HERE. And the lamp and lampshade I got from Dollar General a couple of years ago. Unfortunately I haven't seen the shade again there, but they still have the base (although now it looks more green than blue...) I framed the printable in an old black Dollar Tree frame and then using some red hemp cord from my jewelry making stash hung it on the wall and think it's super cute!


Ok, so back to laundry itself. I have this handy dandy little step down into my laundry room, and so to save my back (which isn't happy at all today as I type, idk what I did but it's mad at me) I set my basket on this step and load my washer.
I don't sort anything. Except towels. Lights, darks, whites, reds, they all get thrown in together. I wash everything on the "Tap Cold" setting and I haven't had a problem with color running, ever. This is a time saver/lazy girl thing that I do. If you are a sorter, sort. Sometimes, just for the heck of it, I'll sort out a white load and use a little bleach on them, but just to say that I sorted laundry and did a whites load that day.



I have a very small arsenal of products that I use in my laundry. I use ALL with Oxi Clean detergent. I buy the one in the blue bottle with the orange top because Aaron says it smells like candy and he likes it better than the regular ALL in the white bottle. Whatever. It's not a huge price difference, if any at all, so I do that. I alternate these days between using Downy and Vinegar as my fabric softener. Now, wait a second before you start throwing things at me. Missy, I thought you were an exclusive vinegar user in your laundry..... Y'all remember my Save Money, Skip Fabric Softener post from a few months ago?? In my defense, I did not buy the Downey. My Mom bought it and didn't like it, so she gave it to me. I haven't noticed a difference in my clothes, so I'm using it up, and I use the vinegar on my bedsheets, towels and rugs. And I throw in some Downey Unstoppables for extra smell goods.


After my clothes have washed, I throw the clothes in the dryer and let them dry. When that loud, annoying, wonderful buzzer goes off, I rush into the laundry room and immediately start folding and hanging. (And you see, I'm not a faker, whites and all are in that dryer!)
The basket that you see on top of the dryer came from Dollar General and that's what everything gets folded into. The rug was a TJ Maxx find when I re-did my bedroom at my parents house in 2008, just before I met Aaron. It's an oldie.  I have a hook hanging behind the door that I put my hanging things onto, and then when I'm ready to put it all away I grab the basket and the hanging things and off to the bedroom I go!



It's simple, it's lazy, but it keeps my clothes clean. Rarely does my laundry ever pile up. But my washer is always running. This is how I stay on top of the craziness. It's not groundbreaking, but it works for me, and that's what is important. Find a system that works FOR YOU and for YOUR FAMILY. Us wives/moms have the hardest jobs of all, whether you are a full time working mom or if you stay home like I do, and if you find a system that works, that doesn't overwhelm you and drag you down, stick with it. For me, that means not sorting laundry and only doing small loads every day. Am I perfect? Nope. Is my home perfect? Far from it. Perfect doesn't exist people. Remember that. Perfect isn't a real thing. I didn't say my laundry "never" piles up. I said it "rarely" piles up. "Whatever is good for your soul, do that."



Thank you all for hanging out and doing laundry with me today! I'll chat with you all again very soon!  Love y'all chickens! See ya later Alligator!


Monday, February 23, 2015

SNOWED IN!!! (Picture Heavy Post)

Is that...wait? Is that SUNLIGHT?? Is that grass? Holy cow!

We've been SNOWED IN for an entire week around here! The weather around here has been RIDICULOUS and so with that comes lots of staying in and cooking at home and staring at each other and what not. So I thought I would give you all a look into what we did during this one week of snow!


Here at our house we got a little over a foot of snow. About 16 inches actually. That's a lot for us. And then we got ice, and then more snow, and then ice again. It's been a rough week.


The first day we both just kind of existed. Aaron actually got up and got ready for work, but just as he was about to leave his boss called him and said to forget it for that day, so we did a happy dance, exchanged a couple of high fives, woke Tabby up, who just growled at us and fell back to sleep standing up (not a morning girl), and then we got back into our PJs and went back to bed. We ended up watching a few old faithful movies that we love and eating everything in sight that we had.... which wasn't much. 

Here are some pictures!

This was my uniform for the entire week. Fuzzy pajamas. These are my favorite. I've got pink ones with paw prints, pink ones with hearts, black ones with hearts, leopard print ones, aqua an grey with stars, pink and black plaid.... I would have frozen to death without my fuzzy pjs!

I changed out our chalkboard to say "Baby, it's COLD outside," just in time.  The next morning, we woke up to a foot of snow.

This. We woke up to this. Literally not one car went by our house the entire day until the snow plow finally came about 1am the next morning. 

