Foto Friday: Out of Place

Remember when I showed you the before and after pictures of my laundry room?  I’m proud to say that I’ve kept it clean!  I even added some colorful labels and a colorful tub to corral loose items. 

When I went into my laundry room yesterday, I saw something that was out of place. 

Can you see it?

No, not the spatula sticking out of the tub.  I use that to push down the diapers into the water when they’re soaking. 

There it is.

Mater wanted to help out with the laundry yesterday. 

Thanks for your help, Mater!

(Don’t forget to visit Mom Tried It and see other Foto Friday submissions for today’s theme Out of Place.  You can see last week’s theme BLUE here. )

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On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to share with you that I lost my hard drive two weeks ago. It was rough, but God saved all my pictures, so I’m not crying as hard as I could be.  I also figured out how to get my music files back onto my computer from my iPod, so I didn’t loose my 2, 250 songs!  So, in the scheme of things, it wasn’t that devastating. 

One thing I did loose that is more of an annoyance than anything is my Live Writer.  That’s the program I use to write my blogs.  All my posts are saved online with Blogger, but Writer had all of my posts listed in it’s storage so I could easily link to a previous post with no fuss.  I had even started a post on my Girls Trip 2011 but lost it in the crash.  Oh well.  I’ve since downloaded Live Writer again and it will store all of my posts from here on out.  No biggie I guess.

I hope you all have a great weekend! We’ll be celebrating Rick’s birthday with his folks coming down to visit tomorrow.  Happy Birthday Wonderful Husband!!

I Can Clean!

The other day I was going into my laundry room to start a load of laundry.  I love that it’s on the first floor, but I hate that it’s right off the kitchen and where everyone can see it if the door is left open.

WARNING!!!  Here is a picture of what my laundry room looked like this day.  It was no worse than any other day before – that’s the problem.  It’s a MESS!!!!!!

(The door is open as far as it will go because of *stuff* cluttered behind the door.)

I was so annoyed with how cluttered it was that I couldn’t even do that load of laundry.  I spent the next hour or so organizing the mess.  I brought in a kitchen chair and went through all the stuff on the shelf – I had no idea what was up there!  I went through all the hangers and hunting gear and found a place for it all.  I sorted all the *crap* that was on the dryer keeping me from easily reaching the controls.

I went to Big Lots on a big sale day (everything in the store was 20% off) and bought some clear tubs. I cam aggravated because I can’t find my label maker anywhere, and I desperately want to label my tubs!  I can be such a nerd when it comes to labels.  I love them!

So here it is, the organized laundry room.  I have a place for everything and everything is in its place! And can you see?  The door is completely open! Since this day, I’ve added hooks on the wall and started using ‘vertical space’.  I use this room for laundry, recycling, and extra pantry storage (just my 25lb container of flour). 

Maybe I’ll get really bright paper and put big colorful labels on the tub to make it cuter.  It’s pretty white in there, isn’t it?

Anyway, I just wanted to prove to my husband, mom, and family (and close friends) that I can actually clean.  I know how.  I just don’t like doing it.

Blue

While I was sitting on the couch folding my laundry today, I was thinking, “What does a person blog about when they blog every day?”  I was drawing a complete blank on any future blog posts.  I recently had a blog explosion (5 whole posts in two weeks), and now I’m at a loss for anything else to write about.

Then, it hits me.  Actually, all I had to do was look down at what I was doing.  There was my inspiration.  Blue laundry. 

Exciting, huh?

I washed our comfy flannel sheets with my son’s comfy flannel sheets today.  Seems like a good idea, huh?  Well, it would be if all the flannel was even remotely close to the same color.  One is a dark navy blue set and the other a pale yellow.  Not a good match!

When I pulled everything out of the dryer, I had blue everything.  Actually I had blue and dingy green everything.  The crib sheet was a dingy green color, the green pillow cases were a dingy green color, and the blue sheets were as blue as ever.

The Color Catcher was a beautiful dark blue as well.  Maybe I should have put a few more sheets in.  You live, you do laundry, you learn.

P.S. A big sorry goes out to my sister who handed down those two pale yellow flannel sheets to me.  Somehow she managed to keep them yellow the entire time she had them for her sons.  12 years later, I ruined one of them in one wash.  I completely understand if she never hands anything else down to me again (though, I think she has given me everything she possibly could give me already!)  Thanks, Sis!!!

My Cloth Diaper Fix

I’ve mentioned before that I use cloth diapers, right?

I love using cloth diapers.  We bought one brand, lots of them, and never looked back.  I love how easy they are to use and how cost saving they are.  Most of all I love how there are never poop leaks.  I can remember two or three poop leaks he’s had in 2 years.  Seriously!  I love them.

There are two things though, that I don’t love about them. 

1.  The brand I chose only came in solid colors.  No cute prints.  I love seeing all the cute prints available in cloth diapers on my message boards.  They’re amazing!  So many cute designs!!  I could go broke getting all the ones I love. 

2.  The Velcro on these diapers is starting to go bad.  I’ve caught a diaper falling off more than once in the past month, and the closures catch on his pants all the time.  I’m getting kind of annoyed with my choice of Velcro over snaps.  (Hindsight is 20/20) 

Here is what my Velcro tabs look like after two years of use and no maintenance -

 

They’re full of lint, strings, and fuzz.  They just don’t work anymore.  I was thinking about buying some new diapers with snaps and building up a new set.  BUT…that costs money, and if I can help it, I don’t want to spend any.  So, I figured out that I could probably clean out the tabs and they might work like new again. 

Here’s what I did.  One afternoon, after a load of diapers came out of the dryer, I sat and pulled out every last string, fuzz and lint from each tab.  My fingers HURT at the end of that afternoon!  I accumulated quite a lot of lint.

After I cleaned out the tabs, they worked like new!!!!!  Go figure!  Anyone else would probably already be cleaning out the Velcro tabs after every few washes, but not me!  I like don’t think of things like that.  Here’s a look at the same tabs from above after I cleaned them out.

 

 

Much better, eh?  I love it!  I have to clean them out every so often, but it surely beats buying new diapers! 

My advice to anyone considering cloth diapers -

Go with snaps.  I thought it was going to be hard to get a good ‘seal’, and that the baby would be too wiggly to do snaps, but I see in the end that they probably would last longer than Velcro tabs and I’ve been told they fit just as well as Velcro diapers.

Or clean out your Velcro tabs more often than I do.  Whatever.