Spicing things up

My husband is out of town on a business trip so I picked up a couple of movies to watch yesterday. I was watching “A Streetcar Named Desire” last night while eating my dinner (broiled salmon — yum). After I ate, I paused the movie so I could put my dishes in the dishwasher and put away the food. As I went to put away the dill and other seasonings, I noticed the spice cabinet was a little messy. Next thing I knew, I had the whole cabinet emptied out. That in itself was no small feat as there are three shelves in that cabinet and they were packed (yes, I do use all these things). I did, however, discover some duplicates which I was able to combine, and a few that were past their prime. In about 15 minutes or less, I had a nice, clean, organized spice cabinet. And then I went back to watching Blanche Du Bois. “I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.” I just LOVE the way she talks!

—The past two days I have spent a few minutes each morning weeding my raised vegetable bed after letting out the chickens. I should be able to finish it tomorrow and then I can get some tomato plants.

—Last year my husband bought me the boxed set of I Love Lucy dvds from the first two seasons. I’ve watched some but not all of them, although I HAVE seen them all on television at one time or another. I decided that since each episode is about half an hour, they would be the perfect thing to watch while on the treadmill. Today I watched the pilot episode which was only rediscovered in 1990 after having been thought to have been lost. I am a huge fan of the I Love Lucy series so maybe I’ll even look forward to my time on the treadmill. Maybe…

—One of the things I am in the process of *decluttering* is my pantry and freezer, as I mentioned earlier. I am looking at what I have on hand and trying to come up with creative uses for these items rather than doing more grocery shopping. Despite having given my mom a dozen eggs the other day, and hard boiling another dozen, I still have nearly two dozen more in my refrigerator. I also have a package of cream cheese that is about to expire so tonight I am making a quiche (my recipe uses cream cheese as one of the ingredients). Now if I can just figure out what to do with several cans of potatoes!

—I love to watch television programs such as “Clean Sweep” and “Mission Organization”. Today as I watched the latter, I started thinking about how I can help my 22 year old son clean up his act. He lives in our guest house and it is an absolute disaster. This is the kid who was actually quite neat until he hit puberty. He admits that he likes things neat but just doesn’t seem to be able to pull it off on his own. When he gets back from the mission trip he is on, I plan to help him start gradually digging out of his mess. I think we will tackle one thing at a time. First thing will be the clothes. They are currently covering his bedroom floor and I don’t know how he can tell which ones are clean and which are dirty. I’m going to have him gather all the laundry which I will do for him — this time! (He generally does his own laundry.) While I am washing clothes, his job will be to sort through the clean clothes. Part of the reason they are all over the floor is that his drawers are full. I know he has lots of clothes he no longer wears. Since our church is doing a garage sale this coming Saturday, this is an excellent time for him to sort out the clothes he doesn’t need. So that is my plan. I’ll let you know how it goes.