You can't even really see it through this nasty picture, but the snow reaches halfway up the tree trunks there by the wood shop.

Birdie foot prints, puppy "nope" prints.
  
They did this for half the morning. It was precious! 


Tuesday, Aaron braved the weather to go to work for a couple of hours and then decreed that since another big round of snow was coming we should run out to the store for a few things. So we did.
The snow reached up to my knees in some places. It was a trick just to get to the truck.

My poor little car....

But it sure was pretty.

This is how thick the snow was on top of our garbage can. Can you tell that the top of the can is my spray paint station?? Just.... ignore that...

Ew. This was at the end of our road.

So we headed off to town to get a few groceries.



Aaaand both grocery stores in our town closed at 5, and it was 5:30 before we got there. So we decided to brave heading to a store 15 minutes away. Thankfully that store was open and instead of getting our usual haul, we got just what would keep us away from eating the dog for the next week. 


  
He is the bomb at driving in the snow and ice. And really cute! :)


The red barn, the black horse... it was too pretty. If I'd had my real camera with me I would have made Aaron stop so I could take a proper picture.



This little diva DID NOT like the snow at all. She didn't get out in it once to play like some dogs do. She did her puppy business in the bushes. All my shrubs will be dead come spring. 

More snow. Jeez. COVERED our carport/porch. I turned the dryer on and heated all that up (the vent comes out there in the bottom left corner, just out of the frame) so that it wouldn't be ice when Aaron got home. 

This. Instant.  I texted this picture to my best friend and she loved it. She and her husband just moved up here from southern Alabama (she'd moved there when we were in High School and stayed there when she met her husband) and it was the first snow they'd seen in a real long time. She hated it.

Boredom equals rearranging your perfume collection and using a picture frame for a tray.... because it's cool and crafty.




We didn't eat healthy this week. We ate warmly. My Mama's meatloaf recipe, mac and cheese and real legitimate mashed potatoes! I was a very happy and full girl.



Guess what happened to us on Thursday?? I woke up to discover our cold water pipe had frozen. Yay! I called my handy father in law and he got on it. This was him digging through the snow to get to the shut off valve. We got the pipe thawed out and working in about 30 minutes, but it was a thrilling 30 minutes, for sure. Poor guy. He pretty awesome.

And to celebrate cold water, I decided I wanted to try my hand at chocolate bread pudding. I had everything I needed and decided "what the heck? We're snowed in anyway!" It was amazing.

We did eat legitimate food that night. Italian Pork Chops, alfredo noodles and green beans! This is a very typical meal around here for us, and it fills you up!


 All we did was eat. I swear!
I decided we needed chili, but we didn't have hardly anything my favorite recipe calls for. I like to make my chili in the crock pot and let it cook for 12 hours. But we wanted chili and we wanted it NOW, so I made what I called "Mash Up Chili," it was a mash up of what I had in the pantry and it was very very good. I surprised myself.

Can you tell? 


The snow has finally started to melt and I will admit, I kind of miss the way life just sort of slowed down. I enjoyed my days off with my Aaron, and I liked that we got to spend so much one on one time together. We did have a BIG BAD case of Cabin Fever (click the link! You won't be sorry!) after 2 days, but it was a good week. Our road crews were amazing, and we never lost any power. When our pipes did freeze we were able to thaw them right away, we had plenty of food to eat .... it was a good week, all things considered.


When I was getting my pictures together for this post, I found these on my phone that I'd apparently collected over the week.

Our first snow day as Mr. and Mrs. 2/10/2010. We were babies!

This is a picture of me and my sweet Daddy in 1995. I was 5 years old and we were living in an old farmhouse. It came a huge snow that day and Daddy decided we needed to build the best snowman in the county. So we got started and rolled up this huge snowball for the base. Being cooped up this week has made me miss that goober so much, I've kept myself very busy to keep from getting very depressed.   He loved and hated the snow all at the same time, just like me, and I know, if he was alive today, that on Monday morning he would have been out in his truck making his way to our house to check on us and bring us breakfast from the Dairy Queen.  But aside from missing my Daddy, it's been a good week.



Thanks for hanging in there with The Simple Life. I've got a few posts in the works, but because of the weather and Aaron being home a lot of the time, I decided to enjoy my down time with him as much as possible. We really see so little of each other through the week because of work and other commitments. But I do plan on picking up blogging more often starting very soon and hope you are as excited as I am about the possibilities!


How much snow did you get at your house? Did your pipes freeze up on you? Did you enjoy your time and be lazy or did you use those snow days to tackle projects around the house? Let me know in the comments below and we can share our snow stories with each other!